Clark: Was that the biggest upset in Florida State football history?
This might be the first time in my career that I've written a question in a headline where I'm genuinely asking for answers from the readers.
But, hey, my Internet research has stumped me for hours, and I'm tired of trying to find a bigger point spread that the FSU football team has overcome. So, if you can find a game in which Florida State won as a bigger underdog than Saturday at North Carolina -- the line was 18.5 points -- please, please reach out and let me know.
If not, no biggie. We'll just appreciate what we saw in that 35-25 victory over North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Because it was -- as far as I can tell -- the biggest upset the Seminoles have pulled off in at least 40 years.
You read that right. Forty years.
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Now, there needs to be some context added.
When you win more games than any school in the country from 1980 to 2019, and when you finish in the Top 5 for 14 years straight during that span, and play in bowls almost every year, well, you don't typically face point spreads that approach three touchdowns.
That actually made one element of the research pretty easy. I just knew that from 1987 to 2000, I didn't need to look up any point spreads at all! Because there weren't many NFL teams that would have been favored by 18.5 points over the Seminoles during that span.
So, that wiped out a decade and a half.
And thanks to the Internet, it is actually easy to research from 2001 to now.
Here's what I found:
The 2000s
Florida State's biggest win as an underdog until Saturday was the 2005 ACC Championship Game, in which Willie Reid (punt returner extraordinaire) and the Seminoles knocked off the lesser of the VIck Brothers to win the inaugural conference title game.
That spread was 14. Florida State won, 27-22.
The only other double-digit underdog victory for the Seminoles during that span came last year. Against, of all teams, North Carolina. The Tar Heels were ranked No. 5 at the time and favored by 13.5 points. Florida State won, 31-24.
Mack Brown truly is a giver, isn't he?
Other games you might be thinking about from the last 20 years are the Seminoles' trips to Boston College in 2007 and BYU in 2009.
Florida State was a seven-point underdog when it knocked off Matty Ice and the No. 2 B.C. Eagles -- the game ended up being iced by Geno Hayes's pick-six in Chestnut Hill.
And the Seminoles were an eight-point underdog when they went out to Provo and ran all over a top-10 BYU team in that 2009 beatdown, which included a pick-six from a freshman named Greg Reid.
So, we can say with absolute certainty that Saturday's 35-25 win was the biggest upset for the Florida State program since at least 1984.
That's when things get complicated.
I personally think it's the biggest upset win since at least the 1960s, but I can't prove it!.
So I'll give you the candidates. Keep in mind, there might be a site out there with all of these point spreads available, and if you can find it and send it to me, I'll douse you with the best champagne Gene Williams' money can buy!
1984 at Miami
I just can't fathom any way this point spread was enormous. The Hurricanes were coming off a national championship in 1983, sure. But they had beaten FSU by just one point, on a last-second field goal, en route to that title. And the Seminoles were undefeated and ranked No. 15 in the country when they rolled into the Orange Bowl in 1984 and completely dismantled Jimmy Johnson's team, 38-3.
It was an upset. Sure. But the No. 4 Hurricanes almost certainly couldn't have been favored by anywhere near 18 points against that talented FSU team. By the way, that Jessie Hester 77-yard score on the reverse was a thing of beauty. Go look it up on YouTube if you have the time.
1981 at Ohio State
FSU was unranked and coming off a 20-point loss at Nebraska. The Seminoles also were right in the middle of their famed -- and, in hindsight, completely maniacal -- "Octoberfest" portion of the schedule when they traveled to Columbus to take on undefeated and No. 7 Ohio State.
The Seminoles beat the Buckeyes, 36-27. They then won the next week AT Notre Dame, before tiring out down the stretch of that season. This point spread was probably sizeable, but was it 18.5?
1980 at Nebraska
Florida State was coming off a heart-breaking 10-9 loss at Miami. The Cornhuskers were ranked No. 3 in the nation and undefeated. The Seminoles had gone 11-1 the year before, so it wasn't like they were a no-name program. But, I can imagine the Miami loss pushed that point spread up to a pretty high number.
Was it 18.5 points high? I would doubt it. Because the Seminoles had proven already to have a great defense and a terrific kicking game. At the same time, they had yet to prove they could play with the biggest of the big boys at that time.
They proved it that day, though, leaving Lincoln with a dramatic 18-14 win.
(You might think I should also throw in the Pitt game from the following week. But the Seminoles were 5-1 and ranked No. 11 in the country when that game kicked off, so there's no chance they were THAT big an underdog at home -- even against that great Dan Marino-led squad).
1976 at Boston College
This is a sneaky one.
Florida State was just 1-3 under first-year head coach Bobby Bowden and was heading to Boston to play the No. 13 Eagles. I can't imagine the oddmakers (I assume they had them back then?) were giving Bowden's squad much of a chance against an undefeated BC team that had already knocked off Texas.
But the Seminoles dominated the Eagles to the tune of a 28-9 win. It was only the second victory of his tenure, but it let everyone know real quick that this Bowden guy could really coach.
1966 at Miami
Florida State was 4-5-1 the previous year and was coming off a loss to Houston in the opener. Miami was ranked No. 15 in the country.
No idea what the point spread would've been for a game like this, but rest assured the Seminoles were a decided underdog. But thanks in part to a 94-yard kickoff return by T.K. Wetherell (he was lateraled the ball at the 17 and ran the last 83 yards), the Seminoles pulled off one of the early upsets in program history with a 23-20 win.
1965 vs. Georgia
The Bulldogs were No. 5 in the country and had already beaten Alabama and Michigan. Florida State was 1-2 on the year. So, yeah, this would be one of the bigger upset wins of all-time.
Florida State was at home, though, so that would have been figured into the equation. And you best believe those 40,112 inside Doak Campbell Stadium were going crazy watching that upset win.
1964 vs. Kentucky
Don't know what the point spread was -- or, again, if they even had them back then. I do know there haven't been many scores in FSU history as inexplicable as this one. Florida State had gotten off to a great start in 1964, winning its first three games by the combined margin of 60-0.
But Kentucky came into Doak undefeated and ranked No. 5 in the country. Most football fans assumed the Wildcats would bring the upstart and unranked Seminoles back down to earth. Instead, FSU demolished Kentucky, 48-6. Not sure how many times before or since an unranked team has beaten a Top 5 team by 42 points.
But rest assured, FSU wasn't unranked after the win, climbing up to No. 10 in the country before finishing the year ranked No. 11.
So, that's the list.
That's the best i can come up with.
What we saw on Saturday was historic from a point-spread perspective, and very well could have been the biggest upset win in the history of the school.
No matter if it was or wasn't, it was the first deposit from Mike Norvell into the famed Sod Cemetery, and the second-year head coach allowed himself to smile about that afterward.
"It was actually the first thing I thought about when I saw the clock hit zero, was that we're going to be able to contribute to the Sod Cemetery," Norvell said. "It's just such a special tradition. It's one of the great things (about) Florida State and who we are."
Contact senior writer Corey Clark at corey@warchant.com and follow @Corey_Clark on Twitter.
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