Georgia Bulldogs vs. Steve Spurrier: 25 years of hostility

The Georgia Bulldogs and their fans love to win, and don’t tolerate a loser for long.

They also love to hate. It’s been said that hate is the fuel that gives Georgia Bulldog red its unique hue.

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They hate Georgia Tech. They hate Auburn and Florida and basically all things orange.

But most of all — and this is almost without exception — they hate Steve Spurrier, and that just makes him as happy as a pig in mud on a sultry summer day.

Spurrier is a winner. He won as a player, and he’s almost universally won as a coach. But when he has coached against Georgia, its almost as if Spurrier gets a kind of perverted pleasure from downing the Bulldogs and making them feel inadequate in his presence.

It’s this relationship that has really been at the forefront for the last 25 years, since Spurrier took over the head coaching job for the hated Florida Gators. While there was never any real love for Spurrier during his playing or early coaching days, 1990 is when the real hostilities began.

Up until 1990, the Georgia-Florida rivalry had been fairly one-sided, with the Bulldogs having a 44-22-2 lead in the series. Then, the Evil Genius took the reigns in Gainesville, and the rivalry took a turn in the Gators direction – and 25 years later it’s just starting to swing back to the Bulldogs.

The trend of Spurrier-domination seemed to end when he took over at South Carolina, but little by little, as he’s developed that once floundering program, his knack for becoming a fly in the ointment for the Dawgs has returned.

Spurrier’s overall record against Georgia as a head coach (those with heart conditions or who are squeamish may want to look away)…

15 – 5, with an average margin of victory sitting at 20.3 points per game in those 15 wins.

That’s just ugly.

And that’s a big reason why the Bulldog Nation feels such animosity towards Spurrier. He doesn’t just beat Georgia. He beats them often, and badly.

And many of the games involving the Head Ball Coach and the Bulldogs have not been without incident or controversy. There was the infamous “timeout” game against Florida in 1993, where a questionable timeout was granted to Spurrier’s Gators, nullifying what would have been a game-tying touchdown pass by Georgia QB Eric Zeier.

Every win against a Spurrier-coached team feels like 100 wins, and every point in the margin of victory feels like 100 points.

And of course, running up the score (always a favorite trick of Spurrier) became a shame meal for hatred as well. Particularly in 1995, when leading by 28 points with just over a minute to go, Spurrier was calling pass plays for backup quarterback Eric Kresser (as All-American Danny Wuerffel had been pulled in the 3rd quarter), and unnecessarily ran the score up to 52-17.

Things have been no different with Spurrier at the helm in South Carolina. He always seems to find a way to get under the skin of the Bulldogs with snide or even downright accusatory comments during SEC Media Days interviews or press conferences. He complains about schedules, tiebreakers or anything else that seemed to have given the Bulldogs the slightest hint of advantage.

And in return, all Georgia fans can really do (since regularly beating his teams seems to be an unliftable curse) is make fun of his choleric temper, visor throwing, and indecisiveness on quarterbacks. Every win against a Spurrier-coached team feels like 100 wins, and every point in the margin of victory feels like 100 points.

It was 25 years ago that Steve Spurrier began his ritualistic beatings of the Bulldogs, and this year, Georgia can’t afford to let their arch-nemesis become the plunderer of their season.

The Dawgs now have some very high hopes attached to this season, and Spurrier would love nothing more than to be the biggest goat ever in Athens, Ga.

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