Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Who is the mascot of the Florida State University football team?
Florida State's Osceola tradition is overseen by Allen Durham, whose father, Bill Durham, introduced it in 1978. Osceola wears a Native American-themed costume that the university says was "designed and approved by the Seminole Tribe of Florida," consisting of leather clothing, moccasins, face paint, and a garnet bandana. He carries a feathered spear and is accompanied by Renegade, an appaloosa horse whom he rides bareback. Osceola performs at all home football games at Doak Campbell Stadium and related events like Homecoming. He initiates each game by charging Renegade to midfield and hurling a flaming spear into the ground.
This list of Florida Gators head football coaches includes those coaches who have led the Florida Gators football team that represents the University of Florida in the sport of American football. The Florida Gators currently compete in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and the Eastern Division of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Twenty-six men have served as the Gators' head coach, including four who served as interim head coach, since the Gators began play in the fall of 1906. In December 2017, Dan Mullen was hired as the Gators' latest head coach.
The modern University of Florida was created in 1905, when the Florida Legislature passed the Buckman Act, consolidating four predecessor institutions to form the "University of the State of Florida." Ten years later, the university sponsored the first Florida Gators men's varsity basketball team that played its first season during the 1915–1916 school year under head coach C. J. McCoy, who was also the head coach of the Florida Gators football team. The first Gators basketball team compiled a 5–1 record, but the following three seasons were canceled during and immediately after World War I. The team was restarted for the 1919–20 season without a professional coach, though the Gators did have a new venue—the newly built University Gymnasium. Head coach William G. Kline, who also coached the Florida Gators football team, led the Gators basketball team from 1920 to 1922.
The mascot of the university is Monte, a Grizzly Bear. In 1897, a live bear cub traveled with UM's football team, then known as the "Bears" (the "Grizzlies" name was adopted in 1923). Numerous live bear cubs who served as university mascots, first named "Teddy", then "Fessy" and finally, in the 1960s, "Cocoa". UM's costumed mascot during the 1980s, dubbed "Otto", donned a variety of fun-loving outfits to entertain crowds at Grizzly football games. Monte (short for "Montana") was born in the mountains of Missoula in the fall 1993. The 2002–03 and 2004–05 National Champion Mascot of the Year (Capital One/ESPN) has evolved into a "motorcycle-riding, break-dancing, back flipping, slam-dunking, movie-making, crowd-surfing, goal post smashing, prank-pulling superstar."
The 2000 Sugar Bowl was the designated Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship Game for the 1999 NCAA Division I-A football season and was played on January 4, 2000, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The Florida State Seminoles, representing the Atlantic Coast Conference, defeated the Virginia Tech Hokies, representing the Big East Conference, by a score of 46–29. With the win, Florida State clinched the 1999 BCS national championship, the team's second national championship in its history.
The South Florida–UCF rivalry, officially known as the War on I–4, is a college rivalry between the University of Central Florida Knights and University of South Florida Bulls. The rivalry is best known for its college football matchup, and originated in a series of football games played from 2005 to 2008. In 2013, when UCF joined the American Athletic Conference, the schools began competing annually in all sports, with the yearly football game played on Thanksgiving weekend. In 2016, the schools officially adopted the "War on I-4" as an official competition series. Each year, the team with the most wins across all sports receives an I–4 road sign trophy; the winner of the football game also receives a similar trophy.
Georgetown's nickname is The Hoyas, but its mascot is "Jack the Bulldog." Various breeds of dogs have been used by the sports teams as mascots since the early 1900s. Several notable bull terriers like Sergeant Stubby and "Hoya" were used at football games in the 1920s, as was a Great Dane in the 1940s. However, in 1951, the school suspended its football program because of the increasing cost of the game financially and academically, which left the school without an official live mascot.
The team's mascot is Blaze the Trail Cat, a two-tone silver-colored mountain lion, which has been the team's official mascot since 2002. Prior to Blaze's debut, the Trail Blazers never had any official mascot. A popular unofficial mascot was the late Bill "The Beerman" Scott, a Seattle beer vendor-cheerleader who worked for numerous pro teams, including the Trail Blazers, the Seattle Seahawks, and the Seattle Mariners. Scott worked for the Trail Blazers from 1981 through 1985.
