No. 3 Miami hosts Florida State as a 3-touchdown favorite in Saturday night rivalry game

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Florida State is sputtering, and Miami is undefeated. Florida State’s coach is embattled amid endless speculation about his job security, and Miami’s coach quietly got a contract extension a few months ago. Florida State has one of the nation’s worst records over the last three years, and Miami has one of the best in that span.

The programs are headed in opposite directions.

None of that will matter when the rivalry resumes this weekend.

There likely isn’t much that Miami coach Mario Cristobal and Florida State coach Mike Norvell agree on, other than their belief that this game — Miami vs. Florida State — is as good as college football gets. The third-ranked Hurricanes (5-0, 3-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) play host to the unranked Seminoles (3-3, 1-2) on Saturday night, with Miami a three-touchdown favorite.

“For Miami and for me personally,” Cristobal said, “it’s always been the greatest rivalry in sports.”

“It’s a big week,” Norvell said. “This is a game that you train and you prepare for 365 days a year.”

The control-of-the-series pendulum has swung back toward Miami, which has won six of the last nine meetings and now has a 37-33 overall lead in the series. But these games almost always seem to go down to the wire anyway, with 18 of the last 25 meetings having been decided by eight points or less.

“They’ve got a really talented football team, several NFL prospects, a lot of future draftees on their current roster, a lot of experience,” Cristobal said of Florida State — which wasted a 21-6 lead before losing to Alabama and had a chance to go up 21-0 before a botched fourth-down call sparked a collapse that turned into a 44-20 loss at Louisville last week. “Very talented, very experienced. They play hard, they play physical, they’re explosive on both sides of the ball. They’re disruptive on defense and explosive on offense. Really good football team.”

Norvell got Florida State off to a 13-0 start in the 2023 season, before an injury to quarterback Jordan Travis kept the Seminoles from getting a spot in what was then a four-team College Football Playoff.

The Seminoles headed to Hard Rock Stadium — the site of Saturday’s game — for the Orange Bowl after that playoff snub, had a number of players sit out and wound up losing to Georgia 63-3 in the Orange Bowl. The program hasn’t recovered since and now faces another enormous challenge against a Miami team widely touted as a national title contender.

“They’ve done a good job accumulating talent across the board,” Norvell said. “So, we’ve got to go and we got to play at an extremely high level.”

The records

Starting with that Orange Bowl loss in Miami Gardens, Florida State is 10-21 in its last 31 games. Miami is 28-6 in that same span.

And if that wasn’t damning enough, the Seminoles have lost 13 consecutive games away from Tallahassee — with nine of those losses by double digits and five of those losses coming by at least three touchdowns.

Seeing both sides

Miami kicker Jake Weinberg and wide receiver Vandrevius Jacobs have both played in this rivalry before — as members of the Seminoles.

Jacobs was in the 2023 game won by Florida State; he then went on to South Carolina before transferring to Miami. Weinberg played for Florida State last season, going 2-for-2 on field goals against the Hurricanes.

Miami’s offense

The Hurricanes enter this week atop the country in points per game (49.6), yards per game (554.8) and yards per play (8.21).

It’ll shape up as a massive challenge for Florida State, which is 122nd nationally (out of 138 teams) in yards per game allowed in games against FBS-level opponents, tied for 92nd in points allowed per game and is 126th in yards given up per play — at a staggering 6.73.

Mensah watch

Miami quarterback Darian Mensah still leads the country with an 84.2% completion percentage, well ahead of No. 2 Gunner Stockton of Georgia (76.6%) on the national list.

He’s about to face Florida State for the first time.

“Obviously a historic game,” Mensah said when asked about the Miami-Florida State rivalry. “Super excited to be a part of it. And I think with rivalry games, no matter how high-ranked one team is and the disparity between the teams, it is always going to be a dogfight.”

Ranked vs. unranked

In this rivalry, ranked teams are 19-2 when facing an unranked opponent.

Miami is 7-0 when facing an unranked Florida State team — although three of those seven wins have come by exactly one point.

Florida State is 12-2 in that situation, with the losses coming in 1980 (a 10-9 Miami win over the ninth-ranked Seminoles) and in 2009 (a 38-34 Miami win over the then-No. 18 Seminoles).

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