If you are a fan of a Florida Division I FBS football team, you had good reason to celebrate Saturday. It didn't matter which team you were rooting for. For the first time since the FAU Owls became an FBS subdivision team in 2005, all seven Florida teams won games the same day. Yes, even FIU and USF pulled out their first wins of the season.
FSU began the day with a 63-0 blowout of previously undefeated and then-25th-ranked Maryland.
Florida's two other ranked teams, UM and UF, overcame first-quarter deficits against conference rivals Georgia Tech and Arkansas to pull out convincing double-digit wins.
UCF, which remains a legitimate contender in the AAC, won its first conference game against Memphis, while FAU took home its first C-USA victory with a 37-23 win over UAB.
Perhaps the biggest stories, though, were the first wins this season for beleaguered FIU and USF.
FIU blocked a buzzer-beating attempt at a field goal by Southern Mississippi for a narrow 24-23 win. Sure, it was Southern Miss' 17th straight loss, but it is FIU's first win under new coach Ron Turner. Next week, the Golden Panthers will play UAB, the team that just lost to FAU, so maybe there's some hope for an actual mini winning streak.
USF also took a 26-20 win over Cincinnati in its first AAC conference game. The Bearcats were a respectable 3-1 going into the game. It was also their new coach Willie Taggert's first win with the program.
As the AP points out, Florida teams scored a total of 249 points to their opponents' 123.
FSU, UM, and UF all remain ranked, while plucky UCF continues to receive votes in the AP poll. It's a grand change of course since nearly two years ago, when on October 8, 2011 -- for only the second time since 1978 -- Miami, FSU, and Florida all lost the same day. That resulted in the first time since December 6, 1982, when not a single team in the state of Florida was ranked. New Times dubbed it "the worst weekend in Florida college football history."
"All three teams are under relatively new coaches, and maybe this is the college football gods' way of humbling us all before a new era of dominance," we wrote back then. "At least that's how we're hoping to take it."
Seems as if our prayers to the college football gods might have been answered.
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