FSU's forgotten first football teams 1899-1904 - vote in new poll
by fsu77gt on Sep 7, 2010 9:22 AM EDT
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Unknown to most FSU football fans (and desperately ignored by reptile fans who don't want to admit it) is the fact that football was played in Tallahassee long before 1947 when FSU became coeducational once again. The 1905 Buckman Act, which segregated Florida college students by race and gender, eliminated male competitive sports from then Florida State College including the football team. Also unknown to FSU fans is that the "F" so popular now in Gainesville was first sported by FSU's football team (see pictures).
When football was started again at newly renamed Florida State University in 1947, many of the FSC football players were still around. In 1953, the FSU homecoming parade had a float with several former FSC football players from 1902 (see last picture).
The WFS and FSC football teams played schools like Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Florida Agricultural College (FAC) in Lake City, East Florida Seminary (EFS) in Gainesville, Stetson in DeLand (discontinued football in the 1950s), and Bainbridge (Ga.) Giants, a city team. (FAC and EFS were combined with other schools at Gainesville in 1905 after the Buckman Act to create today's UF.) College athletics were nothing like today, some schools used non-student "ringers" in their competition, and "home cooking" was rampant with no regulatory agency like today's NCAA.
If Florida State counted the games played from 1902-1904 as Georgia Tech (check their year by year results in their football press guide) and some other schools do, we would have to change the series record with Florida by one win and one loss in 1902 (beat FAC at home, lost in Lake City), by one win and one loss in 1903 (beat FAC in Lake City, lost to East Florida Seminary in Gainesville), and by one win in 1904 (beat FAC in Lake City), for a record against Florida of 3-2 from 1902-1904. Against Georgia Tech, we would have to add two more losses (lost in 1903 and 1904, both in Atlanta). Personally, I think this is a very good idea, because it connects our long history instead of ignoring the West Florida Seminary and Florida State College years altogether.
I can't resist adding this historical note - In the spring of 1885, the state legislature passed "An Act Recognizing the University of Florida" which reads as follows: "The People of the State of Florida, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: Section 1. That the Florida University as organized at the City of Tallahassee be recognized as the University of the state, and be known as the University of Florida; provided, there shall be no expense incurred by the state by reason of this act. Section 2. That the university continue under its present organization and officers until such further action be taken by the state legislature as the case may require." This act continued until 1903, when the title University of Florida was temporarily bestowed upon Florida Agricultural College at Lake City and later to Gainesville.
The OLDEST CONTINUOUS SITE OF HIGHER LEARNING IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA is THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY.
Scores of Games 1902-1904 (games 1899-1901 were considered intramural)
date FSC Opponent (site) Score
1902 = Coach W. W. Hughes
11/19/1902 5 Bainbridge (Ga.) Giants (Tallahassee) 0
12/12/1902 6 Florida Agricultural College (Tallahassee) 0
12/20/1902 0 Florida Agricultural College (Lake City) 6
1903 = Coach W. W. Hughes
10/16/1903 22 Bainbridge (Ga.) Giants (Tallahassee) 0
10/23/1903 5 Bainbridge (Ga.) Giants (Bainbridge) 0
10/30/1903 0 East Florida Seminary (Tallahassee) 16
11/7/1903 0 Georgia Tech (Atlanta) 17
11/14/1903 12 Univ. of Florida (Tallahassee) 0 (formerly Florida Agricultural College)
11/21/1903 5 Stetson (DeLand) 5
1904 = Coach Jack Forsythe
10/8/1904 0 Georgia Tech (Atlanta) 35
10/15/1904 East Florida Seminary (Gainesville) (game canceled)
10/22/1904 23 Univ. of Florida (Lake City) 0
10/29/1904 0 Savannah City (Savannah) 6
11/5/1904 0 Jacksonville Consolidated (Jacksonville) 6
11/24/1904 18 Stetson (Tallahassee) 6 (Florida champions)
[Male athletic competition at FSC interrupted in 1905 due to the segregationist Buckman Act, resumed at FSU in 1947]
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All of these pictures are available through the Florida Heritage Collection, Florida Memory Project.
West Florida Seminary football team 1899
West Florida Seminary football team 1900 (no picture available online in the WFS Argo yearbook)
Florida State College football team 1901
Florida State College football team 1902
Florida State College football team 1903
Florida State College football team 1904
1953 FSU Homecoming Parade float with former FSC football players from 1902 (Veterans of Former Wars)
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The first UF team WAS that FSU team.
When the Buckman Act was passed, most of our guys transferred down to uf at Hogtown (as it was then called). Some just refused and transferred to UGA instead. FSU’s colors had been marron and gold.
