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The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, November 1992
Dogs vs. Gators - Fear replaces fun
Jacksonville - The universities of Georgia and Florida, both
fine schools, need to make an immediate decision to move their annual football
game out of this city's Gator Bowl before somebody gets killed.
Jacksonville can't handle this thing anymore. No city could. Putting an equal
number of Florida and Georgia fans, who absolutely hate each other, together
in an 82,000-seat stadium just invites disaster.
This isn't the World's Largest Cocktail Party anymore. It's the World's Largest
Crazy House.
There are about 40,000 Georgia fans and a like number of Florida fans in the
Gator Bowl on a Halloween Saturday night, and rival fans often sit near each
other.
The taunting never stops. Some of it is fun, but most of it is not. This rivalry
has become so intense, it's primed for a riot.
There already have been brawls. I remember a year when Florida students stormed
the field after the game and tried to destroy it. A Georgia student rushed onto
the field and tackled a couple of shirtless guys carrying away part of a goal
post.
Five or six Florida students then beat the kid from Georgia to a pulp.
It was just as ugly and just as mean here Saturday night. Maybe worse.
I went to Georgia and I'm biased, but I witnessed behavior
Saturday night in the Gator Bowl I'd never seen at a college football game before.
When it was over, and Florida had won 26-24, a few of the Florida players strutted
arrogantly in front of thousands of Georgia fans, and made obscene gestures.
One Gator grabbed his crotch in front of the Georgians. Another gave a pelvic
thrust and shouted an obscenity.
The players left, but then returned to rub it in further. A man who I presume
was a Florida coach finally had the decency to shove the players away.
Leaving the stadium, Florida fans barked directly into the faces of Georgia
fans. Georgia fans retaliated with explicit instructions on what the Gator fans
could do with their victory.
And to think people used to wear coats and ties to college football games,
and shook hands at game's end.
I stood in front of my car with a group o fellow Georgia fans for an hour after
the game. We were insulted by passing motorists or Gators strolling by about
every two minutes. A drunken teenage girl told us to eat something humans don't
eat.
It's out of control. And it's no longer fun.
Orlando wants the game, but Georgia doesn't want to play the Gators any deeper
in Florida.
The best idea is to make the series a home-and-home arrangement. That way the
visiting team would get only a few tickets and there wouldn't be this 40,000
versus 40,000 situation, and more control could be administered.
"I'll never come back here," a Georgia friend told me Sunday morning.
"I'd like to get Florida between the hedges in Athens every other year,
and when the game's in Gainesville I'll just watch it on TV."
In other countries, soccer fans riot and kill one another. Georgia-Florida
in the Gator Bowl isn't that yet, but go home-and-home before one Halloween
night it becomes a nightmare.
--Lewis Grizzard
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