GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- How intense are college football rivalries?

Well to a college football coach, nothing is off limits, not even the spring game attendance.

Dan Mullen and Willie Taggart took over their respective Florida and Florida State programs last winter. Both Mullen and Taggart each drew in a big crowd for their respective spring games last season: Florida with 53,015 and FSU with 60,934.

Mullen's spring game was the largest crowd for a spring game for the last few years - beating out the previous three Florida head coaches.

However, after a 5-7 season, Taggart saw this weekend's spring game crowd fall to half of last year's to 27,901.

Mullen and his Gators beat out FSU 41-14 in last season's game. He may even remind the Noles about that fact on Saturday.

Maybe with an adjusted spring game attendance.

"I know this: I have fudged it before. Well like, not like ridiculously, but for like silly stuff," explained Mullen. "Maybe like the attendance matches the score of a certain game or something like that during the season. We've done that type of stuff before."

Reporter: Like 41,140 people?

"Let's see what game that is—Oh. Yeah, 41,014. Yeah, 41,140. Right?"

Spring games are more than just a way to a way to troll rivals, however.

"The more the better for me," the Florida head coach said about spring game crowds. "The only reason I say that is because you create the environment, you create an exciting environment for recruiting, one, for all the recruits that we have on campus."

There is no question a good game time atmosphere will help sell a program to a prospect. But it's not the only benefit. A crowded Swamp will also help the younger Florida players to experience a game time environment. .

"There's a lot of guys that haven't played in front of a crowd before," Mullen said. "So there will be times you roll some guys out on the field you want to see. It's one thing when we're out there on the practice field, it's not that big a deal. Scrimmages are a little different, because you're in the stadium. But now a spring game, I'm a young player and I get to go in the stadium and there's a lot of people watching. That can change the psyche of an 18-, 19-year-old kid."

According to Mullen, the spring game should also be an entertaining day for players and fans a like.

"A lot of fun things just around the game itself with the Gator Walk, the food trucks, a cookoff contest going on out there, the band’s playing, so a lot of fun activities," said Mullen. "I know baseball is playing, tennis, lacrosse, so a lot of great fun activities."

It will also allow the coaches and fans to see the foundation of guys that Florida has on its roster.

"You probably felt pretty good about a bunch of guys before we even started spring practice, that they’ve played a bunch of football," explained the Gators head coach. "For us, the biggest thing is we’ve got to continue to build depth, so hopefully we add some more guys that we feel comfortable that are ready to play, knowing that we still have summer and 25 more practices before we play a game for more guys to jump on that boat."

The game-day format has yet to be decided, however, one thing is for sure, the game will be two hours long.

"The game is part of the festivities more than there's festivities that surround the game" said Mullen. "The game is part of all the festivities. We try to have some fun with it too. Guess what? We're going to win."

Last season FSU announced their spring game attendance a few hours after Florida's. Their announced attendance was about 7,000 more.

This season, the Gators could very well hold yet another victory against the rival up north after Saturday.

"I don't think we fudged it last year. Ours was legitimate last year."