Danny Wuerffel passed for 452 yards and four TDs on the road against the Razorbacks en route to the 1996 Heisman Trophy.
History Lesson: That First Trip to Fayetteville
Wednesday, November 2, 2016 | Football, Chris Harry
Danny Wuerffel lit up the Arkansas skies in a record-setting defeat of the Razorbacks in 1996.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — South Carolina and Arkansas joined the Southeastern Conference in 1992, prompting the league to split into two divisions and initiate the innovative season-ending championship game that altered the landscape of college football. The Gamecocks were put in the SEC East and thus was born an annual series with Florida. Up until that point, the Gators and Gamecocks had played 12 times in their history, dating to 1911, but not since 1964.
UF and Arkansas, though, had played just once and that was in the old Astro Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston, with the unranked Razorbacks, coached by Lou Holtz, upsetting the Gators 28-24 in 1982.
The two schools first met as league foes in the fourth SEC Championship Game in 1995, smack in the middle of Steve Spurrier's domination of the league. The Hogs, coached by Danny Ford, were a surprise winner of the West in finishing 6-2, a game ahead of Auburn, then got trounced by unbeaten and second-ranked Florida 34-3 in the title game at Atlanta. That victory came with yellow-jacketed representatives of the Fiesta Bowl at the Georgia Dome, who made official UF's invitation to their game to face Nebraska for the national championship.
We know what happened there, but I digress.
This post is about what happened in 1996, the first time UF ever played a game in Fayetteville, Ark., where 20 years later the No. 10 Gators (6-1, 4-1) look to further their quest for the SEC East crown when they face the Hogs Saturday at 3:30 p.m.
Who's up for another history lesson?
THE SETUP
UF went to Razorbacks Stadium — now Reynolds Stadium — on Oct. 5, 1996 undefeated at 4-0 and ranked No. 1, with a couple wins in the SEC. The Gators had gone to Tennessee two weeks earlier and jumped all over the Volunteers and Peyton Manning for what turned out to be a 35-29 victory. The week before, UF massacred Kentucky 65-0 behind a couple punt returns for touchdowns by Jacquez Green.
Arkansas, meanwhile, was just 1-2 overall, having lost an ugly one to SMU, 23-10, to open the season, followed by a 17-7 loss to Alabama, then a 38-21 victory over Northeast Louisiana, with both of those games in Little Rock.
The Razorbacks were a huge underdog at home.
THE GAME
UF quarterback Danny Wuerffel broke the single-game school record for passing yards, completing 23 of 39 for 462 yards and four touchdowns in a 42-7 win.
The Gators led just 14-7 at halftime, with Wuerffel taking a beating against the mad-blitzing Hogs defense that tested an offensive line minus standout tackle Mo Collins, who was suspended for the game. Arkansas sent waves of blitzes, sacking Wuerffel twice, knocking him down several more times.
The locker room mood was somewhat contentious at the break, but the Gators thought they figured some things out and returned to the field ready to pounce. Wuerffel, under pressure, promptly threw an interception that linebacker Chris Akins returned to the UF 22, as the Hogs threatened to tie. The Florida defense, though, forced a field goal attempt that Todd Latourette pushed wide right.
From there, Wuerffel threw touchdowns to Reidel Anthony (9 catches, 189 yards) on back-to-back possessions, then hit Ike Hilliard (5 catches, 108 yards) for another on the first play of the fourth quarter.
Running back Eugene McCaslin's 18-yard run with just under nine minutes to play put the Gators up 42-7.
That was the score late in the game when Spurrier was set to take Wuerffel out of the game when an assistant called down from the coaches box and informed Spurrier that Wuerffel was just 11 yards from setting the school record for yardage.
Flashback: In 1995, Spurrier benched Wuerffel in the middle of the season -- with his team unbeaten, ranked second, and with Wuerffel a leader in Heisman contention -- to let backup Eric Kresser play. Kresser arrived at UF in the same signing class as Wuerffel and had been a good soldier for four seasons and Spurrier wanted to reward him. So Wuerffel, one of the best players in the country, sat out homecoming against Southern Miss. All Kresser did was throw for a school-record 458 yards and six touchdowns. After the game, Spurrier promised Wuerffel if a chance to set the school record was ever there he'd let him go after it.
So Spurrier kept Wuerffel in and called a swing pass to tailback Elijah Williams that went for 15 yards — and the record.
Razorbacks fans, the ones still around, rained boos down on the UF sideline. As the Gators left the field, one Hogs fan jeered Spurrier. "You got no class!" Then came another. "How does it feel to run it up?"
Spurrier raised his index finger, signaling No. 1, and responded, "We love it when you all say that!"
THE QUOTES
>>> "At the start of the third quarter, Danny came to me and said, "This is fun, Coach.' And he was right. This was the first time we hadn't been way ahead at halftime. At 14-7, that's football. The ball just wasn't quite bouncing our way. … But our defense was outstanding, and Danny was the story of the game on offense." — Spurrier
>>> The guy is unbelievable. I think it would take a freight train to knock him out." — UF offensive guard Donnie Young
>>> "[Arkansas] did a good job of just pinning their ears back and coming after us. I wasn't trying to make any statements, just trying to play the game." — Wuerffel
>>> "It seems like he breaks a record every week. That's no big thing for us. We expect it." — Anthony.
>>> "We couldn't have started the third quarter any better." — Ford on the interception.
>>> "We took the life out of them, right there." — UF safety Lawrence Wright, on the defensive stand after the interception.
EPILOGUE
The Gators rolled through SEC play undefeated, before losing at Florida State 24-21 in the regular-season finale. They bounced back the following week to beat Alabama 45-30 in the SEC Championship Game and, due to some remarkably fortuitous circumstances, gained a rematched with the Seminoles in the Sugar Bowl. That one, of course, turned out to be for the national championship. We know what happened.
Arkansas finished 4-7, including 2-6 in the SEC.
Wuerffel's record of 462 yards stood for five years until Rex Grossman broke it on Oct. 6, 2001 by throwing for 464 yards and five touchdowns in a 44-15 road rout of Nick Saban and LSU. Grossman's number eventually was eclipsed by Tim Tebow in the final game of his career. Tebow passed for 482 yards and three scores in the Sugar Bowl against Cincinnati on Jan. 1, 2010.
The Gators have played at Arkansas since '96, winning 33-28 in 2003 under Coach Ron Zook and 38-7 during the '08 run to the national title under Urban Meyer.
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