Most Gator fans know that Steve Spurrier was 11-1 against Georgia as Florida’s head coach. Less well known is that he also went 11-1 against LSU.
The 1990s were a dark time for Tiger football. They started with the last year of the ill-fated Mike Archer tenure, which saw a shared SEC title in 1988 but fell off quickly the next two seasons. Then came Curley Hallman, the worst LSU coach in recent memory. Ol’ Curley went 16-28 and never finished above .500 in a season. Gerry DiNardo took over and had a good first three seasons, tying for the West title twice (though never going to Atlanta) and scoring the Tigers’ one win over UF in 1997. He crashed to 4-7 in 1998, however, and then he was fired after starting 1999 with a 2-8 record. Nick Saban started his rebuild in 2000, but Spurrier beat him twice before going to the NFL.
A lot of folks still don’t think of the Florida-LSU series as a real rivalry. This, despite the teams playing every year from 1953-67 and every season since 1971. No, it doesn’t go back to the leather helmet days, but that’s one of the more consistent series in the conference post-WWII. It’s not a fluke that the teams got matched up as permanent cross-division rivals.
For a long while, I had a growing fondness for the series. As Tennessee fell off in the 2000s, LSU picked it up. The teams played a classic in 2007, and then Tim Tebow and crew got payback in a big way in 2008. The 2009 game was a waste of everyone’s time — LSU had zero chance scoring much on that UF defense, and a Gator offense led by a still-concussed Tebow played as vanilla as possible — but most games afterward save 2011 were competitive nail biters.
As a bonus, there wasn’t a ton of vitriol to the series. The fan bases, to my reckoning, respected each other but didn’t hate each other. There are plenty of great rivalries built on hate, including some of UF’s. I’m not against that, but it was nice to have one rivalry that seemingly never got toxic.
Then the whole Hurricane Matthew saga happened in 2016, and things got toxic in a hurry. I wish I could say it’s gone away, but I saw at least one Tiger fan bring it up a few weeks ago when Florida rescheduled the Eastern Washington game to Sunday. There will always be some people who can’t let things go. I do think it has died down some, at least.
If it feels by now like I’m avoiding talking about Saturday’s loss, it’s because I sort of am. I don’t think there’s a ton to say about it that doesn’t eventually wind up back with the defense. Third down defense, especially. I have things to say about that, but I am saving them for a piece on the main GC site this week. Look for it soon, maybe today or tomorrow.
I can’t help but see the game as a terribly missed opportunity. It was the swing game for the rest of the season, and it swung the wrong way.
It also was a feeling of deja vu. LSU’s Jaydon Daniels has been good through the air against FCS/G5 competition this year but nothing special against P5 teams. He got to exactly 300 yards against Tennessee, but that was a quantity thing. He threw 45 times, so he was at 6.67 yards per attempt, and had to throw that much because the Tigers were behind all game. Against the Gators he got to a yard shy of 350 on 13 fewer attempts.
Making matters worse, there was the case of receiver Kayshon Boutte. He was one of their best last year before injury knocked him out for the year in early October, but he had a bad start to 2022. He topped out at just 10.3 yards per catch in any contest, and he had one of the worst drop rates in the league. Against UF, he had 19.2 yards per catch while rolling up his first triple-digit receiving day with 115 yards.
When players have wanted to have career days, the solution was usually to face a Todd Grantham defense. Too many opponents had one of, if not the best game they played all year against Florida. Well, it happened again for Daniels and Boutte, just as it did to date for Missouri RB Nathaniel Peat, USF RB Brian Battie, and Utah TE Brant Kuithe (who was lost for the year three games later) and RB Tavion Thomas. And, in terms of FBS competition, Kentucky WR Dane Key. At least Tennessee’s best performers had better games either in smashing LSU the next week or defeating Alabama the one after.
I am not at all sure what can be done to fix things for this year. I would have a very quick hook after this off week, if nothing can be figured out with the extra time. If a veteran player who should know better isn’t performing, I’d increasingly play a younger option. As long as Florida is going to get unsatisfactory results, at least they could be investments in the future.
Maybe LSU running off a few wins in a row will get the temperature down on their side some and help the series get back to one where both sides can respect hard-fought games without toxicity. That’d at least pull something good from yet another L to the Tigers.