Putting the \"F\" Back in Florida

This is a little ditty I wrote last year leading up to the Cocktail Party. I've altered it some to reflect last year's game and to preview this year's. I hope you enjoy it. I know my week's better for having revisited and rewritten it. The new bits are in bold red text.

Every year, the same thing.

See, here's the deal. I grew up in the 1990s, at least the part of me that's conscious of what goes on around me. Born in '79, I don't remember the National Championship year or any game featuring Herschel Walker. The first time I ever saw Herschel play it was on television, and it was for the Philadelphia Eagles. The first Georgia game I remember seeing was a victory over Mississippi State in the early '90s, and the first head coach I remember was Ray Goff. I remember distinctly sitting around my grandparents' dining room table in Athens listening to my father and my uncle and my grandfather all say the same thing: Goff should bench Preston Jones for this new what's-his-name kid, Eric Zeier, but that he'd never do it because UGA didn't start freshmen at quarterback, period.

I say all of that to say this: I don't remember beating Florida. In the '70s and '80s, we owned Florida. We broke their hearts every year, stealing SEC
title
s from them when they were in contention, beating them like a rented mule when they were bad. Those two decades are the reason why the series is so bloody lopsided in our favor, and perhaps the fact that I missed all of that made my childhood a little easier. All I ever knew was Florida beating us year in and year out.

I had three real best friends growing up. One didn't pay attention to sports; his asthma and Nintendo addiction kept him inside. One was a die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan; even in games of pick-up basketball he claimed to be Randall Cunningham. The third lived down the street from me. The bus stop was in his driveway.

He was a Florida fan.

His parents met at Florida. His whole life, he set a goal to go to Florida. And throughout the cold Fall and Winter (when we still had those in North Carolina), I had to stand out there, on his driveway, staring at his oversized down-stuffed Florida jacket, and listen to him say, \"It doesn't matter how good Georgia is this year. We're going to beat you. Florida is the greatest ever.\" My only response, being woefully undereloquent in the ways of sports at the time, was merely, \"F Florida!\"

He and I had fallen out of touch by the time the 1997 game rolled around, but the first thing I wanted to do after we won that game was to call him up and taunt him the way he had taunted me. I didn't watch that game, though; school and girls and being angsty kept me away from watching sports at all.

We flash forward. Five years later, and we had returned to form, losing four straight to the Gators. All of a sudden, a couple of heart-stopping victories over Clemson and South Carolina and Tennessee behind us, we were 8-0 going into Jacksonville and ranked the highest we'd been at this point in the season since the Dooley years. No one wanted to jinx it, but there were talks, more like vague mumbles, really, of our first SEC
title
since 1982. There were even lower rumblings about a national championship. This team had no Herschel, but many said that it was a better all-around team than the 1980 Dawgs, certainly the most talented since that magical three-year period. So what do we do? We go down to Jacksonville and we...fail to convert a single third down all day! It was over. The dream was over. As if to prove that old cliche, I didn't sleep a wink that night, and barely slept the next. F Florida!

The next year I'm up in Niagara Falls with my beautiful wife, celebrating our second anniversary. I have no idea where we found the money to do that; I was in grad school at Georgia and she was making less than twenty grand a year. At any rate she allowed me to stay in and watch the Cocktail Party on TV and, convinced that this year was the year, I glued myself to the television.

I still remember that little dink of a screen pass David Greene threw to Tyson Browning that ended the game. We were BETTER than Florida all day long, but we couldn't score. My wife and I went out and walked in the snow that had begun to fall on the New York/Ontario border, but I couldn't talk to her. I could only talk to those green idiots down south: \"F you, Florida!\"

I'm the type of person who, when something goes right for Georgia on the field, gets up out of my traditional overstuffed football-watching chair and screams at the television. 2004 was no different, and, like the year before, we were better than Florida all day long. The only difference was that we were scoring, and in big bunches. But we let Florida get back into the thing in the second half, and knowing that game I was afraid until the end that we would lose. Given everything I've described above, you'll forgive me if, as the offensive line circled around the backfield so that David Greene could take a knee, my own knees buckled under me and I fell to the floor in tears. My wife, nine months pregnant with our first child, ran into the room, asking me what was wrong. \"We're going to win the game,\" I said. \"We're going to win the F'ing game.\"

After the 2007 game I was gloaty. We had been on a two-game losing streak to the Gators, sure, and we really should have beaten them in 2005 (that game, more than any other, made me realize that it was time for Mark Richt to stop calling plays. I mean, come on...you're running Joe Tereshinski out of the shotgun? It was like CMR didn't even know that D.J. wasn't playing!), but I was cocky. I knew we were going to beat Florida, and then we just embarrassed them all day long. It was really no contest, and the only time I was really afraid was when Wandy Pierre-Louis returned that Stafford INT for a touchdown. After that, it was smooth sailing. I strutted around, happily proclaiming that we had beaten Florida, knowing that great things were coming, having been formally introduced to a young man named Knowshon. So it surprised me more than anybody when, as I was online listening to the post-game show and ordering my victory shirt, I suddenly broke down crying. What's this? This was no end to a seven-game drought. This wasn't the 2004 senior class finally living up to its promise. This was basic stuff; beating a rival two out of four years. That's why it's a rivalry, because both programs RIVAL each other in talent, right? So why was I so emotional? My God, what had Florida done to me?