The girl’s school adotped purple and gold.
The recombined school in 1947 combined maroon and purple to yield garnet.
proud graduate of the Uncle Rico Quarterback Camp
Also...
…the coach at FSU in the last year before the buckman act became the first coach of UF.
I looked this up once upon a time.
I was under the impression
that fu didn’t exist until the Buckman Act, and that the FSC football program was moved there from Tally. So they owe FSU for their own football program.
From FSU:
In a 1905 reorganization of Florida’s educational system by the Legislature, six state institutions of higher learning were consolidated into two when the University of Florida in Gainesville was established and designated a men’s school and the Florida State College became a women’s school called the Florida Female College. The male student body moved from Tallahassee to Gainesville, taking with it the fraternity system and the College football team, which had been state champions in 1902, 1903, and 1905.
http://www.fsu.edu/about/history.html
Go Knights! Go Boilers! Go 'Noles! Not necessarily in that order.
by UCFBoilerNole on Sep 10, 2010 6:26 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Been using this for years....
I have been using this argument against gates for a long time. I think i first learned about the true history of our program and theirs when i came to FSU in ’97 for my older sisters orientation. Since then I love to throw some history at gates just to see them try to comprehend the fact that without “the school out west” there would be no UF. They usually come back with some worthless drivel about playing football when we were still a girls school, but never have a valid argument. Even had a few of the higher educated gates respectful thank me for a lesson.
Go Noles.
A Telling Quote From An Excellent Article on FSC Football
Which I highly recommend seeking out if you are interested in FSU History.
The Article is entitled “Before the Seminoles: Football at Florida State College 1902-1904.”
Ric Kabat wrote it in 1991 for the Florida Historical Quarterly.
An ASCII rendering of the article is here:
The Tallahassee team won the following week [after losing to Georgia Tech] in a home game against Lake City’s University of Florida (Florida Agricultural College had changed its name). In a contest “full of surprises from start to finish,” FSC overpowered UF by a score of 12-0.
The game was a good one “but for the squabbling,” wrote a Tallahassee reporter. The argument arose when the teams accused each other of using professionals. When “some enterprising citizen of Tallahassee” informed the visitors from Lake City
that FSC planned to use ex-Clemson football star Jack “Pee Wee” Forsythe as fullback, Lake City’s captain “objected strongly and threatened to call off the game” [Lake City Citizen-Reporter, November 20, 1903]. FSC’s captain, A. B. Clark, agreed not to use Forsythe provided his opponents drop their physical director, J. D. Jeffery, from the lineup. The university team at first refused, even though under the SIAA rules Jeffery was “considerably more of a professional than Forsythe.” Both Forsythe and Jeffery likely were professionals; certainly, neither was a student. Finally, Lake City acquiesced, and the game went on as scheduled, ending with FSC’s victory.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
"My mistress is pooped, the reds have Oklahoma, and I'm going to bed."
-Hodge Podge, Bloom County
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. "
"In practice, there is."-Yogi Berra
Link to Florida Historical Quarterly article
Here is a link to the outstanding article in the Florida Historical Quarterly referenced by Dogrel. You can read accounts of early games against Georgia Tech, the Bainbridge Giants city team, FAC, EFS, and Stetson. Awesome!
In case the link does not work, the complete article is in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, Issue 1, July 1991. Search for it at
Here is the link
most amazing thing about those pictures?
guys sitting int the grass, in Florida, and no red ants. Those would arrive ~1940’s on trade ships from South America.
proud graduate of the Uncle Rico Quarterback Camp
The more you know
::star shoots across the sky::
nice little tidbit. I love this place.
Bring back Peter Tom Willis— a true Nole! -FiestaNole
An illegal one.
As you have to have 7 guys on the line of scrimmage. Teams would line up crazy almost in V patterns to create a wedge and get a running start. Guys were getting hurt. A LOT. Anywho, that is why the rule is in place today.
Not an alcoholic, just an FSU grad.
Oh I know
you were jokin, just droppin some knowledge to be my usual show off jerk self. =)
Not an alcoholic, just an FSU grad.
Help me out...
I guess I never really understood the illegal formation thing…
I thought that 7 guys HAVE to be on the line, or it’s an illegal formation… You know, “5 men in the backfield” and all that stuff….
Why is 7 guys illegal? What is an illegal formation? A link to an appropriate site would probably set me straight.
Why is that formation significantly different from a T formation?
What?
I was talking about the picture above where they don’t have 7 on the line of scrimmage. Otherwise you have the ability to run wedges. Also think about lining up 4 or 5 really fast receivers, off the line. You could have them all with running starts coming off the line. Which would be lame.
