Hard to disagree here. My first FL-GA game was the 1968 game, as a high school sophomore. Not sure I’ve ever seen it rain that hard at a football game, before ir since. Pure misery!
Franz Beard
Why I Despise The Georgia Bulldogs and Why You Should, Too
For the most part, this is a repeat of a column I write every year. If you know me and know how I feel about Gator sports, then you know that I despise the University of Georgia. The only reason any Florida Gator should ever cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs is if a Georgia win in any sport helps the Gators win a championship. Otherwise, my favorite team – ALWAYS – is the Florida Gators and whoever Georgia is playing. This pull for any SEC team playing a non-SEC notion applies to every school except Georgia.
In the past, I said that I despise the Georgia Bulldogs with the white hot intensity of 10,000 suns, but the older I get the more I underestimate how much. I believe General William Tecumseh Sherman should have altered his march to the sea by about 50 miles east of Atlanta. He should have burned down the University of Georgia and then salted the earth in Clarke County so that nothing would grow again for 100 years.
When Georgia plays my hope is their opponent beats them so badly that they question why they ever fielded a team in that sport in the first place. I don’t wish for debilitating injuries or anything like that, but I do wish for humiliating losses for the Georgia Bulldogs. I’m a big Ray Goff fan by the way. I wouldn’t mind if he were still the Georgia football coach.
I am appalled when Gators refer to the Georgia Bulldogs as the “Dawgs.” We are Florida Gators. We actually went to college. We know how to spell. We are not functioning illiterate rednecks. Let the big dog spell.
Here are a few reasons why I despise Georgia and why you should, too. Perhaps you have reasons of your own that you would like to share. That’s fine. My list isn’t the only one out there also it should be the foundation for every Gator fan to see Georgia for exactly what it is – a school and a team unworthy of any respect.
REASON NO. 1: My dad was a just-turned 17-year-old freshman at the University of Florida in 1942, biding his time until he was 18 when he could sign up to join the Navy to fight the Germans and the Japanese. On most of the college campuses across the nation, the physically able athletes had already signed up to fight for their country in the weeks immediately after Pearl Harbor. That wasn’t the case at Georgia which had one of the two or three best ROTC programs in the country. It’s Pre-Flight program drew athletes from all over the country, supplementing an already loaded team coached by Wally Butts. Coach Thomas Lieb’s Gators were a bunch of young guys either waiting their 18th birthday or those who couldn’t pass the physical to join the military.
On November 7 in Jacksonville, it was pure carnage. Led by Flatfoot Frankie Sinkwich, who won the Heisman, and Charlie Trippi, who was actually a better football player, Georgia showed no mercy. The game was over in the first quarter, but Butts left the starters including Sinkwich, Trippi, George Posner and Gene Ellenson in the game well into the fourth quarter.
The final score was Georgia 75, Florida 0. Until the day he died, my father despised Georgia because of that game.
REASON NO. 2: When the 1968 season began, the Gators were picked top five. Playboy Magazine, which at the time had an excellent football writer named Anson Mount, picked the Gators to win the national championship. The Gators were 4-0, but on a rainy, muddy day in Chapel Hill, the bubble burst. Seven Florida fumbles enabled an inferior North Carolina team to beat the Gators 22-7. By the time the Georgia game rolled around, the Gators were a wounded 4-2-1 and spiraling downward.
There was a quarterback controversy that split the team right down the middle. Half the team supported Jackie Eckdahl, the other half Larry Rentz. Defensive players thought they were doing their part so they were angered by the Eckdahl-Rentz controversy. The Gators were the poster child for dysfunction.
Days before the game, Florida offensive genius and playcaller Fred Pancoast underwent an emergency appendectomy. Believing the Gators needed to be shaken by their lapels, Ray Graves swapped coordinators. He assigned Gene Ellenson from defense to offense and Ed Kensler went to the defense. Things went from bad to worse.
