Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — All right, let's get the obvious out of the way. 

It's not gonna go like this Saturday. 

No. 1 Alabama (2-0) rolls into town this week — the first top-ranked foe to visit the "Swamp" in 19 years — for a marquee date against host and 11th-ranked Florida (2-0) in front of an anticipated sellout crowd of 90,000. The Gators will be 15-point underdogs at Spurrier/Florida Field, the largest such spread at home since Florida State visited in 2013. They'll will be looking for just the third home win over Bama in a series that dates to 1916, with the last one coming in 2006 (fifth-ranked Florida 28, Alabama 13) in what turned out to be the final season for then-Crimson Tide coach Mike Shula, thus clearing the path for Nick Saban. 

This story is about Florida's first home win over Alabama.

In happened nearly 30 years ago to the day — Sept. 14, 1991 — and, of course, Steve Spurrier was the guy on the UF sidelines who made it happen. ... [Saban, for what it's' worth, was Bill Belichick's defensive coordinator with the Cleveland Browns at the time.] ... Ahead of that '91 clash, the Gators had lost all six of their home meetings against the vaunted Crimson Tide, including five since the advent of the Southeastern Conference in 1932. Sixth-ranked UF, denied its first league title the year before due to NCAA infractions under Spurrier's predecessors, had finished with the SEC's best record in 1990 and entered the '91 campaign as a popular pick to win the conference, along with Tennessee (No. 11), Auburn (15) and Alabama (16). 

The Gators returned a bevy of starters from a 9-2 team, and were playing their first SEC game at Florida Field following the massive north end zone expansion project that increased the stadium to 85,000. They christened the revamped place the weekend before by beating San Jose State 59-21. Alabama went 7-5 during an injury-ravaged 1990 campaign, but won seven of eight to end the regular season before getting smashed by Louisville in the Fiesta Bowl. The Tide opened the season with a 41-3 win over Temple in Tuscaloosa. 

And there was some pregame intrigue. Of course, there was. 

Let's go to the time machine. 


IN THE NEWS (headlines) * The Federal Reserve Board cut its benchmark discount rate to an 18-year low, a move that led big banks to lower the prime rate. The half-point cut to 5.0 percent was intended to jump-start a national economy trying to merge from the recession. The discount rate was the rate the Fed charged to banks for short-term loads, and a bellwether for other interest rates. 

* In Richmond, Va., Gov. Douglass Wilder, the grandson of slaves and nation's first Black elected governor acknowledged that he was "the longest of long shots" to become the 1992 Democratic presidential nominee. But looking out over the city that served as the seat of government for the pro-slavery Confederacy, Wilder said, "I cannot stand on the sidelines while the country I love stumbles further backward." 

* In Leningrad, U.S.S.R., the United States and Soviet Union settled one of their most bitter political disputes Friday by agreeing to cut off arms supplies to Afghanistan Jan. 1 in hopes of ending the country's long civil war. 

* Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles and the Cabinet may have to cut as much as $700 million next month from the state's $29 billion budget as tax collectors continue to fall short of projections. The cuts would reduce the amount of money that goes to Florida's schools by about $350 million and probably would lead to teacher layoffs, state lawmakers said. 

* In Indianapolis, a judge on Friday ordered attorneys, police and court personnel involved in boxer Mike Tyson's rape case not to make public statements that could prejudice jury at his January trial. 


IN THE THEATERS (most popular films) * "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare" — starring Robert England, Lili Taylor and E.G. Daily.

* "Barton Fink" — Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen, starring John Turturro, John Goodman and Michael Lerner. 

* "Dead Again" — Directed and starring Kenneth Branaugh, with Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia and Robin Williams. 


ON THE TUBE (most-watched TV shows) * "Roseanne" — Starring Roseanne Barr, John Goodman and Sara Gilbert. 

* "Murphy Brown" — Starring Candice Bergen, Faith Ford and Charles Kimbrough.

* "Cheers" — Starring Ted Danson, Shelly Long, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger and Woody Harrelson.



ON THE AIRWAVES (Billboard's top three songs)  * "The Promise of a New Day" — Paula Abdul 

* "I Adore Mi Amor" — Color Me Badd 

* "(Everything I Do) I Do For You" — Bryan Adams 


FOR SALE  (what things cost) * Honda CRX — $11,695 
* Pound of bacon — $1.95
* Gallon of milk — $2.80 
* Dozen eggs — $1.01 
* Gallon of gas — $1.14 
* First-class stamp — 29 cents 
* Five-bedroom, three-bath on golf course in North Tampa — $105,900


THE SET-UP  The week of the game, Birmingham News columnist Charles Hollis kicked a hornets nest when he wrote that Spurrier, during a "Tallahassee area" booster club stop and quoting an anonymous source, reported "Spurrier got carried away and apparently mentioned how bad the Gators would wipe [Coach Gene] Stallings Alabama football team this Saturday in Gainesville" and that "the margin of victory would be in the 30-point range."

