The Florida State football team dashed from the practice field Thursday, almost as if they were late for class.

In reality, that’s where the Seminoles were headed after working out for 90 minutes in shells; a first for a Thursday practice pre-dating 1976. FSU coach Jimbo Fisher met only briefly with the media after the final practice before the Seminoles open the 2010 season against Samford, Saturday at 12 p.m. inside Doak Campbell Stadium.

We’re just going over film; a mental session now for 10 or 15 minutes,” Fisher said, when asked where his team was racing toward.

It’s just another in a long line of changes instituted by the first-year coach who will make his debut against a team he once quarterbacked and later served as an assistant coach. The Seminoles will have a team walk-through Friday, eat dinner, meet and stay at an undisclosed hotel in Tallahassee, forgoing years of getting out of town the night before games.

As for Thursday’s final workout, Fisher largely liked what he saw, which included polishing up the game plan and covering all the situations the Seminoles may encounter against the Bulldogs, including time-and-distance and clock management.

“I thought the defense today played real well,” he said. “Offense? Just OK. I thought we were better yesterday.”

Fisher proclaimed the Seminoles “ready to play” before following his players inside for the skull session.

“You just want to play like normal; just get into a routine of playing a game,” he said. “We’ve got 12 of them and this is just the first one. We need to go out and play well.”

Seminoles fill out schedules

Florida State’s search to find single opponents for the 2011 and 2012 seasons has officially ended. The Seminoles will entertain Louisiana Monroe out of the Sun Belt Conference next season, then play host to Murray State – an FCS school from the Ohio Valley Conference – in ’12. They fill the voids created when Air Force backed out of its commitment to play home-and-home with the Seminoles.

“We needed home games,” Fisher said. “It makes no sense to play three great out-of-conference teams. We’re not going to do it. We’ve got to get the schedule how we want it and get home games here.”

Fisher said he does not anticipate any further changes to the schedule.

Students snap up tickets

Florida State’s student body has thrown its weight behind Fisher and the Seminoles for Saturday’s opener against Samford, snapping up all 16,000 tckets for the north end zone general admission seats.

And they haven’t stopped there.

The FSU ticket office is issuing additional “overflow” tickets as reserved seats in the south end zone of Doak Campbell Stadium at no charge to the students.

“It’s very encouraging,” said Ben Zierden, associate athletics director for ticket sales. “We haven’t seen this kind of student support in a number of years.”

FSU students picked up their full allotment for last season’s opener against Miami, but Zierden said it has been a long time since the interest has exceeded the base allotment. What makes the show of support even more impressive is that this marks the first year that the ticket office has gone 100 percent online with “print-at-home” student tickets.

“A ticket arrives in your email literally a minute after you apply online,” said Zierden, whose office has already processed approximately 17,000 ticket requests from students and will continue to do so until the allotment runs out.

Tickets for the general public remain on sale for the debut of Fisher and the 2010 Seminoles.