GatorCountry.com’s members this past week selected what they believe to be the greatest play of all time in Florida Gators football history.
The greatest play, as selected, was the Jarvis Moss blocking of a last play field goal that would have led to defeat for the Gators and in reality dashed their BCS Championship hopes for 2006.
The play that was voted No. two was “Green is behind the defense” play in the 1997 game against FSU. While the Gators did not win a title that year, preventing the Noles from winning it may have been the next best thing, as was stated in the broadcast of the game.
Here is the last drive of the game by the Gators (not including Victory Formation following the interception).
The first thing any Gators fan will tell you is that Sebastian Janikowski doing the “chomp” right before he kicked off to the Gators was karma biting him where his hip pads were worn.
What the clip here did not show was that the great play by the Gators started with a great goal line stand to prevent FSU from scoring a TD and Bobby Bowden making the bad decision (for FSU) of thinking he could win it with a FG and his defense would stop the Gators. Karma!
In three plays following the kick the Florida Gators went the length of the field with Fred Taylor crashing in for his fourth touchdown of the game. Kicking was shaky that game but the Gators did secure the three-point lead with the extra point and the final score margin.
The play had everything, but unlike the selected greatest play, it was a series of great plays that had Florida Gators fans screaming at the top of the lungs, be it in the living room of their home or in The Swamp for a sustained period of time.
If this game would have led to the SEC title and another title game then, with all the other factors of who we were playing and the drama of the game, then it might have won as greatest play of all time.
It lost by a mere three percentage points.
Before we talk about the next play here is some information about the polls.
When Curtis (OklahomaGator) would list the new polls each week he always provided videos so that members could relive those plays before (and after) voting. There were only four plays that he could not ascertain a video for the play.
Curtis has also listed all of these play videos into a single thread so that Gator Country members can see them whenever they wish or when the arguments about the greatest plays resurface themselves as we are sure they will.
The closest of any of the voting was when the Lawrence Wright hit on Joey Kent was matched up with the Ahmad Black interception of the Bradford pass. The margin was decided in the final hour by one vote.
Steve Spurrier was involved in all four of the final four plays. Three times he was on the winning side and of course the losing side of the greatest play.
SECGator help Curtis to find some of these videos (Spurrier kick and Wes Chandler run) so thanks to him for that.
My memories and some thoughts on the “Cock Block”.
First, here is the play and some of the analysis as the play took place and right after.
As I said in yesterday’s story, this is not my favorite play, but to me, it is the greatest play in Florida Gators football history.
I know some will differ.
So many factors about that play.
First, Steve Spurrier was on the opposing sideline for the first time. While that was as not as big as the game itself, it was the game story from when the Gators left Columbia in 2005.
The Gators had lost earlier in the season and there was no more room for error (loss) on our resume. A second conference loss, late in the season, and the inevitable question would have been, could we win without Spurrier. We did not win much before he arrived and had not done a whole lot since he left.
The game was the CBS game of the week and I think it was called well by what would be our two best assets in the media, Vern and Gary. Some fans, like me, will always give those two a thumbs for the way they lobbied for us the rest of the 2006 season. I can remember Gary in the SEC Championship game with charts to show that we deserved to play in the BCS Title game, not Michigan.
Was he justified, sure he was, but he had one of the big megaphones and he was doing his best to make sure there was not a Big 10 screw job applied to us at the end of the season. Would we have made it without his lobbying for us?
We will never know.
Even as Traci Wolfson asked Urban of if the Gators deserved to be in the title game his comment was “sure we do”. No more PC football talk, it was all in to stop ESPN and the Big Ten from their rematch.
That video above was the one that was in the finals polls, but I added this one. It was taken on a cell phone, but crowd noise was loud, real loud.
As you watch this video it starts loud and then calms just a bit as Ryan Succop approaches the ball (:18) for his kick. It was two seconds later that The Swamp exploded.
Enjoy!
While I was not at either of the two final great plays (1997 FSU, 2006 South Carolina) I believe that the loudest sustained crowd was 1997, however, the burst following the block in 2006 was louder.
But great fans differ on that to this day.
Was this the greatest play in Florida Gators history, I don’t know, but it was certainly one of them.
Now that the poll is over the thing I liked best about it was reading the reasons why someone would think that a play was the greatest and it had little to do with football. It was more about life.
This was taken from the final poll thread.
Ccoralgator: Nope, Kerwin Bell in 1986 vs Auburn.
OklahomaGator: Sorry, that play lost out in the voting to the Ike Hilliard stop and pop against FSU in the 96 Championship game.
CCoralGator: I know, I’m protesting! Lol
GatorFanCF: Thanks for the memory, ccoralgator. I took my Dad (UF ’43) to that game and it seemed like we hugged and celebrated for about 2 minutes straight after the 2pt conversion. Six months later he was gone; but, I’ll never forget how happy we were that day.
CCoralGator It was my last home game as an undergrad (UF’ 87).
Summarized by the wisdom of
WESGATORS: Yeah, even getting to this point there has to be a lot of emotional factors that steer people to pick one over another. This has been a fun endeavor. In the end, these are two of the most crowd capturing plays in SWAMP history. I went with the cock block. I said I wasn’t going to think about it, just go with my gut on picking my first reaction between the two plays…that was it.
Go GATORS!,
WESGATORS
Writers note: I would like to thank Curtis for putting all the time he did in to creating these polls, posting the videos, and then sending me some thoughts to to insert into these two stories.