Thanksgiving is the best holiday.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not the Grinch. I enjoy the gift-giving that comes with December, I am cool with the increasing trend of holiday music playing on multiple channels as early as Veterans Day weekend and I love Christmas lights as much as the next person. I might have even tried one of those holiday coffees at some point in time.

But Thanksgiving is special. There are no gifts, no awkward Secret Santa exchanges, no hidden agendas. Thanksgiving knows what it is and is comfortable with it.

Thanksgiving is just about family, friends, food and football. What could be better?

Thanksgiving is also rivalry weekend in college football, the best weekend of the season in the sport for which we are all most thankful.

In the South, that means we fire up the Big Green Egg on Thursday morning, smoke the turkey, break bread with our friends and families and settle in, because starting Thursday night, it’s football time. Y’all can have the Thanksgiving NFL slate. My weekend starts with the Egg Bowl on Thursday night and won’t be over until Florida embarrasses Florida State on Senior Night in The Swamp on Saturday evening.

(Checks notes. Wait — did he just write “until Florida embarrasses Florida State”?)

Yes, that’s what I wrote.

• The 5 greatest Florida-Florida State games ever

Florida will pummel FSU because it has a better team, because it is still playing for a spot in a New Year’s Six Bowl, because it is Senior Night at The Swamp and because, after a decade of losing — and losing badly — to FSU on its home field, it isn’t revenge Florida will be after Saturday night in the Sunshine Showdown. It’s a reckoning.

Florida hasn’t beaten FSU at The Swamp since Tim Tebow and Brandon Spikes laced it up for the Gators, so a proper rout is past due. The good news is, that’s what’s coming, and you won’t convince me otherwise.

After UF’s five-game losing streak in this rivalry, which ended last year with just its second win over FSU this decade, most Gators fans will be happy to put the lost decade of football behind them. 

If you asked them what football thing they were most grateful for at Thanksgiving dinner, though, they’d probably still say they’re grateful to be a Gator, proud not to be a Seminole and especially thankful this year for the chance to crush FSU at home.

Here are 10 reasons every Florida fan loves beating Florida State.

1. It’s fun to lord it over your FSU employees

(Because Florida alumni end up being the boss, get it?)

No, but seriously … Florida, being a top-10 public university, is a prestigious academic institution of global renown that prepares young people for careers in all walks of life. FSU is a fine school, a state university with a clown college and circus that prepares young people for careers working for Gators.

FSU fans want to win this game for bragging rights at the water cooler or in the office lunch room — and let me tell you, they did love to brag during that five game winning streak — but the truth is, considering how many of them work for Gators, maybe they should want Florida to win? A Gator win means a happier Gator boss, something that could be useful around bonus time. Just sayin’, y’all …

2. They think Gators are snobs anyway

Okay, okay, I didn’t help myself much with the “Florida alumni end up being the boss” joke, but then again, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …

FSU fans have an inferiority complex about Florida, one that stems from the history of the rivalry.

After FSU became coeducational, it almost immediately tried to schedule an annual game with Florida, the older (according to Florida), more venerable (according to everyone) institution to its east. The Florida administration balked, believing that FSU was beneath Florida as a program and the game offered no reward to Florida. The Seminoles tried to create a legislative solution, but the Florida legislature was full of Gators, who voted down a law that would have required Florida to play Florida State on an annual basis.

Finally, Florida Gov. LeRoy Collins intervened, convincing UF president J. Wayne Reitz to play FSU on a trial basis annually beginning in 1958. The schools have played at least once every year since, but FSU fans have never forgiven the Gators for their smarmy dismissal of FSU as a program and school.

That disdain is cultural, and Florida fans have embraced it, from constant Florida student section chants of “SAT scores” aimed at FSU students or bad boss jokes like the one I made.

Point being: ‘Noles fans are always going to think Gators are snobs, so Florida may as well beat the daylights out of them.

3. Bobby Bowden

I get that Bowden won eleventy billion games, is beloved by his former players and did all the winning with integrity, but didn’t that “Aw shucks, we just blocked ’em and tackled ’em” act ever rub any of y’all as phony?

We’re not totally buying former FSU coach Bobby Bowden’s “aw shucks” routine. Photo by: Joshua S. Kelly-USA TODAY Sports

Maybe it didn’t, but every time I see The Waterboy, I always associate Bowden with Louisiana Cougars head coach Red Beaulieu, the kind of sweet talker on the outside who would fire the water boy.

Is that entirely delusional? Probably.

But Bowden ruined so many Gators dreams in his 30-plus seasons in Tallahassee that no one grew up a Gator in the ’90s or 2000s without learning to loathe Bowden. How many national championships would Steve Spurrier have won but for Bowden? At least one more. And Bowden could certainly say the same thing.

4. Anxiety

No matter how great Kirby Smart makes Georgia, most Florida fans of a certain age will still have trouble getting nervous about the Georgia game. Yes, the Dawgs have the better talent and have won three in a row, but Florida will right the ship. For 30 seasons, beating Georgia is just something Florida has done (21 times, in fact).

