Tailback Fred Taylor (above in Sugar Bowl as a junior) posted career highs of 43 carries and 234 yards in the Citrus Bowl against Penn State, his final game as a Gator.
Citrus Bowl History Lesson 3: Gators vs Penn State, 1997
Tuesday, December 29, 2015 | Football, Chris Harry
Share:
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- In 1997, the defending national-champion Florida Gators rolled to a 5-0 record and held the nation's No. 1 ranking when they went to LSU for one of those crazy Saturday nights in Baton Rouge. At the time, the Tigers were an above-average program in the Southeastern Conference West Division, but on the rise in the third season under Coach Gerry DiNardo.
LSU's 28-21 upset of the Gators became his signature moment.
Three weeks later, a lopsided 37-17 loss to rival Georgia -- Steve Spurrier's lone blemish in 12 cracks at the hated Bulldogs, as it turned out -- ended UF's hopes of running their SEC championship dominance to five straight seasons.
Losing a couple games, though, wasn't UF's only problem. Starting quarterback Doug Johnson, who threw four interceptions at LSU, was suspended for a game when it came to light he broke curfew two nights before the Gators squared off against the Tigers. Florida went with freshman Jesse Palmer, with not much luck, then gave senior walk-on Noah Brindise a try, while keep Johnson in the mix.
What Spurrier finally figured out was that passing the ball needed to be the second option for his team.
Senior tailback Fred Taylor had to be first.
Taylor rushed for 170 yards and three touchdowns in a win over South Carolina. The next week, as a 10-point underdog at home and facing No. 1-ranked Florida State and its top-ranked defense, Spurrier alternated Johnson and Brindise for the entire game -- shuffling them in with plays -- and turned Taylor loose in the second half. The result was a stirring 32-29 upset defeat of the Seminoles that ruined their national-championship hopes.
Johnson and Brindise combined to pass for more than 300 yards.
And Taylor had 160 yards and four touchdowns.
When the lights went out at Florida Field that night -- arguably the greatest game ever played in "The Swamp" -- the Gators knew they would not win a championship that year. They also had made sure Florida State wouldn't either.
Their reward was a date against Penn State in the Citrus Bowl.
That's Citrus Bowl, as in the game Spurrier used as a punch line directed at the Tennessee Volunteers -- "Can't spell 'Citrus' without a 'U' and a 'T' -- so many times before. Now the Vols and Peyton Manning, beaten handily by the Gators two months earlier, were headed to the SEC Championship Game.
UF was headed for Orlando.
To the time machine we go.
FOR HISTORICAL CONTEXT (Elsewhere in the news on Jan. 1, 1998)
* Thousands of balloons cascaded to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate a 1997 that ended with 20-percent-plus gains for an unprecedented third consecutive year. The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average finished the year almost 23 percent higher than 1996 and capped its best 10-year stretch in history by gaining more than 300 percent since 1987, the year of the Black Monday crash.
* Michael Kennedy, the 39-year-old son of Robert F. Kennedy who gained notoriety for an alleged affair with the family's baby-sitter, was killed in a skiing accddent in Aspen, Colo. Kennedy was skiing with members of his family on Aspen Mountain about 4:15 p.m. when he crashed into a tree, the resort said. He's was the second of the 11 children both to the former senator and his wife, Ethel, to die under tragic circumstances. His brother David died of a drug overdose in Florida in 1984.
* No. 1 Michigan defeated Washington State 21-16 in the rose bowl to lay its claim to its first national title since 1948, pending the outcome of the Orange Bowl pitting No. 2 and unbeaten Nebraska against No. 3 Tennessee.
* Longtime Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy, the only coach in NFL history to lead a franchise to four straight Super Bowls, announced his retirement at the age of 72.
* At the movies: "Titanic" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and KateWinslet (right); "Good Will Hunting," starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Robin Williams; "As Good it Gets," starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.
* On television: NBC's "must-see TV" was Thursday night with "Friends" at 8 p.m., "Seinfield" at 9 and "ER" at 10.
* On the radio: The Billboard Top 100 counted down to these final three songs: 3 -- "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy (featuring Faith Evans and 112); 2 -- "Foolish Games" by Jewel; 1 -- "Candle in the Wind 1997" by Elton John.
THE SETUP
Spurrier
Media folk couldn't wait to grill Spurrier about being at the Citrus Bowl. Sure enough, when the Gators checked in Dec. 26 at the Renaissance Orlando Sea World, a small group of reporters were waiting and one of first things put to the UF coach was how it felt to be on site for the bowl game he loved to mock.