From Wikipedia:
llegal formation: Fewer than 7 players line up on the line of scrimmage(NFL/High School); more than four players in the backfield (NCAA only); eligible receivers fail to line up as the leftmost and rightmost players on the line in the NFL; or when five properly numbered ineligible players fail to line up on the line.
Not an alcoholic, just an FSU grad.
by onebarrelrum on Sep 10, 2010 5:43 PM EDT up reply actions
I think he's saying the 1904 pick does have 7 on the line.
And that it’s basically a “T formation”. I agree with him.
MiNDSET? SWAG-ER-ISM!!!
---------------------------------------------------------
"Trick is right."
"Wherever you are, Trick, you are wise, indeed."
"Correct, Sir Trick."
i guess so.
hard to tell with no lines on the field and trying to measure with crab grass.
Not an alcoholic, just an FSU grad.
by onebarrelrum on Sep 10, 2010 9:31 PM EDT up reply actions
I just see 4 guys in weird 3 point stances and 3 more in 2 point stances with their arms on the 4 down guys.
MiNDSET? SWAG-ER-ISM!!!
---------------------------------------------------------
"Trick is right."
"Wherever you are, Trick, you are wise, indeed."
"Correct, Sir Trick."
Actually, I just misread your comment.
Suddenly, I thought I needed to re-learn a whole bunch of basics.
Who knows if those guys are on a line or not. The pic does remind me a bit of a rugby scrum, with their posturing and such— kinda cool.
It is a cool pic.
These guys would poo themselves if they saw how the game is played today. So many changes.
Not an alcoholic, just an FSU grad.
by onebarrelrum on Sep 14, 2010 11:26 AM EDT up reply actions
carpe diem
These rugged young men in the photos, so full of energy and optimism with their whole lives in front of them, are long, long dead.
proud graduate of the Uncle Rico Quarterback Camp
Still important to our history
The State Legislature legitimized segregation through the Buckman Act in 1905, and in doing so effectively robbed FSU of its early history. Though the members of these teams have been long gone, they should be remembered as the foundation for what has come later, IMHO.
Fiesta was making a larger point...
….to seize the day. I’m sure everyone here would like FSU to officially and proudly recognize these teams. 1947 is NOT remotely the begining of Florida State’s history…in football or otherwise. That school on the same spot in Tally goes back to the 1850’s. Very cool. THE OLDEST.
GREAT ARTICLE!
Love it. I’ve said for years that FSU needs to recognize these teams OFFICIALLY. It would help get the word out on FSU’s early history. THE oldest campus in Fla. The ONLY college that existed prior/during to the Civil War. Older than the UF campus by ~50 years.
“The recombined school in 1947 combined maroon and purple to yield garnet.”
Wrong. It was the combo of red and purple. Why could you possibly think garnet would be the combo of purple and maroon? Yikes. That wouldn’t exactly change the color much!
It's been years since I read it, and the old memory is getting spotty. Let's see,
Purple is made of equal parts red + blue.
Mixing red + purple yields maroon (2 reds + 1 blue)..
Garnet is redder than maroon. Seems like mixing red + maroon would yield garnet: 3 reds + 1 blue. Guess you would also get there by mixing 2 parts red (men’s) to one part purple (women’s), so yeah, I’ll buy it.
proud graduate of the Uncle Rico Quarterback Camp
by PeachTreeNole on Sep 18, 2010 2:13 AM EDT up reply actions
combo of red and purple
They simply combined the primary colors of FSC and FSCW (red and purple). I don’t think FSU necessarily has to use the exact shade in the middle (which I assume is maroon…which is awful). I wish FSU would go for a more Crimson version of Garnet…some of the stuff (Nike) looks downright ugly dark maroon. Just my 2 cents.
In any case…this was a great read…one of my favorite posts. I don’t understand why FSU doesn’t officially recognize these teams (or it’s early history, in general). It’s as if FSU leadership enjoys playing second fiddle sometimes!
Part of it is that these were all essentially exhibition games
Another part is the continuity. You can’t draw a line from those old teams to the Seminoles. In fact, it’s even worse than that-our old team’s history leads directly to UF. It’s only the second team that has become the Seminoles that we all know and love.
"My mistress is pooped, the reds have Oklahoma, and I'm going to bed."
-Hodge Podge, Bloom County
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. "
"In practice, there is."-Yogi Berra
Garnet = the colour of fresh blood
When it starts looking like dry blood, refresh.
; )
Abiaka Windclan
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by Abiaka Windclan on Sep 19, 2010 7:01 AM EDT up reply actions
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