The story was an obvious play by Hollis, a notorious Tide homer, to fire up his Bama boys. Less than a year earlier, Hollis had penned a scathing column that called Spurrier and the Gators "cheaters" and "perennial pretenders," while they steamrolled to that 6-1 league record, and predicted the closest Spurrier would ever get to the Sugar Bowl was "in front of his television set."  

Spurrier denied the account. Vehemently. 

"The guy writes lies," Spurrier said. "It's not even worth responding to." 

As for the action on the field, Alabama had back seven starters from a 1990 defense that ranked first in the SEC and third in the nation and the year bore limited the powerful offenses of Florida, Penn State and Tennessee to just one touchdown each. Ah, but the Tide lost two of those three games, including their home date against the Gators, a 17-13 come-from-behind victory that Spurrier — to this day — numbers among the most satisfying of his 12 seasons, as well as a catalyst that helped alter the perception of the UF program; internally and externally. 

Hollis was probably still peaved about that 1990 loss, but I digress. 

The Gators went into the game as a seven-point favorite. 

THE GAME 

The alleged prediction, the one Spurrier claimed to have never made, became an ugly prognostication for the visiting Crimson Tide, as UF pummeled Alabama 35-0 in a manner rarely experienced in the Tide's story SEC history. How bad was it? The loss was Bama's worst conference shutout defeat since 1957. 

After a slow start and slim 6-0 first half lead behind two Arden Czyzewski field goals, junior quarterback Shane Matthews, the reigning SEC Player of the Year, passed for 251 yards and three touchdowns, while the UF defense, which was humbled in surrendering nearly 500 yards the week before against San Jose State, forced five turnovers and held Bama's one-dimensional offense to only 257 yards. Sophomore tailback Errict Rhett carried 23 times for 173 yards, most coming in UF's 28-point second half. The Gators tallied 467 yards of total offense. 

Florida safety Will White intercepted Jay Barker on the first series of the second half and the Gators answered when wideout Tre Everett had cornerback George Teague doing pirouettes trying to stop 23-yard touchdown pass barely two minutes into the third period. Matthews hit Alonzo Sullivan for the two-point conversion to make it 14-0. 

Touchdown passes of 13 and 12 yards to Willie Jackson, plus a 3-yard scoring run by Rhett with just over five minutes to go finished off Florida's first home win in the series and further announced UF to the national stage, with a Florida-record 528 media credentials issued for the game, plus an ESPN prime-time audience. 

THE QUOTES 

* "I did not predict a big margin of victory. I did tell a group of Golden Gators, a group of guys who have been around since the '20s and '30s, that if we did finally beat Alabama at home I'd dedicated the game to those guys. So this one's for them." — Spurrier 

* "The first half was basically terrible. I made some terrible throws and we didn't produce. The funny thing is we made no adjustments at the half. We just started executing. The way I look at it, we just started a little later than usual." — Matthews 

* "Now that Coach Spurrier is here and is moving the ball, the attention has shied away from the defense. But the last two or three teams have left a legacy of defense for us tonight and we showed we're still here." — UF senior linebacker Ephesians Bartley 

* "The game could have been different if we would've scored in the first half. They came out and scored quick in the second, then just flat-out whipped us. We could not stop them." — Stallings 

* "For a little while I was having flashbacks of 1988 and '89. But actually, we felt like six points was all we needed to win the game. Physically, we dominated them." — UF senior defensive tackle Brad Culpepper 

* "I don't usually get the ball that much, maybe 10 or 12 times a game, so I try to make sure I make something happen every time I touch the ball." — Rhett 


THE FALLOUT 
 

Blasting the Tide in 1991 was just the beginning. 

Though the Gators likely got a little full of themselves and lost the following week at Syracuse, Spurrier brought his guys back down to earth and back to business. UF won its last six conference games to finish 7-0 in league play, win the first SEC championship in program history and accompanying berth in the Sugar Bowl. 

Hollis must have taken it hard, but I again digress.

UF put a garnet-and-gold star on the regular season by defeating No. 3 and rival Florida 14-9 at Florida Field, for the first victory in the series since 1986. That triumph gave the Gators their first 10-win season in program history, though the feel-good fell a bit flat when Notre Dame upset UF 39-28 in the bowl game at New Orleans. 

In the bigger picture, the Florida-Alabama rivalry took on a significant meaning, both regionally and nationally, as the teams would go on to play in four of the first five SEC Championship Games, which debuted for the 1992 season. Bama not only went on to go 11-1 in that 1991 season after that UF loss, but went unbeaten in 1992 and defeated Florida in the inaugural SEC title game and routed Miami for the national title on the way to winning 28 consecutive games, a streak that lasted deep into the '93 season. The Gators defeated the Tide in the '93, '94 and '96 title games, the latter providing a springboard to UF's first national crown. 

Heading into Saturday's 2021 edition, Alabama leads the all-time series 27-14, including a 2-8 mark in Gainesville and seven straight wins, dating to the 2009 SEC title game. Ten of UF's 14 wins in the series came from 1987-2008.