FSU Football: Rival coach defends series with Noles amid schedule criticism

FSU football knows at least one of their non conference games each season, and the current coach of that foe has not plans of wanting to replace that game.

For the FSU Football team, the biggest news of the week may not have been the fact that the Seminoles are going to be concluding practice this week with the annual spring game – but it might be about something that’s going to happen in close to a decade as the Noles scheduled a home and home series against Georgia.

The future games against the Bulldogs – scheduled to take place in 2027 in Tallahassee and the following season in Athens – are hopefully the start of a trend for the Seminoles of scheduling more quality home and home series to compliment their annual year end game against the rival Florida Gators on the non-conference slate.

While FSU football has been more open to playing quality non-conference series in addition to the Gators, the orange and blue has done the opposite over the last 30 seasons – as Florida, over that span, has played just two series other than the Noles (both against Miami) and played just two non-conference games out of the state of Florida (1991 Syracuse and 2017 Michigan).

The Gators tend to hide behind the excuses of “SEC schedule” and their neutral site game against Georgia as the reasons why, but current head coach Dan Mullen actually is saying that playing FSU football is another reasons – because the Seminoles are a tough enough non-conference foe (h/t Swamp 247).

"“I think that’s one thing that gets looked down upon,” Mullen said. “Would it be better to drop Florida State and schedule Oklahoma? That probably wouldn’t go over so well. We already have that (tough non-conference game) in the schedule.”"

Mullen also took a shot at Georgia for scheduling their game with FSU football by saying that the Bulldogs were “trying to catch up to us, I guess.”

Now, I wouldn’t be the person to use the phrase “looked down upon” to describe the annual game between the Seminoles and Gators as much as I would say it is a series that is taken for granted – mostly because it is assumed, and rightfully so, that top level teams in each state should be playing each other every year (like UF and Miami should instead of a couple times each decade).

I understand that you don’t want to overkill your schedule each season – in the early years where the ACC wasn’t as tough as it is now, FSU football could afford a non-conference schedule that yearly had Florida, Miami and another top team like Notre Dame (1993-94 and 2002-03) or USC (1997-98) with no non-conference breathers.

That being said, especially since the SEC is like the ACC in only playing an eight game conference slate with four openings for non-conference tilts, Florida can afford to once in a while schedule a home and home series against a team from outside the Sunshine State.

Along the same line, FSU football still has openings for possible home and home series in 2022-23 and 2031-32 in years where the aren’t already committed to two power non-conference games. Was Georgia just the start of a new trend for the Seminoles?