Why I despise the Georgia Bulldogs and why you should too

Archive photo: A Florida quarterback prepares to throw as a Georgia defender closes during the Nov. 2, 2024 rivalry game in Jacksonville. Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media.

For the most part, this is a repeat of my yearly ritual of pointing out my intense dislike for the Georgia Bulldogs. Not just the Georgia football team, mind you, but the entire athletic program from top to bottom.

Some people tell me that to despise something as much as I despise the Georgia Bulldogs isn't healthy, but I'm 75 years old and I've been carrying this for decades. It hasn't killed me yet. A pastor friend of mine has told me I must forgive Georgia for their transgressions, both real and perceived. Forgive? That's Biblical. I can do that. Forget? Not as long as I have a breath to breathe and a functioning brain.

So here goes my annual reminder to all Gator fans that there should be a part of your heart and mind reserved for a never-ending, passionate loathing of the Georgia Bulldogs.

Several times each year well-intentioned people inform me that while I am a Gator, I must cheer for the other 15 teams in the Southeastern Conference whenever they play a non-SEC opponent, no matter the sport, but especially football. How about 14 out of 15 I usually reply, followed by this statement: There is only one reason and one reason only to ever cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs and that is if Georgia winning helps the Florida Gators win a championship. Let's say the Gators need a win and an LSU loss to win the SEC championship and LSU is playing Georgia. In that instance, I will lower myself to cheer grudgingly for Georgia.

But I feel dirty doing it.

In the past I have written that during the War of Northern Aggression, General William Tecumseh Sherman made one serious mistake when he began his march to the sea. It would have taken only a couple days march and his army would have been in Athens where they could have burned down the University of Georgia campus and then salted the earth so that nothing could grow there for more than 100 years.

Have you ever wondered why people who call themselves well educated – graduates of what many call the Redneck Cultural Center of North Georgia – call their team the DAWGS? Maybe if UGa grads could spell the school might be a member of the prestigious American Association of Universities. Florida is a longstanding member and is now considered one of the Public Ivies. Our grads know how to spell.

Perhaps you think the Florida-Georgia game is only one day of the year and that it's cute when they call themselves the Dawgs, but allow me this refresher course on why it is important the other 364 days to have the white hot intensity of 10,000 suns when it comes to passionate contempt for Georgia.

1. THE 1942 GAME

I wasn't even an idea in 1942 when my father was a 17-year-old second semester freshman on the University of Florida campus, biding his time until he was 18 so he could enlist in the Navy. The Gators were expected to field a fine football team in 1942, but most of the able-bodied football players enlisted and the team was decimated. The 1941 Gators had finished 4-6 beating Miami and Georgia Tech before losing by three to UCLA, a game played two weeks after Pearl Harbor. Hope of an outstanding 1942 team was lost when most of the players expected to return enlisted in the military, leaving Tom Lieb with a team made up mostly of players either too young to enlist or unable to pass the military physical.

Coach Thomas Lieb's 1942 Gators were a shell of the team that was envisioned prior to Pearl Harbor. The Gators were a team made up mostly of players either too young to enlist or ones who couldn't pass the military physical. Meanwhile up at Georgia, Wally Butts assembled a dream team. Georgia had one of the best ROTC programs in the country and had been selected for a Navy Pre-Flight program. As players from around the country poured into Athens for Pre-Flight and ROTC, Georgia's already strong roster became stacked. The roster included "Flatfoot" Frankie Sinkwich, who would win the Heisman Trophy; Charlie Trippi, who would win MVP of the Rose Bowl and probably should have won the Heisman in 1946 when he came back from military service; All-American end George Poschner, who would win the Distinguished Service Cross at the Battle of the Bulge; and Gene Ellenson, a great defensive lineman who would have two Silver Stars pinned on him by General George S. Patton for heroism at The Battle of the Bulge. Yes, the same Gene Ellenson who would later become the defensive coordinator at the University of Florida and should have been the successor to Ray Graves, but that is another story for another time.

When the Gators limped into Jacksonville's Fairfield Stadium, the Gators had lost three straight games. Georgia, meanwhile, was 7-0 and fresh off a 21-10 win over third-ranked Alabama. For all practical purposes, the game was over almost before it began, but Wally Butts wouldn't sub in his second and third-teamers, leaving his starters in the game until it was almost over. Final score, Georgia 75, Florida 0. Georgia won the national championship by beating UCLA in the Rose Bowl.

My dad and other Gators I talked to who were part of that greatest generation that went on to serve our nation and win a war in Europe and the Pacific, never forgot how Wally Butts chose to humiliate the Gators when it was obvious UF could offer little to no resistance. Every single one of them was bitter and the mention of Wally Butts made their blood boil.

2. THE 1968 GAME

Florida was picked in the preseason to win the SEC for the first time, finish top five nationally and challenge for the national championship. Four straight wins and a No. 7 national ranking into the season, the Gators met up with the elements in Chapel Hill where they fumbled seven times in the mud and lost to North Carolina. The bottom fell out with a tie at Vanderbilt and a Homecoming loss to Auburn. The Gators were 4-2-1 when they arrived in Jacksonville. Georgia, meanwhile, was 5-0-2, ranked 9th and closing in on Vince Dooley's second SEC championship.

