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Gators - Dawgs Football Rivalry

Discussion in 'Sports Board' started by Gator Bill, Oct 22, 2012.

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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Biggest outdoor cocktail party takes place in Jacksonville Florida this Sat. Oct. 27. Florida trails the series 47-40-2 by the Gators count and 48-40-2 by Georgia's count. The one game was in Macon Georgia before the University of Florida was officially founded in Gainesville and started to field a football game. The first game by Gator records was in 1915.

Georgia dominated the early years of the games, but by 1950 the field was more level and the Gators have had a winning record since and have been 18-4 since 1990 when Spurrier arrived and Florida football took off.

I started at UF in 1955 and I guess my presence in the stands was an inspiration as the Gators won 8/9.

The the "Okefenokee Oar" is the annual trophy that most of our Gator Fans don't even know about but looks pretty neat.

Wikipidia

Florida Georgia Football Rivalry

Gator Bill, Oct 22, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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I had something happen here that I've never seen before. I am using Safari and have been for awhile. But I could not get this post to put the link on Safari. I copied it exactly and tried Firefox and it worked.

I don't think I will ever totally understand computers.

Gator Bill, Oct 22, 2012

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Motorcity Gator Well-Known Member

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I saw a post on Gatorsports that copied a link to the Atlanta Journal Constitution fan forum and about 90% of the Ga fans posting think they will get killed on Sat.

I don't think we will see a repeat of UF's explosion last week but a 10 point win wouldn't surprise me.

One thing I noticed when viewing Ga-Ky Sat. night was that Georgia did not seem to bring that physical quality that has been making UF tick this year.

Motorcity Gator, Oct 22, 2012

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Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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Is Georgia still lobbying for it to go to a Home/Home. I remember when Tailback was posting here he always thought it was an unfair advantage for UGA to have to go to Fla every year to play the Gators.

Terry O'Keefe, Oct 22, 2012

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gipper Well-Known Member

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It's just like OK-Tex isn't it? Don't hear the Sooners crying about having to gut the Horns in Dallas ever year.

gipper, Oct 22, 2012

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Motorcity Gator Well-Known Member

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It is just like OU-Tex in that the stadium is 50/50 in seats and honestly UGA has a pretty good following anyway in Jax.....much to my chagrin.

Motorcity Gator, Oct 22, 2012

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IrishCorey Well-Known Member

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Gators big here... and by big, I mean they get 200 total yards but beat UGa by 4tds

IrishCorey, Oct 22, 2012

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Motorcity Gator Well-Known Member

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I think you could be right Corey and if UF does give Ga a beatdown then they are obviously on some kind of an unusual run and I will say the sky's the limit for this team.... even the Tide.

We'll see how they do.....

Motorcity Gator, Oct 23, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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More about the game.

on Saturday afternoon in Jacksonville. For the third time in four weeks, UF will kick off at 3:30 p.m. with a national telecast on CBS.

The Gators will be facing their fourth ranked opponent of the season having already won at Tennessee and defeated LSU and South Carolina in the Swamp.

UF has outscored opponents by a 184-71 margin in SEC play, including 57-8 in the 3rd quarter and 51-13 in the 4th quarter.

Florida and Notre Dame are the only schools in the country with three wins over ranked opponents. The Gators are the only team with two top-10 wins this season.
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Countdown to Kickoff

Gator Bill, Oct 23, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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Pressure is on Richt and I am not sure I like this.

I think he is a good, but not great, coach.

The surest sign that Mark Richt is miffed: He cites numbers. He did it back in 2006, when Georgia was 5-0 but coming off shaky victories over Colorado and Ole Miss. (Those Bulldogs would lose four of their next five games, FYI.) He did it at the end of the 2008 season, which began with Georgia ranked No. 1 but wound down with Richt trying to make 10-3 sound like a major achievement. He did it again Saturday night.

Responding to a question (mine, actually) about the possibility that the halting performance against Kentucky had been a function of focusing more on the Florida-South Carolina score than the opponent at hand, he stopped in mid-answer. “Know what?” he said, his voice rising. “I’m happy with the victory. We’re 6-1. That’s not bad.”

Know what? He’s right. Georgia is 6-1, and 6-1 isn’t at all bad. (It’s good enough for 10th place in the BCS standings.) But now comes Florida, and this game will do more than define the Bulldogs’ season — it will shape the remainder of Mark Richt’s tenure at Georgia.

