For 10 years, no rivalry burned hotter than Florida State vs. Miami.
Wild finishes. No. 1 teams collapsing. Pregame scuffles. Miami’s mascot cuffed by police. Nothing in sports — or in daytime soap operas — matched the chaos of the real-life drama that unfolded every fall in Miami and Tallahassee from 1985 to 1994.
Seven straight top 10 clashes, including four as top-five teams. Legends were born, heartbreak branded into history: Wide Right I and II, the Game of the Century. Two quarterbacks — Miami’s Gino Torretta and Florida State’s Charlie Ward — won the Heisman Trophy. Four national titles were claimed — three for the Hurricanes and one for the Seminoles. For a decade, the road to glory ran through Tallahassee and Coral Gables.
“The amount of violence on the field was unmatched,” said Torretta.
“You can’t even describe how much fun it is to play in that game,” said Devin Bush, whose pick six sealed a 28-10 win against No. 3 Miami in 1993.
On Saturday, the stakes are real again. No. 3 Miami and No. 18 Florida State meet as ranked foes for the first time in nine years, serving a long-awaited reminder of what this rivalry once meant … and could mean again.
It begs the question: Do the players in the rivalry today understand the past and just how inherently tense the Miami-FSU rivalry was for so many years in the Sunshine State?
“They have no idea,” surmised former Miami offensive tackle Leon Searcy, a three-time national champion. “Social media may give them an opportunity where they can go back and forth about the game, but I don’t think they realize how intense it is unless you go back and do your research.”
Miami-FSU might not hold the same intensity as the heydays of Bobby Bowden vs. Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson — heck, ESPN’s “College GameDay” skipped Tallahassee this week for Vanderbilt-Alabama — but the fans certainly remember the past and remain passionate about their ‘Noles and ‘Canes. In many ways, the fans have kept the flame burning, weaponizing their nostalgia into one of the most entertaining and downright vicious spats on social media.
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In the absence of ‘Wide Right’ drama, top 10 showdowns and runs to the national championship, the rivalry has shifted online. ‘Noles Twitter vs. ‘Canes Twitter is a 24/7 bloodsport, a modern echo of the bulletin board days of yesteryear when the entire sport turned their attention to the state of Florida for this one Saturday in the fall.
Their memes are outrageous — some not safe for work — and their arguments get downright personal, carrying through the late nights on X and spilling over into live “Spaces” events in which the fan bases talk trash in real time. GIFs like Miami defensive lineman Kendrick Norton sacking FSU’s James Blackman, and then strumming his leg like a guitar, are prevalent.
Miami fans secured new ammunition when then-No. 8 FSU fell in double overtime to unranked Virginia on the road last week. Images of a Virginia fan flipping the bird to quarterback Tommy Castellanos provided a new template for trash talk.
“I had somebody ask me if I think Florida State is going to look past Virginia,” FSU social media personality TJ Pittinger said. “I was like, ‘Buddy, I don’t think these kids care about playing Miami like you think they do. They care more about Miami being a top-five team than the stuff that happened in the late ’80s. I don’t think these kids give a s–t about that.'”
Indeed, even the coaches have tamped down the trash talk in the modern age. Miami’s Mario Cristobal, who was in the thick of the war and won two national championships as a lineman between 1989 and 1992, has focused more on preparation.
“We always knew this as the best rivalry in football. Coming up as a player, that was always a reason why players chose to go to one of the two respected schools,” Cristobal told reporters this week. “I mean, college football is the best sport in the world, so the fact that people bring up historical moments and whatnot, it’s not surprising. I do think that our players, alumni bases, fans, they all understand how intense this rivalry is, but I think our players, more importantly, understand the importance of practice and preparation, and that’s what our focus is right now.”
Certainly, behind closed doors, those words are more pointed and sharp. Cristobal grew up in an age when Jimmy Johnson declared the days leading up to the Florida State game as “No Class Week.” Players skipped classes to study film at 9 a.m. at the football facility, where they remained for the entire day.
“If you had a test, you told a coach and the coach would get it switched,” former Miami center Kelvin Harris said. “That’s just Jimmy. That’s how Jimmy ran it.”