In Jacksonville, the Florida-Georgia game was played on a cold, rainy, chill you to the bone day. If you were there, you will never forget just how miserable it was. It was 42-0 at the half, 48-0 with seconds remaining in the game. It was 42-0 and over by halftime. In the closing minute with Georgia leading 48-0 and threatening to score, Vince Dooley called time out and sent in a lineman who hadn’t kicked since high school to kick a field goal to humiliate the Gators.
Final score, Georgia 51, Florida 0. As he did every Saturday evening after a Florida game, Steve Spurrier, Florida’s former Heisman Trophy winner and John Brodie’s backup with the San Francisco 49ers, called Coach Ellenson. Hearing what happened, Spurrier seethed. He has a very long memory. Running up the score against Georgia during the 12 years he was the Florida coach was always one of Spurrier’s goals. He never saw a reason to hold back against Georgia, which is why he took particular delight in hanging 52 on the Bulldogs in Athens in 1995.
REASON NO. 3: The 1984 Florida team won the Southeastern Conference championship on the field. In Florida’s march to the title was a 27-0 skunking of Georgia, Florida’s first win over the Bulldogs since 1977. The Gators had been slapped with NCAA probation that would keep UF off television for two years with a reduction of scholarships to 12 each year. Crippling sanctions. In February the SEC affirmed Florida’s championship despite the sanctions. In May, a group led by Georgia tried to strip Florida of the title, but the SEC Executive Committee said Florida had been punished enough by the NCAA. At the SEC Spring Meetings, Vince Dooley and Georgia led the charge to strip Florida of the tile and vacate the championship. It was a 6-4 vote. Florida, Ole Miss, Auburn and Mississippi State voted for UF to keep the championship.
The same group voted to make Florida ineligible for the 1985 SEC title. Florida had the best record in the league (9-1-1) and tied for the SEC with a 5-1 record.
REASON NO. 4: Galen Hall was unceremoniously fired as Florida’s head coach after a 16-13 win over LSU in October. The crime was Galen Hall allegedly paying for a month of child support for Jarvis Williams. Hall denied he ever paid and the NCAA never provided proof that he did. The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, gave the Gators a one-year probation for being a repeat offender.
Steve Spurrier succeeded Hall as the coach, but he was informed the SEC presidents and athletic directors had voted to make the Gators ineligible to win the championship in 1990. Florida finished with the best record at 9-2 which included a 38-7 win over Georgia, but to no avail. Georgia, to no one’s surprise, had led the charge when it came to voting the Gators ineligible.
REASON NO. 5: When Knowshon Moreno scored a touchdown in the first quarter for a 7-0 Georgia lead in 2007, the entire Georgia bench stormed the field. Georgia players taunted the Gators and tried to start the kind of melee that would have offset the 15-year unsportsmanlike conduct penalty assessed the Bulldogs. The Gators didn’t bite, but anyone who was there could see how much restraint was needed. Georgia went on to win the game 42-30.
Storming the field didn’t cost Florida a win, but it was a classless move, followed by Mark Richt’s classless lie post game that he watched from the sideline, surprised like everyone else. Not a single Georgia coach tried to keep the Bulldogs from storming the field. They knew because they had rehearsed. It wasn’t spontaneous as Richt lied.
During the summer at SEC Media Days, Richt compounded matters with another lie that he was shocked that his team had stormed the field. His nose grew.
There is a happy ending to this one. Starting with Brandon Spikes decleating of Moreno on the game’s second play, the Gators dominated and humiliated Georgia in 2008, 49-10. With 43 seconds to go and Florida on its way to a righteous win, Urban Meyer called a timeout. Richt was seen on national TV staring down the scoreboard. With 30 seconds left, Meyer did it again and again Richt was seen by a national audience staring down the scoreboard.
Revenge, yes. An end to despising Georgia? Absolutely not.
Maybe I should be more forgiving of Georgia, but I see no reason to, not now, not ever. I have this recurring dream. The Gators score with 20 seconds left to make it 46-0 and go for two. The Gators kick onside and recover. The Gators throw deep down the middle and it’s caught at the Georgia 38. Florida calls time out. Three seconds left. Out goes the field goal unit for a 55-yarder and it splits the uprights.