Richt has been in place since January 2001. He has — here we cite numbers for him — taken Georgia to two conference championships and four SEC title games. He has presided over seven 10-or-more-win seasons and seen his team finish in the Associated Press top 10 five times. Twice the Bulldogs under Richt have come close (in 2002 and 2007) to playing for the BCS title.

That said, his greatest successes came early, and not since 2007 — Richt’s seventh season — have the Bulldogs given their fans reason to believe the long-sought national championship is within reach. Thus have significant achievements come to be taken with a grain of salt. Winning the SEC East in 2011 was nice, but how nice is a season that features losses to the four best teams on the schedule? Being ranked No. 10 in the BCS is not nothing, but 17 days ago the Bulldogs were ranked No. 5 in the land, and not much good has happened since.
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Pressure is on Mark Richt

Gator Bill, Oct 23, 2012

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Motorcity Gator Well-Known Member

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Thanks Bill....good read and I agree with it.

Motorcity Gator, Oct 23, 2012

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Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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Bill has the UGA/UF game ever been played at night?

Terry O'Keefe, Oct 25, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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Yes Terry on more than on occasion. It is subject to the network choices like any of the other games.

Very possible we have a lot of rain this game. The storm Sandy is off the Florida coast, but hopefully doesn't go any further west.

Gator Bill, Oct 25, 2012

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Motorcity Gator Well-Known Member

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Down here in Ft. Lauderdale the past two days and it is definitely not football weather.

50 to 60 mph wind gusts and heavy rain squalls.

That should favor our running game and hurt Georgia's passing game Iwould think.

Motorcity Gator, Oct 26, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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Ten things to watch for

Some of them

GUNG-HO GATORS

There has been a lot of talk this week about how the Gators might be overconfident after their 33-point win against South Carolina. The pundits say perhaps they will overlook the Bulldogs, who lost 35-7 to the Gamecocks.

That’s very doubtful based on the vibe the coaches and players gave off this week. The Gators are still a young and hungry team and Muschamp has reminded them they haven’t won anything with their 7-0 start. Plus, the Gators remember what happened last year. Florida hasn’t lost two in a row to the Bulldogs since a three-game skid from 1987-89, the pre-Steve Spurrier era.

Seniors such as Jon Bostic don’t want to go out that way. If the Gators lose, it won’t be because they took Georgia too lightly.

“I haven't really looked too much back at that game,’’ Bostic said. “We've been trying to look at film from this year.”

AARON’S AERIAL ATTACK

Georgia starting quarterback Aaron Murray had more incompletions (19) than completions (15) in last year’s game against the Gators, but two of those completions were fourth-down touchdown passes that helped the Bulldogs overcome a 17-3 deficit to knock off the Gators for only the fourth time in 22 tries.

Murray is at it again. He threw for a career-high 427 yards and completed a career-high 30 passes in Georgia’s win over Kentucky. He finished 30 of 38 last week, the 78.9 completion percentage a school record for a quarterback with at least 30 completions.

Murray is tied for third in the SEC in passing (1,914 yards) and has thrown 16 touchdowns and four interceptions. The Gators’ secondary will undoubtedly be tested by the redshirt junior from Tampa’s Plant High, whose 75 career touchdown passes is a Georgia school record.

100 YARDS PASSING

OK, here is my one guarantee for Saturday: Florida will break triple digits in passing yardage. It’s gotta happen sometime.

The Gators have gone three consecutive games without passing for 100 yards and won all three. They haven’t needed quarterback Jeff Driskel to win with his arm. They may not need him to do it this week, but there should be opportunities against a Georgia defense ranked ninth in the SEC overall.

Driskel likely have thrown for 100 yards last week if not for a penalty that negated a 41-yard touchdown pass to Omarius Hines. Georgia is seventh in the SEC in pass defense, allowing 199.6 yards per game passing.
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Ten Things To Watch Gators Dawgs

Gator Bill, Oct 26, 2012

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Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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Wow...Driskell hasn't thrown for 100yds in the last 3 games? That's very surprising. Have you guys just not thrown the ball?

Terry O'Keefe, Oct 26, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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Terry, in the LSU game we started running the ball to start the second half and it worked so we kept on running the ball. At one point 25 plays in a row and we were using as many as 7 offensive lineman blocking.

Against Vandy on three running plays Driskel ran the ball for well over 100 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Last week due to turnovers we scored 3 touchdowns on about 16 yards of offense, all passing. And as you know we had only about 190 yards of offense for the game.