The 2008 game was more important and had more implications tied to it -- for both teams -- than any Georgia-Florida game ever played. The only one that comes close is 1980, when Florida was in real SEC
title
contention. Florida was already out of it in 2007, having already lost to Auburn and LSU. In 2004 our loss to a good Tennessee team had taken us out of SEC
title
contention, as our loss to LSU had in 2003. The 2005 Florida team had already lost to Auburn and LSU and had a new coach. In 1997 both teams had already lost to Tennessee.

Last year, it was for the East. The remainder of each team's SEC schedule (Kentucky and Auburn for us, Vandy and SCarolina for Florida) was smooth sailing for both teams. The winner would likely have finished the year with one loss and played Alabama for the SEC
title
. The Eastern team that won that game would have a very strong argument for playing in Miami come January 8th. Both teams were in the top ten of the human polls and of the BCS for the first time ever. And then, with 16 players out for the season and two more out for the game, Georgia went to Jacksonville, missed field goals, failed to score a touchdown until the fourth quarter, and was utterly embarrassed. All that week I was excited about the game; that morning I woke up knowing it was going to be a blowout.

Now we're gearing up for yet another Cocktail Party, regardless of what the UGA and UF administrations think the game should be called. This year, we're a bad team. Let's not mince words. We play poor football. Florida has the longest undefeated streak in the nation, at 17 games. They have a Heisman winner at quarterback and a coach who's lost less than 15 games over the span of his entire career, at three separate schools. They have a defense that rivals their 2006 squad, which stifled teams on the way to the national title. We have a quarterback who's thrown 12 interceptions, three of which have been returned for touchdowns. We have a porous defense who's giving up an average of 27 points per game. We have so many penalties it's unbearable, and we have a directional kicking game that routinely starts opponents' drives inside our 35. Earlier this week, I proclaimed that the best possible outcome of this game would be 23-20 Florida, a close loss that made Tebow look bad, without a rushing touchdown. I made the statement that it was impossible for Georgia to win.

...and yet...

Today I am wired beyond belief. It is the true beginning of Hate Week today, as I know that classes are out. Where I live, for some reason, school is out today and Friday as we lead up to Halloween. Georgia has had the bye, and both its offense and its defense have shown flashes of brilliance (witness the Arkansas game for the former and the LSU and Vanderbilt games for the latter). Reports have come out of Athens saying that Georgia has \"changed things up\" in anticipation of the Cocktail Party. Florida has struggled recently, needing a fourth-quarter spurt to beat Mississippi State and a 12th man on the field named Marc Curles to beat Arkansas. Tim Tebow has not fully recovered from his concussion. Florida's defense is dinged up, and there are concerns that Brandon Spikes is coming back too early, just to beat Georgia.

...and yet...

Georgia has failed to beat a defending national champion in the regular season just once (in 1999, at Tennessee) since 1982.

...and yet...

In every year that we've beaten Florida since Steve Spurrier became coach, we came into that game with a loss to Tennessee.

...and yet...

The Bulldogs play with absolutely nothing to lose.

Call me crazy. Go ahead and do it. It's what the mirror is doing right now, anyway. You won't be alone. Because today I'm watching \"Rivalries: The Tradition of Georgia vs. Florida,\" and every time they recount a Georgia victory I cheer and laugh and recite stats for that game back at the screen, and every time Florida wins I scream expletives, many of which begin with or contain an \"F,\" and I have tantalizing flash-forward fantasies of dancing in the endzone come Saturday.

And all week long, the way some people say \"How do you do?\" and some people say \"What's up?\", I'll be walking around my little life, saying \"F Florida!\"

dapolla, enjoyed reading the entire post again. I enjoyed it last year and just as much this year. You are so right again saying that the Dawgs have nothing to lose this year, and I hope the team does some things differently that make me stand in front of the TV and use some language.

dapolla this is a great post and expresses so much of what us dawg fans feel about the reptiles. Growing up in S. GA and close to Gatorland I experienced so many of the same things and emotions. I was thinking about this post from last year when the week started and the Cocktail Party once again becomes the focus of my week. Thanks for sharing it again!

Nice read Dapolla.
You really never know in these games. I for one do not think it will be a blow-out by any means

Also, you know my job here is to correct your inacurate information regarding the Gators.

You stated, \"The 2005 Florida team had already lost to Auburn and LSU and had a new coach. In 1997 both teams had already lost to Tennessee.\"

In fact, in 2005 the Gators lost to ALABAMA and LSU and in 1997 it was LSU that beat us, not Tennessee. Manning was still at UT in 1997 and he NEVER beat the Gators.

Good read,as a new dawgs.com member it is good to see fans as crazy as me. Believe, Be Proud, and Go Dawgs. My early years were spent in Fla.and I hated Spurrier all way through his and my college days. He is gone but I am still a gator hater. Play proud you hairy dawgs.

dapolla.....loved it last year....loved it this year, thanks. Should be our forum's yearly ritual post for UF/UGA week.




All in favor?