TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The matchup was set and it was sure to be a top-15 showdown between Florida State and West Virginia.
But in February, West Virginia athletics director Oliver Luck pulled out of the game as the Mountaineers were making their move to the Big 12. And after three tense weeks, in which FSU officials contacted 70 schools in hopes of finding a replacement, there were very few options.
Florida State didn’t want to give up its seventh home game, losing revenue that would help the athletics budget in 2012-13. And setting a home-and-home series was a challenge with the nine-game ACC schedule on the books beginning in 2013 (plus the annual non-conference game locked in with rival Florida).
So FSU took its $500K buyout from West Virginia and scheduled Savannah State, a Football Championship Series program that is just 2-21 since the start of the 2010 season.
“We had West Virginia,” FSU coach Jimbo Fisher said this week. “That would have been a great ballgame. We couldn’t find anybody for this game.”
In February, when the deal with Savannah State was announced, it was clear that FSU athletic director Randy Spetman understood West Virginia’s decision but that he wasn’t pleased with the result.
It was a challenging prospect — going from a sold-out crowd of 84,000 for a major program like West Virginia to potentially seeing tens of thousands of empty seats for one of the worst FCS teams in the nation.
Spetman did, however, try to spin the Savannah State-FSU matchup.
“Savannah State’s got a great band,” Spetman said.
What Savannah State has in a band, it lacks in a football team. The Tigers have taken on two guarantee games this season, and they were throttled 84-0 in the first one at Oklahoma State. They will make $475,000 for playing FSU.
When Savannah State visits FSU on Saturday, the game will feature the most lopsided matchup in college football history. Oddsmakers don’t often place a line on games between FCS and Football Bowl Subdivision programs, but a few Las Vegas lines have FSU as a 70.5-point favorite, the first time any team has been favored by 70.
FSU defeated another FCS team, Murray State, 69-3 a week ago. The 66-point margin of victory was the third largest in school history.
And the Seminoles could challenge a few school records when they play Savannah State — FSU’s single-game scoring mark is 77 (against N.C. State in 1995) and its biggest margin of victory is 74 (against Whiting Field in 1949).
The Tigers will almost certainly struggle to move the ball behind an offensive line that will start four freshmen. FSU won’t have All-American defensive end Brandon Jenkins for the rest of the season, but the Seminoles’ line still features talented ends like Bjoern Werner and Tank Carradine. Werner had four sacks in the win over Murray State last week while Carradine added nine tackles.
Fisher has tried to bring the emphasis of this game week back to Florida State and not on the opponent. He said that he is pleased with FSU’s focus in practice this week, and said that it’s not about who the Seminoles play but how they play.
“Should we play well? Yes,” Fisher said. “Should we have a significant advantage? Yes. Now, hopefully we will play well and act like it.”
While the game could get out of hand quickly, Fisher and the coaching staff are using the game as an opportunity to give the freshmen and sophomores more experience. And with Jenkins out, Fisher has said that true freshmen defensive ends Mario Edwards Jr. and Chris Casher will not redshirt and that they could play on Saturday.
“You create and you start developing,” Fisher said. “We can push them right now and justify the reps.”
