Four-plus years into the job at the University of Florida and Urban Meyer still won’t call the fine institution of higher learning in Tallahassee by its official name. Florida State University is simply “our rival” or “the school to the west” but never Florida State or FSU. Even though he speaks kindly of Bobby Bowden and praises the longtime coach of the Seminoles for all he’s accomplished in his career, Meyer won’t acknowledge that Bowden coaches Florida State University.
It was like that when he was at Utah, too. He has said many times that he likes and admires Brigham Young coach Bronco Mendenhall, but BYU was always “the school up north” when Meyer was coaching Utah. The week before the BYU game, Meyer even put the big “Y” (the symbol for Brigham Young University) in every locker room urinal.
Here at Florida, Meyer acknowledges three rivals for the Gators — “the school out west,” Georgia and Tennessee. He’s never had a public run-in with FSU but he still won’t call the school by name. He did have a very well publicized don’t get mad but always get even incident with Georgia coach Mark Richt last year. Richt allowed his players to storm the field after a touchdown against the Gators in 2007, a move Meyer thought was classless and dangerous. Richt feigned innocence, claiming it was merely a spontaneous celebration, which only showed his Bobby Bowden “boys will be boys” upbringing in the coaching ranks. Meyer’s only public comment about the incident was in “Urban’s Way,” his authorized biography authored by Gator Country’s Buddy Martin. Though he wouldn’t say anything else, Meyer seethed about it for a full year. During the final minute of Florida’s 49-10 beat down of Georgia in Jacksonville last year, Meyer called time out. Not once, but twice. Both times, Richt instantly looked at the scoreboard where he saw the score, a not so gentle reminder that there is a price to pay when you try to show up Urban Meyer.
And this brings us to Tennessee, which has always been at the heart of some sort of ruckus with the Gators going back to the 1923-24 seasons. Florida was coached in 1923-24 by Major James A. Van Fleet, who graduated from West Point with Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton among others. Tennessee was coached by Major Bob Neyland, who graduated one year behind Van Fleet. Van Fleet got Army to schedule the Gators (Florida lost 20-0 in 1923 and 14-7 in 1924) but according to legend, Neyland refused to play his old classmate. Van Fleet left Florida after two years. In addition to coaching football, he was the head of ROTC at Florida. He was called to active duty to help suppress an uprising in Central America and never again coached football. Neyland stayed at Tennessee and became one of the greatest college football coaches in history.
There was the 1928 incident when the unbeaten, untied Gators (8-0-0), coached by former Notre Dame star Charles Bachman, went to Tennessee to play the once-tied (8-0-1) Vols. The Gators were supposed to be the fastest team in America, led by ambidextrous Clyde “Cannonball” Crabtree and future College Football Hall of Fame inductee Dale Van Sickel. According to ledend, a drought had parched eastern Tennessee but the night before the UF-Tennessee game, a rainstorm drenched the Tennessee football stadium — not eastern Tennessee or even Knoxville, mind you, but the football stadium. The field was a muddy mess and the Gators hadn’t brought mud cleats. Neyland had mud cleats but alas, only enough for his team. There were no mud cleats available anywhere in Knoxville so the Gators played without them and spent the day slipping and sliding on the turf. Tennessee won the game, 13-12, when Bobby Dodd blocked an extra point. Tennessee folks deny any such thing took place, but witnesses here in Florida say it’s definitely true and point to the fact Florida and Tennessee didn’t play again until 1940 as proof.
In August of 1969 before the football season began, University of Florida president Stephen C. O’Connell forced Ray Graves out as Florida’s coach and made a deal with Tennessee coach Doug Dickey to come home (Dickey played football for Bob Woodruff at Florida) after the 1969 season. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the moment, but it turned out to be one of the most divisive moves in Florida football history. Graves’ 1969 Gators, led by sophomores John Reaves and Carlos Alvarez, went 9-1-1 and ironically, beat the Vols in the Gator Bowl, 14-13. Gator Country’s Buddy Martin (then with Florida Today) and Jack Hairston (then with the Jacksonville Journal) exposed coaching change 48 hours before the Gator Bowl. O’Connell and Dickey lied and denied it but within a few days after the game, Graves announced he was stepping down as coach and would remain as athletic director and Dickey took the Florida coaching job. Dickey was fired nine years later.
