Playing Dirty: Florida State

After a long and miserable offseason that saw LSU take home two more national championships, football season is back! We begin exactly where we did a year ago, with the Florida State Seminoles.

A whole lot has changed since that last game, so we caught up with Perry Kostidakis of Tomahawk Chop to tell us what’s been going on with the Noles. Not Xs and Os and boring shit like that, we already did a Q&A for that. This is Playing Dirty... let’s have fun.

1. This is going to be a huge game despite it being non-confer- wait a minute, are you guys in our conference now? Are you sure? Really? By the time I send this email will y’all have fled for the SEC yet?

Haven’t you heard all the cool kids are headed to the Big 10/12/14/16? The SEC is passe, a bunch of dorks chasing two front runners and hoping to rise up during their down years. In the Big 282839? It’s a conference of champions and legends and leaders, where your premier brand can easily blow it in a conference game. That’s college football to me. And America.

But wait, do you think the SEC wants us? Don’t joke.

2. For both LSU and FSU this will be the second straight game in Orlando. The Noles won the Cheez-It Bowl in December, while the Tigers won the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl in the same stadium a few days later. So that brings up the ultimate question: which school is really the Cheeziest?

This is a true story — I made this joke to the PR rep at the Cheez-It Bowl enough times that they finally tweeted out a graphic saying something along the same lines.

To up the stakes beyond claiming Cheez-It Champion status, Pop-Tart now the presenting sponsor so truly whoever wins will be the final, unquestioned Cheeziest.

While we’re on the topic of food — can I say that the corn dog stuff is uncalled for? Corn dogs are, arguably, our nation’s greatest food creation, and I would do anything to be associated with those magnificent, golden delicacies.

3. Both schools entered that 2022 game unranked, but had surprising turnaround seasons and now enter 2023 with New Year’s Six expectations behind electric, Heisman contender QBs. So I have to ask: are you guys also afraid of how much preseason hype you’re getting? I am. People are assuming we’re gonna beat Bama this year. That’s weird and makes me scared!!!

It’s so terrifying because like, you guys at least went to the SEC Championship last year and have the security of not sharing revenue with a school that, proudly, holds cheese and wine picnics during games. You have felt the joy of true domination within the last five years — that time period has been nothing but pain outside of last season.

And the other key thing is, people outside of rivals really like LSU! People have fun watching them and rooting for them! It is sometimes fun, but mainly exhausting, that people really do love watching FSU fail. It’s for sure self-inflicted because FSU fans are the most “oh god it’s so over oh man we’re so back oh god never mind” fan base to exist but really, really lean in during the “so back” phase. It mainly helps that Florida and Miami are going to suck again though.

4. What is Florida State’s strategy for winning now that LSU has a new Special Teams Coordinator? Especially now that this one will seemingly... coordinate special teams! (God we hope)

What you failed to mention, which might be the most interesting part, is that he also serves as Brian Kelly’s dialect coach.

I’ve heard rumors, but have not been able to confirm, that Mike Norvell has harvested the power of the Tallahassee Magnet into a portable device that can force muffs if FSU’s plan of running four verticals with its army of Monstar receivers and dunking on the LSU secondary every play doesn’t work out

5. A reminder that the LSU Tigers defeated the Florida Gators in the College World Series to deny them a championship. So go ahead and thank us. Tell us how awesome we are. Y’all owe us.

Sincerely, thank you, and for also the shoe toss win, which will forever be one of my favorites college football memories ever — and that includes covering the 2013 BCS National Championship.

One of the funniest moments of last season was when Zachary Junda DM’d me to Spider-Man point meme over FSU and LSU going 2-0 vs. Florida, which followed an FSU win over ULL who apparently like really hates LSU? And thinks you should be on equal footing? And I was like oh, everybody has their own UCF.