Gator Country

In the second game of the 1960 season Ray Graves and the Florida Gators defeated Florida State, 3-0. It was Graves’ first season as the Gator coach and the Gators got off to a 2-0 start with the win.

Adding some luster to the game was the announcement that one of the Gator players had been offered a bribe to do what he could to prevent the Gators from covering the 13-point spread. Jon McBeth did not play in the game and two New York gamblers and a Florida student were jailed before the game.

Coach Graves’ initial season at Florida was a successful one that saw the Gators win nine games and lose just two – to Rice and Auburn.

Here’s the United Press International dispatch on the game 50 years ago today:

Florida 3, Florida State 0

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (UPI) — Sophomore Bill Cash kicked a 35-yard field goal in the second quarter and gave the heavily favored Florida Gators a skin-of-their-teeth 3-0 football victory over rival Florida State Saturday.

But a brisk, gusty north wind that blew throughout the game prevented FSU from making full use of its aerial game and the Seminoles didn’t quite have a scoring punch against the more experienced and bigger Florida team.

The Gators are 8-2 on games played on Sept. 24. The wins came against Florida Southern 27-7 (1927), The Citadel 13-0 (1949), FSU 3-0 (1960) Mississippi State in 1966, 1977, 1983 and 1988 and a 49-28 win over Kentucky in 2005. The losses were to Stetson 16-14 (1938) and Georgia Tech 14-7 (1955).

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