If you walk past Doak Campbell Stadium today, you’re looking at a cathedral of college football. It’s a massive brick fortress where the ghosts of Bobby Bowden and Jameis Winston still seem to linger in the humid Tallahassee air. But honestly? The start of it all was nothing like that. It wasn't some grand, destiny-filled evening under the lights. It was actually kind of a mess.
When people talk about Florida State’s first football game, they usually skip straight to the 1990s dominance. They forget that for decades, Florida State College for Women (FSCW) didn't even have a men's team because, well, there weren't any men. That changed after World War II. The GI Bill flooded the campus with veterans, the school went co-ed, and suddenly, there was a desperate, almost frantic need for a football program to give these guys something to do on a Saturday.
The October Night That Changed Tallahassee Forever
October 18, 1947. That’s the date you need to know.
Florida State University—newly renamed from Florida State College for Women—played its first intercollegiate football game against Stetson University. It wasn’t played at Doak. It was played at Centennial Field, which was basically a converted baseball park that sat near where the Cascades Park area is today.
The conditions were... primitive.
Imagine a crowd of about 8,000 people crammed into wooden bleachers. Most of them were students who had no idea what a football culture looked like because their school had been an all-female institution just months prior. The "marching band" was a tiny group of students trying to find a rhythm. There was no "Osceola and Renegade." There was no Tomahawk Chop. There was just a bunch of guys in mismatched gear trying not to get embarrassed.
Stetson won 14-0.
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Yeah, FSU lost their very first game. It wasn’t a thriller. It was a grind. The Seminoles (who had only recently picked that nickname via a student vote over options like "Crackers" or "Senators") couldn't move the ball. Ed Dilsaver, who played on that inaugural team, later recalled that they were basically just happy to be out there. They were coached by Ed Williamson, a man who was technically the coach because he was available, not because he was a seasoned gridiron mastermind. He only coached that one season, finishing 0-5.
Think about that. The program that would eventually produce three national championships and dozens of NFL first-rounders started its existence by failing to score a single point and finishing its first season winless.
Why Florida State’s First Football Game Was Actually a Logistics Nightmare
It’s easy to look back with rose-colored glasses, but the reality of 1947 was a logistical headache. The school didn't have a stadium. They didn't have a practice field that was worth anything. They barely had uniforms.
The players? They weren't blue-chip recruits. They were guys like Chris Banakas, Chris Kalfas, and Bill "V8" Vesel. Most were veterans who had spent the last few years in Europe or the Pacific. They were older, tougher, and significantly less polished than the kids coming out of high school today. They weren't playing for NIL money; they were playing for a degree and maybe a post-game meal.
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- The Equipment: Most of the gear was hand-me-downs or the cheapest stuff the university could procure on a shoestring budget.
- The Coaching: Ed Williamson was actually a professor. He was drafted into the role. He didn't have a "system." He had a playbook that was basically "run the ball and hope for the best."
- The Crowd: Half the people there were just confused. The transition from an all-women's college to a co-ed university was jarring.
The game against Stetson was a comedy of errors. FSU fumbled. They missed assignments. They looked like a team that had only been practicing for a few weeks—because they had. Stetson, meanwhile, had an established program and a much better understanding of the game's fundamentals at the time.
The Misconceptions About the 1947 Season
A lot of fans think FSU has always been this powerhouse. Or they think the "first" game was against the University of Florida.
Nope.
The Florida Gators refused to play FSU for years. They viewed the new Tallahassee school as a "girls' school" that had no business on the same field as them. It took a literal act of the state legislature and years of political maneuvering to force that rivalry into existence. In 1947, FSU was the underdog in its own backyard.
Another thing: people think the Seminole identity was fully formed. It wasn't. The students voted on the name in 1947, but the iconography we see today took decades to evolve. At Florida State’s first football game, the atmosphere was more like a small-town high school game than a major collegiate event.
The Long Road from Centennial Field to Doak Campbell
If you want to understand the soul of FSU football, you have to appreciate the lean years. After that 0-5 start in 1947, things didn't magically get better overnight. Don Veller took over in 1948 and actually led the team to a much better season, but they were still playing against schools like Cumberland and Erskine.
The leap from playing Stetson at a baseball park to playing Oklahoma for a National Championship is one of the most improbable rises in sports history.
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Most programs that start that poorly stay small. They become Division II mainstays or they drop the sport entirely. FSU is the outlier. The fact that they lost 14-0 to Stetson on a random Saturday in October is the necessary prologue to the 1993 and 1999 seasons. It’s the "before" picture in a dramatic weight-loss commercial.
What You Should Do With This History
Knowing the history of Florida State’s first football game isn't just for trivia nights at the local Tallahassee bars. It changes how you watch the game today. When you see a modern FSU receiver catch a touchdown in a $100 million stadium, remember the guys in 1947 who were just trying to tackle a Stetson running back in the dirt of a baseball infield.
If you’re a fan or a historian, here is how you can actually engage with this legacy:
- Visit Cascades Park: Walk the area near where old Centennial Field stood. It’s not a stadium anymore, but it’s the literal ground where the program was born. There are markers that explain the history of the area.
- Check the FSU Digital Archives: The university has incredible photos of the 1947 squad. Look at their faces. They look like men who have seen a lot more than a blitz—because most of them had just come back from a World War.
- Respect the "Small" Opponents: FSU started as the "small" opponent. When the Noles play a non-conference game against a smaller school today, remember that in 1947, FSU was the team everyone expected to beat.
- Read "The Fifty-Year Itch": While many books cover the Bowden era, look for local histories that detail the 1940s transition of the Florida State College for Women. It provides the social context that explains why a football team was so important for the morale of a changing campus.
The 14-0 loss to Stetson wasn't a failure. It was a birth. It was the moment a group of veterans and students decided that Tallahassee was a football town, even if the scoreboard didn't know it yet. It’s proof that where you start has almost nothing to do with where you can go.
Don't let the flashy uniforms of today make you forget the mismatched jerseys of 1947. That first game is the reason the rest of the history exists. It’s the foundation, buried deep under the sod of every win that followed. It was messy, it was quiet, and it was perfect in its own way.