Gator Talk - From Humble Beginnings
Monday, September 6, 2010 | Football
By Norm Carlson, Assistant Athletics Director/Gator Historian
When the Buckman Act created the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1906, changing the name from East Florida Seminary in Lake City, the football program started against opponents like Mercer, Rollins and various athletic clubs representing Jacksonville, Gainesville, Tallahassee, Savannah and Athens.
Those pre-Gators were coached by James W. (PeeWee) Forsythe, who was hired from Florida State College after that school became the Florida State College for Women. Prior to that time, the Tallahassee university was the only four-year institution playing the sport in the state, having fielded teams from 1902-05.
Senator Henry Buckman of Jacksonville chaired the committee that created the State University System and came up with the plan to put the bell-cow school for men in Gainesville and convert Florida State into the women's four-year institution.
This plan endured until after World War II. The University of Florida played football for over 50 years before the first team was fielded at Florida State University after World War II. The two teams didn't face each other until 1958. It was a huge advantage for the Gators in building a program.
Those early Florida teams, like most college teams in those years, were manned by a combination of students and other athletes. Forsythe, the coach, was also the fullback. He had been a star player in college at Clemson.
Dummy Taylor, captain of the 1910 team, lettered for five seasons. Dummy, a star running back and placekicker, might have been named appropriately. That team finished 6-1, the finest record at UF until the 1920s.
William Kline came from Kansas State to take over the Gator program in 1920 and changed the course of football at Florida, not so much by his record as from who he hired. His teams went 19-8-2 in three seasons and the 1922 outfit finished 7-2.
Major James A. Van Fleet also came from Kansas State to take over the ROTC program, and he was soon recruited by Kline to help with football. His impact was immediate and the seven wins in his first season the on the staff set a school record.
Van Fleet was at the helm of the program for two seasons before being transferred to another university to set up its ROTC program. During the 1923-24 campaigns, he produced a 12-3-4 record playing what's generally considered among the most difficult schedules in school history. His teams played road games against national powers Army, Georgia Tech, Texas and Alabama.
Florida tied Georgia Tech twice, and Texas, beat Alabama to knock the Tide out of an unbeaten season and the Rose Bowl, and lost a close game at Army, his alma mater. He also put Florida in position to become a national figure in football.
Some of the players of that era did become nationally-known. Ark Newton, Edgar Jones, Clyde “Cannonball” Crabtree, Dale Van Sickle and Carl Brumbaugh all claimed national attention.
The Gators of the 1920s went on to average seven wins a season, capturing eight victories in 1925, 1928 and 1929. It appeared the program was on the way, but factors out of their control halted the early momentum at the end of the 1929 season.
