I hate state; but i got them going all the way. I just dont like Alabama enough to ever root for them.
I doubt their bandwagon fanbase has ever rooted for Florida
How you say you feel about Bama, Dale, I pretty well feel that way about FSU.
(BTW--and though this wanders from the main point here, it's as good a time as any to air my feelings and questions in this regard:
Though I have a certain contempt for "The Girls' School" that goes WAY back to, like, grade school (as a beach-kid in Fla., where you tended to make these kinds of decisions early and hard along family lines), to this day, IN-state at least, that attitude, though hard and stronger than ever today, relatively speaking is still moderate (well, not quite, but you get the idea) compared to how I feel about Miami. I've talked before about the evolution of those feelings and how they came about similarly for so many of us Gators over the years, but it can all be simply encapsulated in the difference between my experiences 4 Falls as an undergraduate: Divided according to tradition, grades, image and ultimately destination as time went on during high school, once we actually WENT off-to-college and they became our "enemies from Tallahassee", we "razzed" each other year-round, wore T-shirts on-campus that denigrated the other school, played elaborate practical jokes come game-week each late-November, reveled in our victories over them, and regardless ALWAYS smirkingly ran them down when we inevitably encountered each other back home at Christmas, etc...In contrast, we had to outright BRAWL with gold-chained packs of 'Cane fans, often a dozen or more spoiled frat-boys "bravely" cornering one or two vulnerable, usually very young or very old Gators on their way to get beers, whatever, and finding themselves cornered in the dim gray tunnels under the stands at The Toilet, um, I mean ORANGE Bowl they played in then. We (I drove down with 3 friends) only found out at halftime when, already on our guard after having to fight our ways INTO the stadium on the way to our crappy-sightline seats in the "Gator-section" in the low south corner they'd relegated us all to, discovered 8 or 10 of these "Hurricane Heroes" crowded around, bullying an elderly couple, he in his "Little Gators all over it"-shorts and her in her orange'n'blue Gator "helmet-style" bonnet, pushing and shoving them (the old guy, to his credit, getting mad and now shouting back at them--LOVE ol' guys like that!), and us running/bashing into/breaking up the pack as we saw someone reach forward and dump their just-bought full-drinks on their chests--FUCK "fair" either way: we hit them running, had already gotten a few sucker-punches in, knocked a couple of 'em down from behind and were screaming and swinging and they scattered...but were reforming and coming back with more friends by the time we had threateningly demanded and gotten refills for the couple and were escorting/hustling them back to their seats back among the 1500 or so Gators there...and pretty well spent the rest of that day alternately trying to follow the game, dealing with stuff being thrown at us, wrestling with drunken jerks around the edges of our crowd, and taking turns with other male students in escorting folks (ok, especially girls--I mean, we were undergraduate Gator MALES, after all) to restrooms and refreshment stands. It got so bad, and we'd heard about what was brewing (ie. supposedly large "Get-a-Gator"-squads of 'Canes) late in the game, that we all had to organize our own "squads" of, like, half-a-dozen or so guys/per to walk groups of a couple dozen co-eds, families and older couples out of The Orange Bowl, back and forth maybe 3 or 4 times, altogether an extra 2 hours or more after the game was over that day
So: Where 'Noles and us played pranks on each other--at worst irritating, maybe as "destructive" as soaping "Gators!" on car and building windows or splashing their bus in orange and blue water-based food colorings--Well, when we drove down to Miami to play the Hurricanes that senior year, for example, after everything else we'd endured getting in and out of the stadium proper, as above and more, we returned to my car in the stadium parking-lot, its only remaining post-"sanitizing" out-of-town identifier being the "Alachua Cty." on the license plate (rear-only Florida plates used to have that on the bottom), to find the body dented, gouged, and boot-printed all over, and the windshield smashed, a big piece of broken lot-asphalt lying on the hood. The Orange Bowl "security" guards laughed and turned their backs, smacked palms with each other when we tried to ask them who to see about it, etc., on our way out. I wasn't alone: Between similar property damage and dozens, even hundreds of reports/complaints about the kinds of experiences I mention here, not just students but families and older couples who RV'd all over the South for Gator games each Fall, as I remember it the Regents voted and advised the University President to cancel future "Home and Home" meetings with Miami, once the then-current contract ran its course. No matter what the media say, how they ignore or "conveniently forget" it, THAT'S the story behind why we stopped playing them early each season, as we once did--and why it took so long, why OUR people were so hesitant to go back to it. Beyond that, of course, there were never any more personal consequences for any of the students than there've been for the program and institution in general over the years, aside from eventual decline from just TOO many years of poor coaching and (finally SOME) lost scholarships: They faux-"students" AND thug-fans, well, the gold-chained rich boyz just went back to their homes in Great Neck, NY, Shaker Hts., Illinois and so forth. We had nothing in common with either of them, thugs OR actual students, in the final analysis--and proud OF it!
As for FSU, my feelings about the Criminoles have actually deepened, gotten worse over the years, more and more of late for the very reason that, in the way their coaches, administration and students have come to first turn a blind eye to, now even come to accept ANY kind of despicable transgression and behavior in their players, especially and all the more when it's a "star", they have become more like Miami in attitude and behavior--And lately, more and more, it seems they face few consequences for ANY of it.
In fact, I can now ask loudly what I found myself wondering over the course of the last year or so of Muschamp's reign as our Head Coach: For all HIS claims and actions with regard to OUR players' "class", "discipline", and "personal responsibility", how can FSU's "look-the-other-way" Coach, under whom things have if anything gotten acceleratingly WORSE than under "smiling/corrupt good-ol'-boy" Bowden, be his "best friend"? What does that SAY?)