FLORIDA 51, Georgia 0.
Franz Beard
Why I Despise The Georgia Bulldogs and Why You Should, Too
For the most part, this is a repeat of a column I write every year. If you know me and know how I feel about Gator sports, then you know that I despise the University of Georgia. The only reason any Florida Gator should ever cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs is if a Georgia win in any sport helps the Gators win a championship. Otherwise, my favorite team – ALWAYS – is the Florida Gators and whoever Georgia is playing. This pull for any SEC team playing a non-SEC notion applies to every school except Georgia.
In the past, I said that I despise the Georgia Bulldogs with the white hot intensity of 10,000 suns, but the older I get the more I underestimate how much. I believe General William Tecumseh Sherman should have altered his march to the sea by about 50 miles east of Atlanta. He should have burned down the University of Georgia and then salted the earth in Clarke County so that nothing would grow again for 100 years.
When Georgia plays my hope is their opponent beats them so badly that they question why they ever fielded a team in that sport in the first place. I don’t wish for debilitating injuries or anything like that, but I do wish for humiliating losses for the Georgia Bulldogs. I’m a big Ray Goff fan by the way. I wouldn’t mind if he were still the Georgia football coach.
I am appalled when Gators refer to the Georgia Bulldogs as the “Dawgs.” We are Florida Gators. We actually went to college. We know how to spell. We are not functioning illiterate rednecks. Let the big dog spell.
Here are a few reasons why I despise Georgia and why you should, too. Perhaps you have reasons of your own that you would like to share. That’s fine. My list isn’t the only one out there also it should be the foundation for every Gator fan to see Georgia for exactly what it is – a school and a team unworthy of any respect.
REASON NO. 1: My dad was a just-turned 17-year-old freshman at the University of Florida in 1942, biding his time until he was 18 when he could sign up to join the Navy to fight the Germans and the Japanese. On most of the college campuses across the nation, the physically able athletes had already signed up to fight for their country in the weeks immediately after Pearl Harbor. That wasn’t the case at Georgia which had one of the two or three best ROTC programs in the country. It’s Pre-Flight program drew athletes from all over the country, supplementing an already loaded team coached by Wally Butts. Coach Thomas Lieb’s Gators were a bunch of young guys either waiting their 18th birthday or those who couldn’t pass the physical to join the military.
On November 7 in Jacksonville, it was pure carnage. Led by Flatfoot Frankie Sinkwich, who won the Heisman, and Charlie Trippi, who was actually a better football player, Georgia showed no mercy. The game was over in the first quarter, but Butts left the starters including Sinkwich, Trippi, George Posner and Gene Ellenson in the game well into the fourth quarter.
The final score was Georgia 75, Florida 0. Until the day he died, my father despised Georgia because of that game.
REASON NO. 2: When the 1968 season began, the Gators were picked top five. Playboy Magazine, which at the time had an excellent football writer named Anson Mount, picked the Gators to win the national championship. The Gators were 4-0, but on a rainy, muddy day in Chapel Hill, the bubble burst. Seven Florida fumbles enabled an inferior North Carolina team to beat the Gators 22-7. By the time the Georgia game rolled around, the Gators were a wounded 4-2-1 and spiraling downward.
There was a quarterback controversy that split the team right down the middle. Half the team supported Jackie Eckdahl, the other half Larry Rentz. Defensive players thought they were doing their part so they were angered by the Eckdahl-Rentz controversy. The Gators were the poster child for dysfunction.
Days before the game, Florida offensive genius and playcaller Fred Pancoast underwent an emergency appendectomy. Believing the Gators needed to be shaken by their lapels, Ray Graves swapped coordinators. He assigned Gene Ellenson from defense to offense and Ed Kensler went to the defense. Things went from bad to worse.
In Jacksonville, the Florida-Georgia game was played on a cold, rainy, chill you to the bone day. If you were there, you will never forget just how miserable it was. It was 42-0 at the half, 48-0 with seconds remaining in the game. It was 42-0 and over by halftime. In the closing minute with Georgia leading 48-0 and threatening to score, Vince Dooley called time out and sent in a lineman who hadn’t kicked since high school to kick a field goal to humiliate the Gators.