"Oh, it's not so bad. We're glad to be here," Spurrier shot back. "Better than waking up Christmas Day and seeing a bunch of your players in the Blue-Gray Game."
Note: Alabama was on probation at the time and the day before had sent several Crimson Tide players to the lightly attended all-star game in Montgomery, Ala.
Zing.
Now, about the game. Besides being the first meeting between two of the college game's most iconic coaches -- Spurrier and Joe Paterno -- the 45th Citrus Bowl matched two teams that held the No. 1 spots in both polls to start the season. PaternoPSU debuted in the Associated Press top spot during the preseason and Florida in the USA Today/Coaches poll. And both bounced back and forth atop those polls through the first half of the season until the Gators lost at LSU and the Nittany Lions crumbled after a 7-0 start with an ugly 34-8 home loss to surging Michigan.
Orlando bowl officals, however, were ecstatic wth the sexy matchup, highlighted by the marquee coaches, but also the fact the Gators were the reigning national champions.
Both teams came in with 9-2 records.
The 11th-ranked Nittany Lions, though, weren't whole when they showed up. Their offense took a major hit when All-America tailback and top-10 NFL prospect Curtis Enis (1,363 yards, 19 TDs) was ruled ineligible by the NCAA for accepting a suit from an agent. Paterno also suspended his top receiver, senior Joe Jurevicius (39 catches, 817 yards, 10 TDs), for skipping classes. Paterno, though, brought a sterling 18-8-1 bowl record with him and 20-game winning streak against non-conference opponents.
The No. 6 Gators had their rotating QBs, the red-hot Taylor and a pretty good homefield advantage in the bleachers.
THE GAME
JohnsonPenn State may have brought its Big Ten reputation to the Citrus Bowl, but Florida played with the look of a team from the north.
There was nothing "Fun-N-Gun" about UF's 21-6 victory. When the dust not only settled but was kicked in the face of the Nittany Lions, Taylor had shattered Citrus records with career-highs of 43 carries and 234 rushing yards in front of a partisan, record crowd of 72,940.
The Lions came in with the running-game credentials, averaging 209 yards rushing per game. They got 47 on 29 attempts. Of Penn State's 13 possessions, 11 of them went for nine yards or fewer. Twice the Gators defense stopped the Nittany Lions on fourth-and-goal at the UF 1. Without Enis and Jurevicious, PSU managed just 139 total yards for the game.
A 1-yard run by Brindise and 35-yard touchdown pass from Johnson to Jacquez Green surged the Gators to a 14-0 lead in the first period.
Field goals in the second and third quarter helped Penn State chop the margin to 14-6, but after Johnson left the game with an injury in the third, Palmer took his place in the shuffle rotation and threw a 37-yard tipped touchdown pass to Green early in the fourth to ice the game.
THE QUOTES
Peterson* "It was a run-the-ball, run-the-clock-out kind of game. We tried to hand the ball to Fred and not beat ourselves." -- Spurrier
* "They thought they could come down here and play smash-mouth with us. They thought the SEC is soft. But we thought we could run on them the way a lot of other teams did. ... And I wanted to go out with a bang." -- Taylor
* It was a game of feet and inches. They made both. They made the plays." -- Paterno
* "They said we were the pretty white tennis-shoes team that can't play, but looks good. So we came out and got our shoes dirty." -- UF linebacker Mike Peterson
* "What happened to the smash-mouth football they were coming in here to play?" -- UF center Wylie Ritch
* "I just had a good cry in the locker room. ... I'll never be in this situation again. I'll never wear a Penn State uniform again. I'll never be the starting quarterback at Penn State again. It's over. It's final." -- Nittany Lions quarterback Mike McQueary
THE FALLOUT
The Gators notched a fifth straight season with at least 10 wins and finished ranked No. 4 in the final AP poll and No. 6 in the USA Today/Coaches poll. It also marked the seventh consecutive year the team ended ranked in the AP Top 10. The Nittany Lions finished 16th.
Coming Wednesday: Citrus Bowl Lesson 4 -- Michigan State (1999)
Three weeks later, a lopsided 37-17 loss to rival Georgia -- Steve Spurrier's lone blemish in 12 cracks at the hated Bulldogs, as it turned out -- ended UF's hopes of running their SEC championship dominance to five straight seasons. 
* No. 1 Michigan defeated Washington State 21-16 in the rose bowl to lay its claim to its first national title since 1948, pending the outcome of the Orange Bowl pitting No. 2 and unbeaten Nebraska against No. 3 Tennessee. 
