Florida College Football History

The University of Florida's 2026 football media guide lists 1906 as its first year of football (2026 Gators media guide).

UF's own sources disagree on the first game. A 2012 floridagators.com history post says the program played its first game ever on October 26, 1906, a 6-0 win over Rollins on a baseball field at the Gainesville City Park, on the way to a 5-3 first season under coach James Forsythe (Florida Gators). The all-time results in the 2026 media guide instead open 1906 with a 16-6 win over Gainesville AC on October 5, list the Rollins game third, and give the season as 3-3 (2026 Gators media guide). The University of Miami followed two decades later: after a September 1926 hurricane delayed classes, the Hurricanes played their first game on October 23, 1926, a 7-0 win over Rollins before 304 spectators, and fielded their first varsity team in 1927 (Miami Hurricanes football history). Florida State's home record includes three seasons, 1947 to 1949, played at Centennial Field in downtown Tallahassee (FSU game notes).

UCF, South Florida, Florida Atlantic and FIU all started between 1979 and 2002. Rollins was the opponent in the games that UF's 2012 post and Miami's history page each call the program's first (Florida Gators; Miami Hurricanes).

Miami's early years also tie into a statewide bowl tradition. After the 1934 season the Hurricanes played Bucknell on New Year's Day in the Wooden Bowl, whose halftime parade with an orange-colored bowl was the humble beginning of the Orange Bowl games, and in 1937 the team moved into Roddy Burdine Municipal Stadium, later renamed the Orange Bowl (Miami Hurricanes football history). Jack Harding, hired in 1937 as both head coach and athletic director, is credited by the school with moving Miami from small-time football into major college status.

Florida, Florida State and Miami claim eleven major college football national championships between them: five for Miami, three for Florida State and three for Florida, by each school's own count (Miami Hurricanes; Florida State; Seminoles.com; Florida Gators).

Miami lists football titles in 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991 and 2001, won under Howard Schnellenberger, Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson twice and Larry Coker (Miami national championships page). Florida State's athletics department describes Bobby Bowden's 1993 and 1999 teams as consensus national champions (Seminoles.com), and its 2013 team went 14-0 and won the BCS National Championship 34-31 over No. 2 Auburn at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California (Seminoles.com). The Gators list national championships in 1996, 2006 and 2008 (Gators media guide); the first came with a 52-20 Sugar Bowl win over top-ranked Florida State in New Orleans on January 2, 1997, as UF's own history page records the rankings (Florida Gators).

NCAA.com's list of undefeated national champions since 1936, built from its own history page, includes five Florida teams: Miami in 1987, 1991 and 2001 and Florida State in 1999 and 2013 (NCAA.com). None of Florida's three title seasons appears on that list.

Eight Heisman Trophy winners played at Florida's three oldest major programs, three at Florida, three at Florida State and two at Miami (Gators media guide; FSU game notes; Miami history).

Florida's first winner, Spurrier, won in 1966 and later became the first Heisman winner to coach a Heisman recipient when Wuerffel won in 1996 (Gators media guide). Tebow became the first sophomore ever to win the award, in 2007 (Gators media guide). At Florida State, Ward became the program's first Heisman winner in 1993, completing 69.5 percent of his passes for 3,032 yards and 27 touchdowns (FSU Hall of Fame); Weinke followed in 2000 and Winston in 2013 (FSU game notes). Seminoles.com calls Winston the youngest player ever to win the Heisman Trophy (Seminoles.com).

Miami's history page names Testaverde as the program's first Heisman winner on the 1986 team, which went 11-0 in the regular season, and Torretta as its second after the 1992 season, the season Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida just before play began (Miami Hurricanes football history).

Bobby Bowden, hired by Florida State in 1976, won two national titles and 12 ACC championships, and Howard Schnellenberger coached Miami's first title team in 1983 before starting the Florida Atlantic program (Seminoles.com; FAU Athletics).

Florida State hired Bowden in 1976 after winning just four games over the previous three seasons, and over 34 years he led the Seminoles to 31 bowl appearances and 12 ACC championships, including eight in a row from 1992 to 2000 (Seminoles.com). FSU competed as an independent before joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1992 (Seminoles.com).

Schnellenberger coached Miami's first national title team in 1983 (Miami Hurricanes). Florida Atlantic hired him as director of football operations on May 1, 1998, he coached the Owls' first game on Sept. 1, 2001 against Slippery Rock at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, and FAU won the New Orleans Bowl in 2007 (FAU Athletics). The same FAU release elsewhere says the Owls played their inaugural season in 1999, which does not match its own September 2001 first-game date. He retired after the 2011 season with 158 victories over 27 years as a head coach, and the field at FAU Stadium in Boca Raton bears his name (FAU Athletics).

Florida A&M in Tallahassee has its own championship coach. Under Rudy Hubbard, the Rattlers won back-to-back Black College Football National Championships in 1977 and 1978, and in 1978 won the inaugural NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship, 35-28 over UMass (FAMU Athletics). FAMU notes that Hubbard is the only HBCU head coach to win the Division I-AA, now FCS, national title.

UCF, South Florida, Florida Atlantic and FIU each started football from scratch between 1979 and 2002, joining Florida, Florida State and Miami among the state's major university programs (UCF Athletics; FIU Athletics).

UCF began in 1979 at the NCAA Division III level with no on-campus facilities, a volunteer coaching staff led by Don Jonas and mostly donated equipment, playing at Orlando Stadium, now Camping World Stadium (UCF Athletics). Its on-campus stadium opened in 2007, and UCF's athletics department refers to the Knights' national championship following their perfect 13-0 season in 2017 (UCF Athletics). That claim is UCF's own; the NCAA.com list of undefeated national champions does not include the 2017 Knights (NCAA.com).

South Florida opened on Sept. 6, 1997 at the old Tampa Stadium under coach Jim Leavitt, beating Kentucky Wesleyan 80-3 before a sellout crowd of 49,212 (USF Athletics). FIU played its first game on Aug. 29, 2002, defeating St. Peter's 27-3 before a sellout crowd of 17,314 at FIU Community Stadium in Miami (FIU Athletics). FIU's 2026 season is its 25th, and USF is marking its 30th football season with a 12-part anniversary series (FIU Athletics; USF Athletics).

The newest chapter of Florida college football history is Miami's 2025 season, when the Hurricanes made their first College Football Playoff and reached the CFP National Championship Game before losing 27-21 to Indiana (Miami Hurricanes football history).

On the way to that title game, Miami beat Texas A&M in the first round, defending national champion Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl and Ole Miss in the Fiesta Bowl, and its 13-3 finish set a Hurricanes single-season record for wins (Miami Hurricanes). NCAA.com records the same 27-21 final in the game that made Indiana a 16-0 national champion (NCAA.com).

The Gators' 2026 media guide lists a 4-8 record for 2025, an all-time record of 770-458-40 over 119 years, a Ben Hill Griffin Stadium capacity of 88,548 and Jon Sumrall as head coach in his first season at Florida (2026 Gators media guide). The same guide counts eight SEC championships, the last in 2008 (2026 Gators media guide). Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the athletics websites of the Florida universities named on this page.