Florida began the next decade with a 27–23 victory in Knoxville in front of a national record crowd of 108,768 fans. During the following season, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks postponed all NCAA Division-I football games that were scheduled to be played on the following Saturday. The Florida and Tennessee match-up was rescheduled for December, and the Vols upset the Gators in Gainesville, winning on Florida Field for the first time since 1971. Steve Spurrier left Florida for the NFL after the 2001 season, but two trends in the rivalry continued in 2002: both teams were ranked in the top 10, and new Florida coach Ron Zook led the Gators to another win in Knoxville. However, both teams stumbled later in the season, and for the first time ever, neither would represent the SEC's Eastern Conference in the SEC Championship Game. The 2002 contest would be the last time to date in which both schools would enter their annual clash ranked in the top 10.
The following season, neither Florida State nor Virginia Tech competed for a national championship, but both teams played in the 2002 Gator Bowl, their first matchup in two years. Following the Gator Bowl, Florida State next met Virginia Tech in the 2005 ACC Championship Game after the Hokies left the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference. Florida State won that contest, 27–22. Not until the 2007 college football season did Virginia Tech finally avenge its losses to the Seminoles with a 40–21 win en route to an Atlantic Coast Conference championship. It was the first game in fifteen consecutive matchups between the two teams that Virginia Tech had won.
The current mascot is the 16th in a series of mascots named "Chesty" in honor of famed Marine Lieutenant General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller Jr. This dog lives at the Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., where he appears in weekly parades.
The 1978 Florida Gators football team represented the University of Florida during the 1978 NCAA Division I-A football season. The season was Doug Dickey's ninth and last year as the head coach of the Florida Gators football team. The 1978 Florida Gators finished with a 4–7 overall record and a 3–3 Southeastern Conference (SEC) record, tying for fourth among ten SEC teams. After a disappointing 1977 season, Dickey had been under pressure to shake up his coaching staff, and he decided to abandon the run-oriented wishbone offense his teams had used for several seasons in favor of a more pro-style system. Former Florida quarterback Steve Spurrier, who had lived in Gainesville since wrapping up his NFL career in 1976, was tapped by Dickey to be the Gators' quarterback coach, his first coaching job.
The Osceola and Renegade mascots were conceived by Bill Durham, a Tallahassee businessman and Florida State alumnus. He came up with the concept of a horseback-riding Seminole mascot as early as 1962, when he was voted into the school's homecoming court. He returned to the idea in 1977, and won the support of Ann Bowden, wife of head football coach Bobby Bowden, who helped make the idea a reality. Durham contacted the Seminole Tribe of Florida about the project, and chairman Howard Tommie had tribe members make the first costume for Osceola. Durham provided the horse, while Bowden helped acquire the various permits necessary to allow a horse onto the field.
About two-thirds of Florida occupies a peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Florida has the longest coastline in the contiguous United States, approximately , not including the contribution of the many barrier islands. Florida has a total of 4,510 islands that are ten acres or larger in area. This is the second-highest number of islands of any state of the United States; only Alaska has more. It is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Much of the state is at or near sea level and is characterized by sedimentary soil. Florida has the lowest high point of any U.S. state. The climate varies from subtropical in the north to tropical in the south. The American alligator, American crocodile, American flamingo, Roseate spoonbill, Florida panther, bottlenose dolphin, and manatee can be found in Everglades National Park in the southern part of the state. Along with Hawaii, Florida is one of only two states that has a tropical climate, and is the only continental state with either a tropical climate or a coral reef. The Florida Reef is the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States, and the third-largest coral barrier reef system in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef and Belize Barrier Reef).
The most unusual event of this season took place on February 28, 1981, during the final regular-season game. Big East rival Connecticut was visiting McDonough Gymnasium when, during a timeout, Connecticuts Jonathan the Husky mascot started a fistfight with Georgetowns Jack the Bulldog mascot, leading to Jonathans ejection from McDonough. Thanks to senior center Mike Fraziers heroics, which included a block and rebound at the end of the game to preserve a 60-58 Georgetown victory, over a hundred Georgetown students gathered outside Fraziers on-campus apartment for an informal post-game pep rally.
Leading the Florida State offense was quarterback Chris Weinke, a former baseball player who, at 27 years old, was by far the oldest player on the Seminoles' team. After suffering a neck injury in the 1998 college football season, Weinke recovered to complete 232 of 377 pass attempts for 3,103 yards, 25 touchdowns, and 14 interceptions.
During most of Florida baseball's early existence, the new university's athletic association suffered from a lack of financial resources, and few of the head baseball coaches were full-time baseball coaches. William G. Kline was also the athletic director, head football coach, and head basketball coach; James L. White was Florida's athletic director and head basketball coach; Brady Cowell, Ben Clemons and Lewie Hardage were assistant football coaches; and Sam McAllister was the head basketball coach and an assistant football coach. A notable exception was Lance Richbourg, who was a Florida alumnus and a Major League Baseball outfielder for the Boston Braves and others, and led the Gators to an impressive 39–21 overall record (a .650 winning percentage) in 1922, 1923 and 1926. McAllister was the Gators' last pre-World War II coach, and he returned from military service to lead the Gators baseball team again in 1946 and 1947.
