1999 Season Recap

Updated August 28, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Wire to Wire

Florida State made history with their high-flying 46-29 win over Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. The Seminoles, who have not finished out of the top 5 in the final Associated Press poll since 1986, became the first team ever to top the AP poll from the preseason all the way through the bowl season since the preseason poll debuted in 1950.

The Seminoles were tabbed as the team to beat before the season began and no one could all year giving head coach Bobby Bowden his second national championship and first undefeated team. Their 12 wins on the year also solidified them as the winningest team of the 1990's with 109 victories, a record for any decade.

At times, it looked like they might beat themselves like when their best player, wide receiver Peter Warrick, was picked up along with teammate Laveraneus Coles for scamming Dillard's department store into getting expensive clothes at discounts too good to be true—or even legal. Warrick and Coles were arrested on Oct. 7 on a charge of felony grand theft for paying $21.40 for $412.38 worth of clothing at the store in Tallahassee, Fla. Warrick was suspended two games and reinstated after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, requiring him to spend 30 hours in a work program.

Warrick, who might have felt snubbed by the Heisman Trophy voters that preferred Wisconsin running back Ron Dayne, came back with renewed determination and in the biggest game of his career, the 2000 Sugar Bowl, he scored three touchdowns including one on a punt return. Warrick even outshined Virginia Tech freshman quarterback sensation Michael Vick, who has been called college football's best player.

The scintillating Vick led the surprising Hokies to a perfect 11-0 record in the regular season and a second-place spot in the Bowl Championship Series rankings. The Hokies were picked 13th in the preseason AP poll but someone obviously knew something because they did garner one first place vote.

In the second year of the BCS, the national championship game matched the top two teams in the nation and actually lived up to today's atmosphere of big-game hype. The 'Noles jumped out to an early 28-7 before Va. Tech put up 22 unanswered points to take a 29-28 lead into the fourth quarter. But the Florida State defense tightened and shut out the Hokies the rest of the way and the Seminole offense reasserted their superiority.