BUDDY MARTIN: The Truth About Florida-Georgia. And Why It’s A Terrible Mistake To Move The Game.

"They’ve been playing this game for a century, almost always in Jax, but its future location is in question because they’ve invented a reason to move it – primarily because they can."

Go ahead, put the game in Athens and Gainesville because you need to cater to the group of 17-year-olds who may or may not choose to play for the Bulldogs or Gators and, by the way, may change their minds and hit the transfer portal 15 minutes later if another school will make them a better NIL deal for blue jeans and hamburgers.

Florida-Georgia in Jacksonville is coming to an end after 2023 either way, I’m pretty sure. Because “they” say it’s better if they rip this event off the calendar, despite the thousands who have celebrated the weeklong jubilee up and down the Southeast Georgia and Northeast Florida coast since Roosevelt was president, and then some.

Riddle me this: Who the hell is “they” and why don’t the fans have a voice in college football anymore? Who, in fact, owns the game? Is it the NCAA who keeps winking at corruption while raking in millions as the de facto operators of college basketball’s cash bar? Is it the college football committee whose inability to reach a consensus on an expanded playoff is leaving hundreds of millions on the table?

They’ve been playing this game for a century, almost always in Jax, but its future location is in question because they’ve invented a reason to move it – primarily because they can.

It’s being driven by Kirby Smart and the Georgia illiterati who perhaps have forgotten what happened the last time they invited the Gators to Athens when they got smoked. That 1995 contest is known as “The Half A Hundred” game, thanks to Bulldogs slayer Steve Spurrier, who has 11 Dawg skins on his wall for his happy hunting years 1990-2001. Danny Wuerffel led Florida to a 52-17 win with help from backup Eric Kresser and Spurrier’s team pillaged Sanford Stadium.

Maybe they don’t want to hang out that “Welcome Gators” sign anymore?

Oddly enough, when Spurrier came to Gainesville in 1990, his brain trusts argued that the game should be moved out of Jacksonville and become a home-and-home series because of Georgia’s recent dominance. In his infinite wisdom, Spurrier calculated the odds were in his favor because the game was on Florida soil, his team could bus to Jacksonville and the Dawgs would come by airplane -- and the name of the place they played back then was “The Gator Bowl.”

Clearly, though, sentiment doesn’t count. And I’m not even sure if cash will be the deciding factor, because each school is already making more than $3 million per game and that will increase with the CFB contract after ’23.

So as we sit here likely counting down the days before the demise of Fla-Ga-Jax, all we will be left with are the echoes, the memories and the glorious camaraderie we’ve enjoyed in our jubilee days.

After home-and-home kicks in, that means only about 5,000 visiting fans will be allowed to see the game in person – no more stark contrasting of 40,000 orange and blue on one side and 40,000 red and black on the other.

There is something sociologically gratifying about a Border War contest whose participants are living among each other, interacting with respect and appreciation for each side’s loyalty, making it as much about human decency and fraternization as about sport.

Anthony Richardson had a rough start in Florida-Georgia, 2021. (Chris Spears Photo)

I will miss the reconnection with our great friends, the Watsons, neutral Auburn folks who have hosted us for several decades, especially remembering the times we party-hopped house-to-house along Ponte Vedra Boulevard – sometimes with Gators, sometimes with Bulldogs. Yes, it is possible to co-mingle with The Enemy and enjoy wonderful Southern hospitality. Full disclosure here, as many of you already know – I grew up a Gator fan and Florida-trained journalist who prides himself on story telling, hopefully without hardcore bias leaking through. I will admit to you that the few years out of the sports writing business I watched Florida-Georgia on TV with my infant son Brenden, who already at age 18 months was running up and down the sofa, yelling in baby talk, “Gooooo Gators! NOT YOU GEORGIA!"

Nearly a half century later, at 6-foot-3, Brenden is my business partner and president of GatorBait, who probably still whispers those words.

For many years I would meet Ed, my best friend from Ocala who resides in Atlanta and sometimes poached a place to sleep. Ed is a Lifetime Gator fan whose son Edward graduated from Georgia. When Edward starting coming down for the game we agreed that neither side would gloat — lucky for him because the Gators were on a 7-0 run under the HBC. But it stayed civil. Not everybody from Georgia agrees with moving the game. I know my media colleague and longtime friend Tony Barnhart, formerly of CBS and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, doesn’t want to break up his foursome of college fraternity pals who meet annually to break bread, imbibe, swap lies and tee it up – “and maybe not even go to the game.” Tony is a longtime Bulldog advocate who was able to balance a hugely successful broadcast-writer career with objective reporting, despite bleeding red and black blood. They’re holed up in Darien, Georgia this week, anticipating the outcome in their favor as 22-point favorites, but, also espousing the concern “we know what kind of strange things can happen in Jacksonville.” One story Tony shared this week was his memory of the famous 1980 “Run Lindsay” game. He wasn’t in Jax but was working for a small North Carolina paper covering a game in Tallahassee, watching Fla-Ga on TV. When Scott took the pass from Belue in for the score, Barnhart leapt up so fast that he knocked over his motel room lamp and broke it. The next morning he fessed up to the motel owner of the Econo Lodge.

“Were you rooting for Georgia or Florida?" asked the owner.

“Georgia,” said Tony.

“No charge! Around here, anybody who roots against the Gators is an ally.”

Loyalty runs deep and sometimes pays dividends. I hope the people trying to move this game out of Jacksonville will look up the word “loyalty” in their dictionaries.