50 Fun Facts About Florida State University

Florida State is one of only two U.S. colleges whose students stage which kind of show?

A circus has run at Florida State since 1947: the Flying High Circus has no animal acts, and student performers rig the equipment, raise the tent and sew the costumes.

Which Florida State cornerback is the only athlete to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series?

Deion Sanders won the Jim Thorpe Award at Florida State in 1988. A year later he hit a major-league home run and scored an NFL touchdown in the same week.

Which 1970s Hollywood leading man played halfback at Florida State before injuries ended his football career?

Burt Reynolds earned his first start at right halfback in 1954. After he died in 2018, the team wore helmet decals styled like the Trans Am plate from Smokey and the Bandit.

Which Florida State quarterback won the 1993 Heisman Trophy but chose the NBA over the NFL?

Charlie Ward joined the basketball team just 15 days after winning the Heisman, then played 11 NBA seasons, mostly with the New York Knicks.

Which Seminole leader does a student rider portray before every Florida State home football game?

Osceola's regalia is designed and approved by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and each student rider serves a two-year apprenticeship and must keep a 3.0 grade average.

Which 1970s campus craze is said to have first been spotted on Landis Green at Florida State University?

Streaking is said to have begun on Landis Green, the lawn beside the main library, in years when student protest made the campus a hotbed of activism.

For 42 years, from 1905 until 1947, Florida State operated as what kind of institution?

A women's college from 1905, the Florida State College for Women grew into the third-largest in the United States by 1933; men returned after World War II.

Which Major League Baseball team's fans adopted the tomahawk chop first seen at Florida State football games in 1984?

Atlanta Braves fans took up the chop in 1991, when the team started winning; its organist had already been playing the tune before at-bats for a few seasons.

Which Florida State quarterback won the 2000 Heisman Trophy at age 28 after seven years in minor-league baseball?

Chris Weinke is the oldest Heisman winner; a Toronto Blue Jays draft pick, he returned to football and led the 1999 team to an unbeaten national title.

Police handcuffed which rival mascot in 1989 for trying to put out Florida State's flaming spear?

Sebastian the Ibis, wearing a fireman's helmet and a yellow raincoat, sprayed an officer with a fire extinguisher before four policemen cuffed him; he was soon released.

What is the name of the Appaloosa horse that carries a spear-throwing rider onto Florida State's football field?

Renegade is ridden bareback and made his debut in 1978 against Oklahoma State; the university calls horse and rider symbols, not mascots.

Which coach led Florida State football for 34 seasons and won national titles in 1993 and 1999?

Bobby Bowden arrived from West Virginia in 1976 and, fittingly, beat West Virginia in his final game on New Year's Day 2010.

Which two colors, named in the title of Florida State's hymn, do Seminoles teams wear?

Garnet and gold are the official colors; the school's first football team, known as The Eleven and fielded from 1902 to 1904, wore gold uniforms.

Florida State's football stadium, opened in 1950, is named for which man who was then university president?

Doak Campbell was president when the stadium opened with 15,000 seats at a cost of $250,000; later expansions lifted its capacity past 80,000.

Which conference did Florida State join in 1992 after four decades as a football independent?

The ACC won out even though the SEC also courted the Seminoles, who then took the league title in each of their first nine seasons.

Which longtime ESPN College GameDay analyst played football and baseball at Florida State in the 1950s?

Lee Corso became famous for donning mascot heads on the show, making 431 headgear picks before he retired in 2025.

Florida State graduate Sara Blakely sold fax machines door-to-door before founding which apparel brand?

Spanx grew out of two years of research funded with $5,000 of her savings, and she bought the trademark herself online for $150.

Which future rock frontman studied at Florida State in the early 1960s and was arrested at a Seminoles home game?

Jim Morrison was arrested in September 1963 for disturbing the peace and petty larceny while drunk at the stadium; he soon left for film school in California.

Florida State film school graduate Barry Jenkins directed which drama that won the Academy Award for Best Picture?

Moonlight was his first feature in eight years, and he made it with collaborators he met at Florida State, including his cinematographer, producer and editors.

Which Florida State women's team won national championships in 2014, 2018, 2021, 2023 and 2025?

Soccer became a Florida State varsity sport only in 1995, and the team was playing in its first national final by 2007.

Which Florida State redshirt freshman won the 2013 Heisman Trophy and later went first overall in the NFL draft?

Jameis Winston chose Florida State partly because he could also play for its baseball team; the Texas Rangers drafted him out of high school that same year.

The award for college football's best receiver is named for which Florida State star, later a Super Bowl MVP?

Fred Biletnikoff was Florida State's first consensus All-American, then caught four passes for 79 yards to earn MVP honors as the Raiders won Super Bowl XI.

Florida State won its first football national title by beating which unbeaten team 18–16 in the Orange Bowl?

Nebraska got one last chance when a second was put back on the clock, but its 45-yard field goal try sailed wide left and the Seminoles survived.

Which future NFL star quarterbacked Virginia Tech against Florida State in the Sugar Bowl that decided the 1999 title?

Michael Vick rallied the Hokies to a 29–28 lead after three quarters, but Florida State scored the last 18 points to win 46–29 and finish No. 1 from wire to wire.

Florida State's 2013 team rallied from 21–3 down to beat which SEC school in the last BCS title game?

Auburn led 31–27 with 1:19 left, but Florida State needed only seven plays to score with 13 seconds to go, ending the SEC's run of seven straight titles.