Gone are the days of a roster sticking together for four to five years. Yes, 57 players on Florida State’s roster hail from Florida, and Miami has 54, but the transfer portal has led to frequent roster churn every offseason. Miami added 19 transfers and FSU had 23 in the offseason. Both quarterbacks — Carson Beck (Georgia) and Castellanos (Boston College).– started at other schools in 2024.
“I tell these kids now making all this money, listen, 10 or 20 years from now, ain’t nobody gonna remember how much money you made at school. But if you bring the school championships, that’s what makes legends,” Searcy said. “You make all that money and then you’re going to be forgotten in two or three years, but if you leave a legacy …
“There ain’t nowhere in Miami I can walk without someone saying, ‘What’s up, Big Searce?'”
Echoed Bush: “We were with our teammates from freshman all the way through as seniors. We did all the dirty work, the stuff that doesn’t feel good: running in your vomit together, holding each other up, pushing. We had that relationship and camaraderie.
“In the offseason, my teammate Derrick Brooks and I would work out and we talked about nothing but Miami when we lifted weights.”
In the early 1990s, Miami coaches were kicked out of the team meeting room on Thursday night before the game as former players filtered into the room to impart words of wisdom — and plenty of colorful language.
“No one knew who it was going to be. They would speak it real,” former Miami linebacker Maurice Crum said. “It got to the point where the guys were so fired up, people would be in tears. We wanted to play that night.”
While it can be argued that the constant roster movement via the transfer portal has cooled the vitriol among players, it has actually intensified the chatter among fan bases online. Miami fans consider Cristobal the sport’s Portal King. FSU fans argue in favor of Mike Norvell, who has leaned heavily on the transfer portal in recent years to varying degrees of success, leading the ‘Noles to an ACC title in 2023 before faltering to a two-win campaign in 2024, the program’s worst season in nearly 50 years. FSU has bounced back again, thanks, in part to the addition of superstars like Castellanos from the portal.
“In the offseason, people really started to get on (X),” said “Touchdown Timothy,” a prominent figure on Miami Twitter. “I launched a blog during the pandemic out of boredom, and it took off. People ask me if ‘Touchdown Timmy” is a character. I just say, every person is playing a character to some degree.”
Said Pittinger, an FSU fan: “They literally overpay for guys that the other one is recruiting just to have a recruiting win and piss the other one off.”
The fan bases feed off the missteps and failures of their rivals. Feverish attitudes have always been present on game days, but now they are featured online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“The fans were super nasty, but I loved it,” Bush said. “They’re shooting you birdies, calling you all types of names, but when you’re riding in on the bus, it’s nobody but you. There’s no help. I remember one year they came up and tore up our visitor locker room. It’s a real rivalry. Let’s go! It’s a rivalry you’re supposed to get into. There’s supposed to be severe trash talk. You’re supposed to get into shoving matches. There’s bad blood. That’s supposed to happen.”
FSU fan Darren Dukes, known as “Jaguar Paw” on social media, fondly remembers a rally from a 16-0 deficit to defeat the Hurricanes 30-26 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. “Miami fans were waking out crying. They were literally crying. Grown me crying!” Dukes said. “Me? Hey, I was laughing.”
Dukes is in full troll mode online. He believes Miami fans are among the cockiest on the planet. “Their fan base can be unbearable,” he said.
But that didn’t stop the South Florida native from dating Miami receiver Leonard Hankerson’s mother for nine years, he said. Hankerson is now the receivers coach for the San Francisco 49ers.
“We get along really good. Sometimes he’ll send me a text that ‘we’re going to beat y’all.’ But I always supported him when he was at The U,” Dukes said.
They may not admit it, but Florida State and Miami share more in common than most other rivalries. Years after bleeding and sweating on the field, Hurricanes and Seminoles alike fondly remember their epic clashes with pride.
“We respectfully hate Florida State. We respectfully hated them,” Searcy said. “They were our mirror image as far as talent — the speed, the physicality.
“Now, Notre Dame — we just hated Notre Dame. We didn’t respect them.”
Florida State and Miami never needed hate to fuel the fire, only respect. And that, perhaps more than anything, is what made their battles unforgettable.