Final score, Georgia 51, Florida 0. As he did every Saturday evening after a Florida game, Steve Spurrier, Florida’s former Heisman Trophy winner and John Brodie’s backup with the San Francisco 49ers, called Coach Ellenson. Hearing what happened, Spurrier seethed. He has a very long memory. Running up the score against Georgia during the 12 years he was the Florida coach was always one of Spurrier’s goals. He never saw a reason to hold back against Georgia, which is why he took particular delight in hanging 52 on the Bulldogs in Athens in 1995.
REASON NO. 3: The 1984 Florida team won the Southeastern Conference championship on the field. In Florida’s march to the title was a 27-0 skunking of Georgia, Florida’s first win over the Bulldogs since 1977. The Gators had been slapped with NCAA probation that would keep UF off television for two years with a reduction of scholarships to 12 each year. Crippling sanctions. In February the SEC affirmed Florida’s championship despite the sanctions. In May, a group led by Georgia tried to strip Florida of the title, but the SEC Executive Committee said Florida had been punished enough by the NCAA. At the SEC Spring Meetings, Vince Dooley and Georgia led the charge to strip Florida of the tile and vacate the championship. It was a 6-4 vote. Florida, Ole Miss, Auburn and Mississippi State voted for UF to keep the championship.
The same group voted to make Florida ineligible for the 1985 SEC title. Florida had the best record in the league (9-1-1) and tied for the SEC with a 5-1 record.
REASON NO. 4: Galen Hall was unceremoniously fired as Florida’s head coach after a 16-13 win over LSU in October. The crime was Galen Hall allegedly paying for a month of child support for Jarvis Williams. Hall denied he ever paid and the NCAA never provided proof that he did. The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, gave the Gators a one-year probation for being a repeat offender.
Steve Spurrier succeeded Hall as the coach, but he was informed the SEC presidents and athletic directors had voted to make the Gators ineligible to win the championship in 1990. Florida finished with the best record at 9-2 which included a 38-7 win over Georgia, but to no avail. Georgia, to no one’s surprise, had led the charge when it came to voting the Gators ineligible.
REASON NO. 5: When Knowshon Moreno scored a touchdown in the first quarter for a 7-0 Georgia lead in 2007, the entire Georgia bench stormed the field. Georgia players taunted the Gators and tried to start the kind of melee that would have offset the 15-year unsportsmanlike conduct penalty assessed the Bulldogs. The Gators didn’t bite, but anyone who was there could see how much restraint was needed. Georgia went on to win the game 42-30.
Storming the field didn’t cost Florida a win, but it was a classless move, followed by Mark Richt’s classless lie post game that he watched from the sideline, surprised like everyone else. Not a single Georgia coach tried to keep the Bulldogs from storming the field. They knew because they had rehearsed. It wasn’t spontaneous as Richt lied.
During the summer at SEC Media Days, Richt compounded matters with another lie that he was shocked that his team had stormed the field. His nose grew.
There is a happy ending to this one. Starting with Brandon Spikes decleating of Moreno on the game’s second play, the Gators dominated and humiliated Georgia in 2008, 49-10. With 43 seconds to go and Florida on its way to a righteous win, Urban Meyer called a timeout. Richt was seen on national TV staring down the scoreboard. With 30 seconds left, Meyer did it again and again Richt was seen by a national audience staring down the scoreboard.
Revenge, yes. An end to despising Georgia? Absolutely not.
Maybe I should be more forgiving of Georgia, but I see no reason to, not now, not ever. I have this recurring dream. The Gators score with 20 seconds left to make it 46-0 and go for two. The Gators kick onside and recover. The Gators throw deep down the middle and it’s caught at the Georgia 38. Florida calls time out. Three seconds left. Out goes the field goal unit for a 55-yarder and it splits the uprights.
FLORIDA 51, Georgia 0.