Which coach guided Florida State to the 2013 national title before leaving for a $75 million deal at Texas A&M?

Jimbo Fisher had been the offensive coordinator and head coach-in-waiting, and his teams won 29 consecutive games from 2012 through 2014.

A run of last-second missed field goals known as Wide Right cost Florida State games against which rival?

Miami won five such games in 12 years, starting with a 34-yard miss in the final seconds of a No. 1 against No. 2 showdown in 1991.

Which name is given to LeRoy Butler's 1988 trick-play run that set up Florida State's late win at Clemson?

Puntrooskie was a fake punt on fourth down at Florida State's own 21 with the score tied: an up back took the snap and slipped the ball to Butler, who ran 78 yards.

After a big road win, Florida State football captains bring back what to bury in a campus cemetery?

A chunk of turf first came home in 1962, after a dean dared the team to bring back sod from between the hedges at Georgia; the Seminoles won 18–0.

Which Florida State linebacker became a Pro Football Hall of Famer after 14 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?

Derrick Brooks was twice a consensus All-American, and his late interception sealed the Sugar Bowl rematch with Florida nicknamed the Fifth Quarter in the French Quarter.

Which Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who predicted antimatter, spent his final years as a Florida State professor?

Paul Dirac left Cambridge's Lucasian chair and taught physics at Florida State from 1970 to 1984; the campus science library is named for him.

Florida State chemist Robert Holton developed the synthesis of which cancer drug, first found in Pacific yew bark?

Taxol earned Florida State more than $351 million in patent royalties; before Holton's process, the drug could be obtained only from the bark of the tree.

In 1990 Florida State beat out MIT to host a national laboratory devoted to research on what?

High magnetic fields are the business of the MagLab; MIT, which ran the existing national magnet lab, protested the award in an unprecedented appeal and lost.

Florida State administers which Sarasota museum, founded by a famous showman, as Florida's state art museum?

The Ringling is noted for its galleries of Rubens paintings, and the university took over its governance in 2000.

Florida State students are traditionally dunked on their 21st birthday in which landmark at the end of College Avenue?

Westcott Fountain was a gift from the classes of 1915 and 1917, and tradition holds that nobody is truly a Seminole until friends have thrown them in.

What ominous name did early Tallahassee give the rise where Florida State's oldest campus site now stands?

Gallows Hill was a place of public executions in the 1830s, and students still swap ghost stories about strange noises there at night.

Cadets from the school that became Florida State helped repel Union troops in 1865 at which battle?

Natural Bridge kept Tallahassee the only Confederate capital east of the Mississippi never to fall, and Florida State's Army ROTC unit may display a battle streamer for it.

Which 1905 law reorganized Florida's colleges and halted football at the future Florida State for four decades?

The Buckman Act merged six schools into three segregated by sex and race, so many of the school's men left for the new men's university that became the University of Florida.

FSU traces its origins to which school that state lawmakers in Tallahassee voted to create in 1851?

West Florida Seminary opened in 1857 on the western side of the Suwannee River; its eastern twin, first settled in Ocala, grew into the University of Florida.

What is the name of Florida State's band, chosen in a 1949 newspaper survey run by student government?

The Marching Chiefs reached 400 members in 1988, a milestone the band says made it the world's largest collegiate marching band.

Which Florida State baseball coach retired after 40 seasons with the most wins in NCAA Division I history?

Mike Martin won 2,029 games as head coach, and as a player he was the Seminoles' center fielder in the 1965 College World Series.

Which Florida State catcher won the 2008 Golden Spikes Award before winning three World Series with the Giants?

Buster Posey once played all nine positions in a single Florida State game, hitting a grand slam and striking out both batters he faced as a pitcher.

Florida State's men's basketball team reached its only national title game in 1972, losing 81–76 to which school?

UCLA was top-ranked and coached by John Wooden, yet Hugh Durham's Seminoles pushed the Bruins to a five-point finish in Los Angeles.

Which quarterback's season-ending leg injury was cited when unbeaten Florida State missed the 2023 playoff?

Jordan Travis was his conference's player of the year, and the selection chairman said Florida State was a different team without him.

Florida State opened its 2024 season against Georgia Tech in its first game abroad, played in which city?

Dublin's Aviva Stadium staged the game, and ESPN's College GameDay marked the occasion with its first broadcast from outside the United States.

What one-word name is engraved on the pedestal of the bronze horse-and-rider statue outside Florida State's stadium?

Unconquered stands 19 feet tall, and its spear is set aflame at sunset on the night before each home game and put out at sunrise after it.

Which Florida State center became the 1973 NBA MVP and won two championships with the Boston Celtics?

Dave Cowens was the fourth pick of the 1970 draft and, though undersized for his position, beat out Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the MVP award.

Which fitness personality of 1980s television earned an art degree from Florida State?

Richard Simmons began college at Louisiana-Lafayette before finishing his art degree at Florida State, years ahead of his Sweatin' to the Oldies videos.

Which Hall of Fame baseball manager finished a law degree at Florida State in 1978 but never practiced?

Tony La Russa took law courses for years during baseball off-seasons and was admitted to the Florida bar in 1980, then chose managing instead.

Florida State's baseball stadium honors which alumnus who managed the Kansas City Royals to the 1985 World Series title?

Dick Howser was a two-time All-American shortstop who hit .422 for Florida State in 1956 and later spent a season as its head coach.