In 2004, all North Dakota State athletic teams moved to Division I. From 2004 to 2007, the Bison were members of the Great West Football Conference. Since 2008 they have been affiliated with the Missouri Valley Football Conference. Since moving to Division I, their primary rival are the South Dakota State University Jackrabbits whom they compete with each year for the Dakota Marker. The team's former head coach was Craig Bohl, who led the Bison from 2003 to 2013, holds the school record for most wins by a head coach, going 104–32 in his tenure at NDSU. Bohl's successor Chris Klieman went 69–6 in his five seasons (2014–2018). During the Bison's successful run to the 2018 FCS title, Klieman was named as the successor to the retiring Bill Snyder as head coach at Kansas State, though both schools agreed that Klieman would remain at NDSU while the Bison were involved in the FCS playoffs. Bison defensive coordinator Matt Entz took over as head coach following that season's championship game.
Florida and Tennessee's football teams first met in 1916, when both schools were members of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association. They each joined the Southern Conference in the 1920s, and were founding members of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in 1932. Despite these common affiliations, a true rivalry did not develop between the programs for a long time because they played so sparingly.
KU football dates from 1890, and has played in the Orange Bowl three times: 1948, 1969, and 2008. They are currently coached by David Beaty, who was hired in 2014. In 2008, under the leadership of Mark Mangino, the #7 Jayhawks emerged victorious in their first BCS bowl game, the FedEx Orange Bowl, with a 24–21 victory over the #3 Virginia Tech Hokies. This capstone victory marked the end of the most successful season in school history, in which the Jayhawks went 12–1 (.923). The team plays at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which recently underwent a $31 million renovation to add the Anderson Family Football Complex, adding a football practice facility adjacent to the stadium complete with indoor partial practice field, weight room, and new locker room.
The school's teams are called "Hoyas", a name whose origin is uncertain. Sometime before 1893, students well versed in classical languages invented the mixed Greek and Latin chant of "Hoya Saxa", translating roughly as "what (or such) rocks." The school's baseball team, then called the Stonewalls, began in 1870, and football in 1874, and the chant likely refers to one of these teams. By the 1920s, the term "Hoyas" was used to describe groups on campus, and by 1928, campus sports writers started using it instead of the older team name, the "Hilltoppers." The name was picked up in the local publications, and became official shortly after. Jack the Bulldog has been the mascot of Georgetown athletics programs since 1962, and the school fight song is "There Goes Old Georgetown".
The 1903 Florida State College football team represented Florida State College in the sport of American football during the 1903 college football season. The team was led by head coach W.W. Hughes and posted a 3–2–1 record and won the State Championship. With no formal nickname or mascot, the Florida State College football team was known simply as e. g. the "Florida State College Eleven".
The 1904 Florida State College football team represented Florida State College in the sport of American football during the 1904 college football season. The team, led by head coach Jack Forsythe, posted a 2–3 record and won the State Championship with a victory over Stetson and the University of Florida. With no formal nickname or mascot, the Florida State College football team was known simply as e. g. the "Florida State College Eleven".
Southeastern University teams are nicknamed the Fire and the school's mascot is known as Scorch. The university is a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), competing in The Sun Conference, formerly known as the Florida Sun Conference (FSC). The Fire are associate members of the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) after competing in both Division II and, more recently, Division I. The university added softball, men's tennis, and men's & women's cross country during the 2012-13 school year, and women's golf for 2013-14. Southeastern currently competes in seven men's and seven women's sports, after the addition of football in the 2014-15 academic year. Men's wrestling was added in the 2015-16 academic year, becoming the state's only collegiate scholarship program.
Florida State University adopted the Seminoles nickname in 1947, just after its reorganization from a women's college to a coed institution. The moniker was selected through a fan competition; reportedly the newly established football team liked it so much that they stuffed the ballot box to ensure its selection. Prior to the introduction of Osceola and Renegade, the Florida State Seminoles used several different Native American-themed mascots. The first was Sammy Seminole, introduced at the FSU Pow Wow in 1958 for football games. This mascot was portrayed by a white male member of the gymnastics or circus programs, who performed wild stunts in garish faux-Native American garb. The gymnastics program's sponsorship of Sammy Seminole ended in 1968, but the character was quickly reintroduced.