Florida went on probation in 1984 for NCAA violations. When the SEC stripped the Gators of their SEC championship, Tennessee and Georgia were among those leading the effort. When the Gators were denied a bowl game in 1990 for transgressions that occurred years earlier, it was the Tennessee-Georgia duo that again led the effort. That probably had a lot to do with Steve Spurrier always looking for a chance to stick the needle in both those schools. Spurrier owned Georgia but had some problems with Tennessee although he was always coming up with a zinger such as “you can’t spell Citrus (as in Citrus Bowl) without a U and a T.” Spurrier went 8-4 against the Vols. In the first ten years of the SEC Championship Game, either Florida or Tennessee represented the SEC East.
Spurrier left Florida for the NFL after the 2001 season. Urban Meyer became Florida’s head coach in 2005 and he immediately declared FSU, Georgia and Tennessee as the three rivalry games for the Gators and he emphasized the importance that winning those games has on recruiting. At Florida, Meyer is 11-1 against the big three rivals — 4-0 against both FSU and Tennessee and 3-1 against Georgia. He’s put together four straight recruiting classes that are vastly superior to the three rivals.
Although the 2005 and 2006 games with Tennessee were close encounters, Florida’s blowout wins (okay, here goes … you can’t spell BLOWOUT without a U and a T) the last two years took some of the luster off this game and it definitely had something to do with Tennessee firing longtime coach Phil Fulmer. Fulmer’s replacement is Lane Kiffin, who needed only two months to once again make this a circle the calendar game again.
Kiffin gloated that he was going to have fun singing Rocky Top when the Vols beat the Gators in Gainesville this year. On February 5, the day after national signing day, he called Meyer a cheater. The next day he was issuing apologies. At Destin, Kiffin tried to convince the media that all his talk was part of a master plan to make Tennessee the most talked about program in the country.
Whether he succeeded in making Tennessee the most talked about program is debatable. What isn’t the subject of debate is that Kiffin made the Tennessee game relevant again. After two straight blowout (there I go again … you can’t spell BLOWOUT without a U and a T) wins, Meyer was going to have to dig into his bag of motivational tricks to get his guys an emotional edge for the Tennessee game. Kiffin’s comments saved the creativity. Now all Meyer has to do is keep those comments circulating in his locker room all week. His guys will definitely get the message.
Meyer doesn’t have to talk about it this week for you to know that he is seething still about Kiffin’s comments. Remember last year? He spent an entire year with very little to say about Georgia storming the field in 2007 but the week of the game, the replay of the incident played over and over again on every television screen in the football complex. By game time, the Gators were ready to hand Georgia an old fashioned beat down and they delivered to the tune of 49-10. The time outs were simply Meyer’s way of letting Mark Richt know he’s an Old Testament kind of guy — an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
When asked about Kiffin, Meyer stated, “To me that’s all water under the bridge. It happened a long time ago.” He has also taken what would seem to be the politically correct approach by saying the game is all about the Tennessee players and the Florida players.
That sounds politically correct, but let me translate for you. Although he would never say this out loud, nearly five years of being around Urban Meyer have made me fluent in Urban Speak. Translation: “This is about our players kicking the butts of their players.”
Some might say this is Meyer going a little too far. A friend told me on the phone last night that Meyer should take The Godfather approach — “It isn’t personal. It’s business.”
I told him that’s exactly the approach Urban has taken, just that when it comes to football and Urban Meyer, personal and business are one and the same. So, whether he wins by a blowout (oops, there I go again … you can’t spell BLOWOUT without a U and a T) or by a close margin, Urban Meyer will give Lane Kiffin a lesson in Newtonian (Sir Isaac, not Nate) physics.
Newton said, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” In Urban Speak that translates to “Back atcha, buddy, only you won’t like what comes back atcha.”