A DAWG – GATOR TALE

The first “official” year of the Georgia – Florida rivalry game took place in Jacksonville, Florida in 1915.  Although it sporadically continued to be played there, Jacksonville did not become its permanent home until 1933. The games prior to then had also been played in Athens, Georgia, Macon, Georgia, Savannah, Georgia, Tampa, Florida, and in 1931 for the first time in Gainesville, Florida.  Jacksonville has continued to be the home to what has been known as “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” (lately to the chagrin of the officials of both schools), except for the two years that the schools traded the game home and home, while Jacksonville built a new Alltel Stadium, to hold more folks not only for this game but also accommodate the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team.

Prior to the 1931 game that came to Gainesville; the Georgia Bulldogs had dominated the series, which had only been played 10 times by that year.  The Dogs had won the first six games, in addition to a 52-0 shellacking of the Gators in 1904, which Florida does not recognize.  The Gators, however, claimed to have won the three games prior to this battle, one of those was a 0-0 tie in Savannah in 1930 (A very realistic score for the scheduled game this weekend).

Although dominance for either team in this game has been cyclical from one decade to the next, the tide (nothing to do with Alabama) began to swing all Florida’s way when the evil genius, Steve Spurrier, and his infernal visor came to Gainesville. In 1993, leaving nothing to chance, Spurrier influenced a schedule option by putting the Gators open date before the Georgia game every year.  Of course our coach at the time, Ray Goof (I mean Goff) didn’t do anything about it.  During Spurrier’s tenor at Florida, he was 11-1 against the dogs.

Source: Yardbarker

Of course that one game that we won while Spurrier was there was in 1997 (part of the short Jim Donnan era).  At that time the dogs, although only having lost to Tennessee, and being ranked #14 nationally to Florida’s #6 ranking, had just an average quarterback, who had really not done anything special in any of the games preceding this one, relying mostly on a powerful running game and an extremely talented receiver.  Yours truly sat on the lower level, fourth row, 25 yard line, to watch this average quarterback go from a lamb to a lion and lead this bulldog team to stomp the gators 37-17.  That quarterback’s name was Mike Bobo.  Sound familier?  Oh and by the way, that receiver was Hines Ward (Pittsburgh Steelers WR) and the primary running back was Robert Edwards (New England Patriots RB, Miami Dolphins RB retired from NFL and CFL).

Source:  Yardbarker

Tomorrow, we will look at more specifics of this game and how it has evolved (or if you are a Dawg, “devolved”) through the Richt-Meyer era.

I told you in the UGA-101 blog that the English bulldog has not always been Georgia’s mascot.  I won’t let you suffer any longer waiting for the punch line.  Believe it or not our first mascot at our first game against Auburn, Feb. 22, 1892, was a goat.  Yes my friends a frickin’ goat!  In 1894 we got “Trilby” a Bull Terrier.  Yes, the same dog that was the Budweiser dog in the commercials all those years, and is the Target Stores mascot. (source of Mascot information: Georgiadogs.Com)

(Source of all historical references: Florida-Georgia Rivalry Football Vault by Norm Carlson and Loran Smith, Whitman Publishing, LLC)

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 LET THE BIG DAWG EAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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By: Dawgman1973 (Gary K.) Lead-Blogger “Dawn of the Dawg”