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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Why this is Georgia’s biggest game with Florida in 20 years
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Everybody knows what’s on the line Saturday when Georgia and Florida meet in Jacksonville. Lord knows we’ll try, but what’s at stake can’t be overstated. It is no less than an elimination game for the BCS national championship and a spot in the SEC title game in Atlanta on Dec. 6. From a sheer rankings standpoint (Georgia 6, Florida 8), it’s the biggest meeting since 1999 when the Bulldogs were No. 5 and the Gators were No. 10.
But strictly from the Georgia perspective, this is the Bulldogs’ biggest game with Florida in almost 20 years. Here’s why: On Saturday Georgia will get a chance to win its second straight game over Florida for the first time since 1988-89. And for the Bulldog Nation it will be an opportunity to start reversing one of the most painful trends in their history.
Consider this: Steve Spurrier did a lot of remarkable things in his 12 years as the head coach at Florida. Before The Head Ball Coach got to Gainesville in 1990, the Gators had never won 10 games in a season and had never won an SEC championship. When he left after the 2001 season, Florida had posted NINE seasons of 10 wins or more and six SEC titles.
But I still believe that among Spurrier’s greatest accomplishments as the head Gator was his ability to completely reverse the psychology of the Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville. Understand that when Spurrier arrived Georgia was dominating the series. Vince Dooley had won 17 out of 25 and the momentum had carried over into Ray Goff’s first season in 1989, when the Bulldogs won 17-10. And at no time in that 26-year period (1964-89) did Florida ever win two straight games.
There were Florida fans who wanted to move the game out of Jacksonville, convinced that Georgia had some built in advantage. A whole generation of Gators grew up believing that there was some unseen, unknown reason why Florida couldn’t beat Georgia.
Spurrier arrives and quickly announces that the whole notion is silly. The game, he said, is an hour from campus in a stadium called (at the time) The Gator Bowl. Then he proceeded to beat Georgia 11 out of the next 12 years. It so changed the psychology of the game that even after Spurrier left in 2001 it carried over into the next two coaches: Ron Zook was 2-1 against Georgia while Urban Meyer is 2-1. Florida’s lingering mojo was such that in 2002 Georgia took its best team in 20 years (13-1) down to Jacksonville to play an 8-5 team with a rookie head coach (Zook). Georgia lost its only game that season (20-13) with a vastly superior team. It probably cost Georgia a shot at the national championship.
The point is that reversing this kind of psychological trend is like turning around a battle ship. It takes time. Last year’s win in Jacksonville was huge for Georgia. But if Florida comes back and wins on Saturday, the Gators will be 16-3 against the Bulldogs since 1990 and will have gone 20 years without losing consecutive games. Florida can rightfully say that it still controls the series.
A Georgia win, however, puts that in doubt. And when a team like Georgia is trying to reassert itself after being dominated for so long, a little doubt can go a long way.