So I would say it is just the way things developed and I would be highly surprised if we don't have more than 100 yards tomorrow. However there could be bad weather and who knows what that does to the game.

Gator Bill, Oct 26, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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More about the Okefenokee Oar, this might catch on. The first I remember hearing about it was in the first article I posted.

Okefenokee Oar

Getting approval for an object to be the “official” trophy of a rivalry game is like going upstream without a paddle.

Fortunately, the Florida-Georgia game has a paddle, a 10-footer called the Okefenokee Oar, but the process still has been a journey.

“It’s a really big paddle, so that’s helping out,” joked Keith Merkel, who handles media relations for the University of Florida-University of Georgia Rivalry Committee.
Merkel sent out a press release to news organizations about two weeks ago in an effort to generate publicity. There also has been a social media push to get it recognized. The hashtag “#WarForTheOar” has gained traction on Twitter and there is even an official Okefenokee Oar page on Facebook.
In the SEC, other rivalries have official trophies such as The Golden Boot (Arkansas-LSU), the Golden Egg (Ole Miss-Mississippi State) and the ODK-Foy Sportsmanship Trophy (Alabama-Auburn). Click here for a link to a list of rivalry trophies.
“We just want to get everyone on board and behind this,” Merkel said. “We’re just trying to promote this and get it into the public’s eye to get everyone more enthusiastic about it and help get it going.”
The fist task is gaining the approval of the athletic associations at both schools to have the Okefenokee Oar recognized as the official trophy for the Gators’ football rivalry against the Bulldogs, which will kickoff at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday at Jacksonville’s EverBank Field.
“We’ve got confirmation last week from the (University Atheletic Association at Florida) that next season we will be able to bring it out on the field to get it recognized it at halftime,” Merkel said. “We’re still trying to figure out how we will be able to present it to the winning team, so that after the game the winner actually takes home the prize.”
That’s been an issue in past seasons. After last year’s 24-20 win by Georgia, it was presented in a makeshift ceremony outside of the stadium.
“That’s been our struggle,” said UF student body president TJ Villamil. “Last season we presented it in an area that was not that highly visible outside of the stadium.
“I think we’re gaining enough attention from not only the administrations, but the athletic association at both schools. Georgia has really bought into it, and I think Florida is following suit.”
Mystery surrounds how the Okefenokee Oar came about. It was anonymously donated to the University of Florida in 2009. It was carved out of a 1,000-year-old cypress tree that grew in the Okefenokee Swamp, which straddles the Florida-Georgia state line. Each side is engraved with logos from each school.
The final scores from the past four Florida-Georgia game have been engraved on the oar, and Merkel said there is enough room for the next 150 years worth of scores to go on there as well.
Since the 1950s, the rivalry was known as the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party,” until alcohol-fueled incidents caused the name to be removed in 2006.
“There was a bit of a lull there for a couple of years where people would call it either the Florida-Georgia game or the Georgia-Florida game, so the student governments at both Georgia and Florida came together and were like, ‘Hey, this is one of the best rivalries in college football, we need a trophy,’” Villamil said.
Georgia’s administration built a case to house the oar in its student union after the Bulldogs’ win last season. Florida’s administration did the same, with the housing department constructing a case that now sits empty on the first floor of the Reitz Union.
“It’s really started to grow in popularity over the past two years … it’s been exciting to watch,” Merkel said.
Rarely does a day pass where Villamil is not sent a picture of the oar with smack talk from Georgia students saying how the Gators are not going to win the oar back this season.
It’s all in good fun and a major part of what makes a rivalry a rivalry.
“It’s a symbol for what a great rivalry and tradition the game is, and it’s a way to promote the rivalry in a positive way without using alcohol or beer or things like that,” Villamil said. “From that aspect, it’s a way to promote the rivalry and in good, clean fun.”
Rivalry committees on both sides hope to meet in the spring to get the Okefenokee Oar completely official, so it can be properly presented to the winning team next season.
“We would love to have players running off of the field with it after the game,” Villamil said. “That’s the ultimate goal.”
Click to expand...

Gator Bill, Oct 26, 2012

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Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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Cool story, thanks Bill.

Terry O'Keefe, Oct 26, 2012

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Gator Bill Well-Known Member Administrator

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Hey this game is important to me and Jeanne for another reason. 50 years ago our 2nd date was at the Florida - Georgia game. We were married in April of the next year and our 50th anniversary is coming up.

Gator Bill, Oct 27, 2012

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