After winning the first national title in program history, the FSU football team was hungry for getting a second crown. Two failed attempts in the championship game – in the 1996 season with a blowout loss to rival Florida and the 1998 season against Tennessee in the first year of the Bowl Championship Series – had the Seminoles starving for another title.
Entering the 1999 season, expectations were as high as they had ever been for the Noles – with the men from Tallahassee finding themselves ranked number one in the country to start the season for just the fifth time in program history at that point (with four of those coming over a seven season span starting in 1993).