It’s the opposite with FSU. The Gators could be 11-0 and FSU 6-5, and this game would make Gen X’ers and older millennial Gators nervous. And after being fathered by Jimbo Fisher for so many seasons this decade, that anxiety just became worse.

Do you believe Florida will lose to a 6-5 FSU team playing for an interim head coach Saturday? No. Do you lose sleep over the possibility that it might happen, and it would be the most FSU-Florida thing ever if it did? Absolutely, you lose sleep. Or you lie about not losing sleep. There is no in between.

Don’t tell us Florida fans aren’t at least a little stressed about Saturday’s game. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

5. The Swindle in The Swamp

I will never get over the fact that FSU fumbled six times in a game, and not one of them was called a fumble by the ACC officiating crew led by a referee named Jack Childress whose nickname was “Black Jack” because he enjoyed gambling.

That game, a 38-34 FSU “win” in The Swamp in 2003, prevented Ron Zook from winning nine games in his second season in Gainesville and prompted institutional reform in the sport in its aftermath. Not only did the ACC commissioner apologize to the University of Florida for what transpired, but the NCAA passed a rule that officials from the conference of the home team would handle non-conference games moving forward. The game was also a huge impetus for the adoption of instant replay in college football, which began in 2006.

6. Jameis Winston

Do I really need to explain this one? I mean, I don’t even think most FSU fans still like Jameis Winston.

The 2013 Heisman Trophy winner who got to keep playing while being investigated, belatedly, for sexual battery (he was not charged) absolutely terrorized the Gators, leading FSU to a blowout win in The Swamp in 2013 and a big comeback win at Doak Campbell in 2014.

It would be one thing if he were just a great quarterback who happened to play for a rival. It’s the character questions that never quite seem to catch up with him that make it even worse. It would be one thing if he had learned from being implicated in the sexual battery case involving Erica Kinsman in college. People learn from life’s trials and tribulations. Instead, Winston took so much from the whole incident that he was suspended by the NFL for another allegation of sexual misconduct when he allegedly groped an Uber driver in Las Vegas in 2018.

Winston’s sense of entitlement and disregard for accountability make it easy to loathe FSU.

7. The Choke at Doak

I get that it’s embarrassing to blow a 31-3 lead in the fourth quarter.

But have you ever sat back and thought about the fact that one of the greatest moments in the history of FSU’s program was a tie?

How pathetic is that?

8. The Marching Chiefs and that awful War Chant

Let’s come clean for a minute, shall we?

FSU’s band is awesome. It is one of the biggest, best bands in college football. It’s loud, it sounds good, its public address announcer is appropriately obnoxious — when the ‘Noles came to Florida unbeaten in 2013 and the Gators were 4-7 and finishing their first losing season in 34 years, he introduced the band at halftime as “winners who are world-renowned and postseason-bound.” It’s a great band.

But that stupid, droning, repetitive War Chant is the dumbest, loudest, most annoying thing in college football. And I’ve been to Knoxville and heard Rocky Top at least 30 times in a game when Tennessee was good (trust me, this was actually a thing once upon a time).

To silence the War Chant alone, it will be great to pummel Florida State on Saturday night.

9. More famous alumni

Florida is the better school, but with all due respect to Tim Tebow, Laura Rutledge, Bob Vila and Milton from Office Space, FSU has the more famous alumni list by miles.

Lee Corso, Hunter S. Thompson, Burt Freaking Reynolds, Academy Award-winning director and writer Barry Jenkins, Prime Time himself, the woman who invented Spanx and paid Willie Taggart’s buyout — all ‘Noles. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

10. Free Shoes University

FSU players love free things.

We all know about Jameis lifting crab legs from the local Publix.

Then there’s the one about All-American Peter Warrick’s and teammate Laveranues Coles’ shopping spree at Dillard’s in the middle of the 1999 championship season. The two wide receivers stole hundreds of dollars of merchandise as part of an “underpaying scheme” they worked out with a Dillard’s cashier, and Coles, the less valuable of the two, was the fall guy, with Warrick receiving a brief suspension.

Warrick and Coles’ shopping spree paled in comparison to the one FSU orchestrated in the summer of 1994, when eight Florida State players were involved in an agent-financed shopping spree worth more than $6,000, with the main big-ticket items being shoes.

Speaking at a booster event that summer, Spurrier said there was a clear correlation between FSU’s shopping sprees and its elite recruiting.

“Our recruiting has picked up,” Spurrier said. “We didn’t get as many blue-chip players as FSU got, but I’m starting to understand why they’re getting so many of those guys now. You know what FSU stands for, don’t you? Free Shoes University.”

Man, but Steve Spurrier loved to needle Florida’s rivals. Photo by: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports

Free Shoes University.

That’s vintage Spurrier. Well, actually, vintage Spurrier would be to hang 50 on the ‘Noles to win a national championship.

The Gators can’t win a national championship this season.

But don’t be stunned if they hang 40-plus on the ‘Noles for the second straight season Saturday.

What a Happy Thanksgiving that would be.