CONTEXT ADDED BY ADMIN:
END OF CONTEXT
GA with quite an individual performance by Wes Chandler, but it wasn't enough...I'll never forget the atmosphere. We had driven over from Tallahassee the night before and stayed at some friends of my folks house...the Old Maxwell House coffee house right on the St Johns...I remember it had a tower room and an old elevator...back then the stadium was divided up into quarters and very industrial...at any given time two quarters of the crowd was rockin!!...the paint job was either battle ship gray or water tower green....nothing too aesthetic about it...just get down to business time....I don't think there was even the Landing yet...my God, the alcohol flowed!! It was open and it was brazen!! I remember a guy staggering up the aisle opening up his trenchcoat and sewn inside was a mobile bar with the tiny liquor bottle and mixers lining it from top to bottom...the RV lot was overflowing...one sign I remember distinctly seeing year after year was a Gator with GIANT balls "GO GATORS IF YOU GOT 'EM!"....the game was unlike any other and still is....but the 70/80's were much wilder and woolier....The banana man was on the field...Then later as a student, I remember waiting in Florida Field all night for the student alotment...fraternity brothers gaming the system with everything from a "borrowed"wheelchair to a $20 handshake at the turnstiles to just plain rushing the gate and taking off under the old Gator Bowl counting on the fact no one wanted to chase after some kid in that erector set...I remember "We Are the Boys" swaying back and forth in some decrepit and packed endzone bathroom....I seem to remember James Brown at the halftime show and that relentless electric guitar beat of the GA band...an old fan with a fishing pole atop his RV with a Milkbone dangling over the crowds and the stuffed bulldogs and gators dragged by a rope and run over by the passing cars.......I was there till the last tick of 44-0....I leaped into the wagon wheel light fixture at my grandmother's house in SC watching the game alone as #badword# streaked down the sideline and the exultation of the biggest upset we ever had was erased on one play...was in the Gator Bowl when the dawgs won the next year by the identical score...was there when we led the entire game and GA mounted a 90-someodd yard drive for a touchdown for a 10-9 victory...and two of the games I remember the most, we had FINALLY beat the hated dawgs after the Hershel years, and many many other frustrating years of defeat....it was 84 I believe...Kerwin to "The Rocket" Ricky Nattiel....27-3....years of frustration was released and the Gator fans easily pushed down the chainlink fence and stormed the field...danced in front of the GA band...held chunks of turf over our heads in victory and took down both goal posts!! One was passed to the top of the Gator Bowl and thrown over!!! It sat reassemplbed in the ATO yard for a while...The mood was joyous and even the Mayor, Jake Godbold, was fine with any field repairs after so many years of whippings...only the next year, when FL returned....we had just come off a victory at Auburn and it was a bruising battle...perhaps the one when Bo Jackson took himself out of the game...FL had ascended to number one...RARE if not unheard of at the time...GA was having a very un-GA type of year, very mediocre....Kerwin threw for more than 400 yards!! And we still got thumped 24-3!! (or so)....needless to say, the Jax authorities had reassessed the liability of allowing fans to storm the field after the previous year 9and the goal post toss!)....but the GA fans were every bit as determined to match the Gators from the previous year....it got ugly....they shoved the fence down easily...but cops on horseback surrounded the goal posts...the GA mob pressed forward....the horses began raring up and scattering the crowd....they finally got the goal posts...another mob had gathered in front of the FL section (still in quarters) taunting and the liquor bottles began to fly back and forth...believe it or not ALBERT got beat up on the field!!! A mob shoved him to the ground and tore his head off...Dooley later had to write a letter of apology----he had a sprained ankle! The barking...the drunkeness!! It was an ugly ugly sight!!! Then the Spurrier years....still so hard to get used to...I can remember years of frustration and that still sticks with me....I still can't believe the tables have been turned....I was there in Athens when SOS laid a "half a hundred" on em...and I was there for Richt's "dance" trick....when Zook ran across the field to the wrong side!! And still beat em!! (I knew his days were numbered!) It's in an NFL Stadium now and is much more buttoned down and corporate, but it still has the spirit of one of only two or three neutral site games in all of college football...a true Classic...Long may the WLOCP Live!!!
|
SwampSwammie
(63.139.233.66) on 10/27/2009 - 11:48 a.m. says: ( 195 views
, 1 likes
)