Beginning with the loss to Carolina, Florida was a team with issues that included a quarterback controversy that divided the offense almost straight down the middle. Half wanted Larry Rentz while the other half wanted Jackie Eckdahl. Defensive players on the other side of the locker room were resentful that their teammates were selfish enough to split loyalties.

As if things weren't bad enough, play caller and offensive backfield coach Fred Pancoast was hospitalized for an appendectomy a few days prior to the game in Jacksonville. Feeling the need to shake up the team Ray Graves decided to swap coordinators – Ed Kensler became the defensive coordinator and Gene Ellenson became the offensive coordinator.

The only thing shaken was the team's confidence and it showed on that miserably cold, rainy day at the Gator Bowl. I was working for the Gainesville Sun at that time but press box space at the old Gator Bowl was limited. My boss, Joe Halberstein, got me a ticket to watch from the stands where there was no relief from the weather. By the second quarter, I was soaked to the core and I was freezing. Since I was riding with other Sun staffers, I had to stay to the bitter end asking myself if this was what hypothermia was all about.

It was seek and destroy for Georgia. Mike Cavan quarterbacked Georgia to a 41-0 lead at the half and the defense led by future College Football Hall of Famers Bill Stanfill and Jake Scott, made the Gators pay on nearly every play. The Gators didn't cross midfield until the third quarter.

In the final minute of the game with the score 48-0, Georgia faced a fourth down when one of the players on the team approached Dooley and told him he hadn't kicked a field goal since high school. Rather than take a knee to end the game, Dooley called time and sent the player in to kick the field goal to humiliate Florida 51-0.

As was his habit on Saturdays upon seeing the Florida football score, San Francisco 49ers backup QB Steve Spurrier called Ellenson to talk about the game. If you've ever wondered why Spurrier was obsessed with running up the score on Georgia whenever he had the chance, the conversation he had with Coach Ellenson is one of the main reasons. Remember when Spurrier ran it up in Athens in 1995 by calling a reverse at the goal line for the TD that gave the Gators the finishing touches on a 52-17 beatdown? Do you remember Eric Kresser throwing a pair of touchdown passes in the fourth quarter when Georgia was already slapped silly? Remember Spurrier saying he wanted to be the first coach to hang "half a hundred" on Georgia in Sanford Stadium? 1968 had plenty to do with that. Coach Ellenson wasn't alive for Spurrier to call with congratulations but a call was made to Coach Graves to say "this one's for you."

3. THE PROBATION YEARS

Okay, we'll start with the obvious. Florida got nailed by the NCAA not just once, but twice. The first time, the Gators were hit with 109 violations, some of them as heinous as Dale Dorminey going back to Pensacola with a T-shirt and Hoss Adams buying him a pack of Juicy Fruit and a Sprite while waiting on the plane at the Gainesville airport. Hanging offenses! Some violations were pretty bad, but the majority were of the nickel and dime variety and for that Charley Pell was fired and the SEC championship the 1984 Gators won on the field was forfeited. The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, gave the Gators two years probation without television and a maximum of 12 in consecutive recruiting classes. At the same time, Florida State, Tennessee, Auburn and Georgia all got slaps on the wrist for their NCAA violations. The NCAA was well aware that Georgia had bent or broken every rule in the book to sign Herschel Walker, but that was overlooked and Georgia lost two scholarships, a small price to pay for one of the two or three greatest college football players of all time. When all this went down, Vince Dooley was chairman of the NCAA television committee. Coincidence that Georgia got off so lightly?

Georgia fans insist Vince Dooley was a man of the highest possible integrity, which doesn't exactly explain how it is that Georgia went on football probation three times (1965, 1978, 1982) while he was the coach and again in 1997 while he was the AD. He's the guy who hired Hugh Durham and Jim Harrick, who both put Georgia basketball in the NCAA jailhouse.

Dooley is also the same guy who allowed serious academic fraud scandal to go on right under his nose. Google Jan Kemp sometime. She was fired as Georgia's academic advisor because she wouldn't give athletes passing grades. She sued and won a $1.08 million settlement, an impressive amount in the 1990s.

Dooley was also front and center in the vote to strip the Gators of the 1984 SEC title. By the way, in 1984 the Gators skunked Georgia 27-0.

Years ago, I did a magazine article with College Football Hall of Famer and Gator great Wilber Marshall. When we got around to the subject of recruiting Wilber said, "I went to Florida because it was close to home and I'm a mama's boy. I didn't go there because they paid me to go but other schools made offers – some big offers – some of the same teams that voted to strip the SEC championship from us in 1984. You would go on recruiting trips and some fat cat booster would let you know what you could expect. That was pretty common then."

I asked if Georgia was complicit. Wilber laughed rather sarcastically.

The second probation resulted in the NCAA putting Spurrier's first Florida team on probation, so no bowl game. The SEC athletic directors, lobbied very hard by Vince Dooley, voted to make Florida ineligible for the SEC championship even though the Gators had the best record in the league. All that for something that happened in the Galen Hall years. Not a single player on that 1990 Florida roster was even on the team when Hall allegedly paid the child support for Jarvis Williams. Galen denied he did it but people in Palatka swear the cash was paid back the next morning by Jarvis Williams' mother. None of that was ever substantiated and the NCAA never volunteered proof that it actually happened.

For that alleged crime, Galen was fired during the 1989 season. Florida AD Bill Arnsparger refused to fight the allegations but was very quick to fire Galen. Arnsparger saw this as the perfect opportunity to hire Mike Archer, who had succeeded him as the HBC at LSU. He would have done it if not for powerful Florida boosters like Ben Hill Griffin, who put him in his place.

Punishment should always fit the crime. It could be argued that what Florida did in 1984 deserved time in the NCAA jailhouse, but if that's the case, why was Florida's punishment so tough and the punishment to FSU (a couple of scholarships lost), Tennessee (something similar) and Georgia nothing more than a pop on the fanny and the NCAA saying "be good boys and don't do this again"?

Why also was it so important for Vince Dooley to go to the mat to have the Gators stripped of the 1984 SEC title and then prevent the 1990 team from winning it? Mr. Integrity got slapped with NCAA violations back in 1966 and 1968. His SEC titles were never stripped. After all, this is the same Vince Dooley whose history of cheating dated back to 1965.

THE 2007 STORM THE FIELD INCIDENT

Immediately following a 1-yard run by Knowshon Moreno that gave Georgia the lead with six minutes to go in the first quarter, some 70 Georgia players left the bench and stormed the field, taunting the Gators and doing their best to draw a reaction that would have resulted in offsetting penalties. To their credit, the Gators did not retaliate but that incident changed the entire tenor of the game, which Georgia eventually won, 42-30.

In the aftermath, Mark Richt claimed complete surprise and innocence. If so, then why didn't he or even one of his assistant coaches try to stop the players, knowing it would force Georgia to kick off from the 20? It was all planned in advance despite Richt's denials.

At SEC Media Days in Birmingham in the summer of 2008, Richt offered the same lame excuse. He was lying. I wrote that his nose had grown, which set off a firestorm on radio row. When I was a guest on Rachel Barribeau's show out of Columbus, I understand the Georgia supporters blew out the switchboard.

Meyer showed Georgia storming the field on a constant reel in the Florida locker room for an entire year. When Georgia took the ball first in 2008, a Matt Stafford to Moreno pass lost three yards on the first play. On second down, Moreno had a close encounter with Mr. Spikes, who decleated him. Florida played like its hair was on fire. In the fourth quarter after Georgia had finally scored a TD, Chris Rainey took the kickoff and stood in place wiggling his hips before taking off. He was mocking Georgia. With 44 seconds remaining and Florida ahead 49-10, Meyer called a time out. He called another one after the next play. Both times the CBS cameras caught Richt looking up at the scoreboard.

It was payback for a low level stunt and it was righteous.

THE 21-YEAR REVERSAL OF FORTUNE AND THE 15 YEARS SINCE

Spurrier changed everything and tilted the rivalry advantages strongly in Florida's favor. The Head Ball Coach understood the hypocrisy and he knew the history. That has everything to do with why he took such delight in sticking it to Georgia (11 wins in 12 years; average margin of victory 23.36 points) every chance he got. Ron Zook beat Georgia two-out-of-three and might have made it three-for-three if he hadn't been fired the Monday prior to the 2004 Georgia game. He still almost won that one. As a Spurrier assistant for five years (1991-95) Zook was well versed in what beating Georgia meant and why it was so important. Urban Meyer wasn't around for the Spurrier years but he understood it too. He beat Georgia five times in six seasons. He knew all about the recruiting advantages for beating Georgia and he had been well versed in the history of the rivalry.

In the years since Urban Meyer left Florida in 2010, the Florida-Georgia rivalry has tilted heavily in Georgia's favor. Florida has won only four times, the last one in 2020. Georgia has won the last five and is an 11.5-point favorite to beat the Gators this year when the game is being played in Atlanta due to stadium renovations in Jacksonville.

Since Meyer resigned after the 2010 season, the Gators are now on their fifth head coach. One reason Georgia is on such a roll is because it has had only two football coaches since 2001 – Mark Richt (2001-15) and Kirby Smart since 2016. Continuity and good coaches have given Georgia a huge advantage that first year Florida coach Jon Sumrall will have to chip away.

Sumrall respects what Georgia has done, particularly the last 11 years when Smart has won four SEC and two national championships. While respecting that Georgia's success can't be undone, he pals around with Spurrier and Meyer. Bet all that is sacred that the two of them have filled him in on all the details.

If Georgia doesn't make him seethe already, it won't take long for Jon Sumrall to fully understand it is dutiful for Florida football coaches to revile the Georgia Bulldogs. If he doesn't already, he will learn to despise them.

It is the duty of every single Gator.