ESPN Network: ESPN.com | NBA.com | ABCSports | EXPN | FANTASY



Deliverance in the Swamp
By Geoffrey Norman
Special to Page 2



ESPN TOOLS
 
Email story
 
Most sent
 
Print story
 

Editor's Note: Geoffrey Norman is working on a book about college football in the state of Florida. Each week during the 2001 season, he will send a letter to Page 2, in which he will try to make sense of the personalities, events and peculiar culture that make up Sunshine State football.

Dear Page 2:

When it was all over, the FSU fans were consoling themselves with the words, "It wasn't as bad as it could have been."

Gator fans -- certainly the one who was screaming in my ear all night long and probably a host of others, too -- were beating themselves up with the words, "It wasn't as bad as it could have been."

Florida had defeated FSU for the first time in three years and, in a rational football universe, that might have been enough, even if they had won by a single point. They had beaten the spread, which was 15, so even the (many) people who bet their hearts instead of their heads when it comes to Gator football should have been satisfied. They had beaten them 37-13, which is as conclusively as they were, themselves, defeated (30-7) in Tallahassee, Fla., last year. They won every phase of the game -- passing, running, defense, special teams. They did turn the ball over more than FSU (2-1) but, then, their defense had stopped FSU twice in close after the offense had given up the ball and the Seminoles had a feeble chance of getting back in the game. Even their band's halftime show was better than the one FSU's Marching Chiefs put on.

Steve Spurrier
Steve Spurrier, left, and assistant Dwayne Dixon couldn't get enough points to satisfy all Gators fans.
Not enough. Nowhere near it.

The Gator sitting behind me -- whose vocal chords surely must be throbbing today -- wanted more. Long after the game had been safely put away, he was screaming for another score, more blood, and giving Steve Spurrier hell for "going conservative," a crime Spurrier's worst enemies, even those at FSU, would never accuse him of.

This game was about revenge and, I suppose, if you feel vengeance is owed you, then you can never have quite enough. Every bite tastes good.

The Gators had been looking forward to this one for a long time.

All week long, Bobby Bowden had been poor-mouthing his team's prospects against Florida "in their place." Everyone knows about the homefield advantage in sports, but it is hard to imagine any home being more of an asset than Ben Hill Griffin stadium in Gainesville, Fla., a venue that Gators famously call "the Swamp."

The advantage, of course, does not lie with the home field -- they are all the same size, and both FSU and Florida play on grass -- but with the home fans. In the world of college football, there are fans and, then, there are Gators fans.

"I came down here from Michigan for graduate school," a young man at the Fred Bear Archery Museum told me before the game, "and I'd been to games in Ann Arbor, where they put 106,000 people in the stands. Compared to the Swamp, that place is quiet."

You make allowances for hyperbole in the world of sports, where superlatives get tossed around the way politicians make promises during an election year. The sports world is littered with "greatests" and "ultimates" and, after a while, you just build in a discount factor. But the noise at Ben Hill Griffin is, truly, something you just have to experience. And when FSU is the opponent, that experience is memorable.

The noise actually started building outside the stadium, before the game. Kickoff wasn't until 8 p.m. -- the wages of television is college football games at night -- so by midafternoon, the parking lots around the stadium and University Avenue, where the bars are located, resembled some kind of first world bazaar where, instead of bicycles and scooters, traffic was clotted with SUVs bearing Gator flags and decals, and the sidewalks spilled over with people whose right forearms were held perpendicular to the ground to keep their drinks from spilling. Furthermore, in this bazaar, the women were definitely not covered. Not their faces, and a lot more besides. And what was covered was covered tight and close.

This mobile mass of people and vehicles gave off a constant roar, something like the ocean in the hours leading up to a storm. It seemed to rise in volume over time, steadily and without your realizing it. By kickoff, you had to shout to be heard, and everybody, it seems, wanted to be heard.

  The Gator sitting behind me -- whose vocal chords surely must be throbbing today -- wanted more. Long after the game had been safely put away, he was screaming for another score, more blood, and giving Steve Spurrier hell for "going conservative," a crime Spurrier's worst enemies, even those at FSU, would never accuse him of.  
  
Inside the stadium, the stands looked liked a Leroy Neiman when he'd run out of everything except orange and blue. The storm, now, had moved in closer to the coast, and the noise had grown in volume. Fifteen minutes before kickoff, if this place were a factory, OSHA would have mandated ear protection.

When the FSU band took the field, the crowd booed. With real conviction. They weren't just trying to cement a reputation. They wanted to rattle those tuba players and majorettes. Especially the one twirling fire.

The cheers for the Florida band were just as ardent as the boos for the Marching Chiefs.

And then, when the Gators came through the tunnel, the noise got serious. The storm had made land. This sound, I'm here to tell you, was tangible. It had real substance and was so strong you felt it. It overloaded all your other senses and got down inside your organs.

I can only remember one motion penalty on FSU -- it was a fairly flag-free game -- and if Bowden is looking to take something away from this game to hold close and cherish until next year, it might be his team's discipline. The defense, in fact, looked a lot better than it had against North Carolina State, a team that is not in Florida's class. For a bunch of underclassmen, the Seminoles handled themselves pretty well.

Mike Nattiel, Jabar Gaffney
Mike Nattiel, left, and Jabar Gaffney celebrate Florida's 37-13 win over Florida State.
But ... whatever they were willing to give -- had to give -- Florida eagerly took. The fans around me (and, again, I assume they were representative) didn't like the short passing game and the runs. They wanted the Gators to carve them up; cut them, as the old saying goes, three ways: long, deep, and continuously.

Two early touchdowns on two long drives weren't hardly enough so when the Gators were on offense, the fans weren't as loud, actually, as they might have been. The noise was merely deafening after a Gators reception for 10 or 15 yards and a first down. But when the Florida State offense took the field, it was overpowering. Florida has lost precisely four games in the Swamp since Spurrier arrived here in 1990.

Two of those insults were inflicted by FSU. Under Spurrier, Florida has never beaten FSU in Tallahassee, where the noise is considerable but of a different order. The crowd in this stadium gives you a whole new appreciation of home-field advantage and a sense of what Tennessee will be up against when they come in on Dec. 1 to play a game that was rescheduled after Sept. 11.

Florida needs this game to stay in the national title picture and, indeed, to get into the SEC championship game. Spurrier insists that for this reason, Tennessee, not FSU, is the biggest game of the season. And the Gators fans seem to feel just as much antipathy for Tennessee as they do for FSU. They take a kind of cruel relish in beating the Vols every year and sending them to the Citrus Bowl. Breaking Tennessee's spirit in September is a fine thing. Doing it during December will probably feel even better. Especially after you have already dispatched Florida State.

If they get to the SEC championship game, however, the Gators will not be playing in the Swamp. You wonder how they'll handle the quiet.

Sincerely,
Geoffrey Norman

grinnin' gators 


ALSO SEE:
Geoffrey Norman Archive

Gators' defense puts clamps on overmatched Seminoles





 
    
 
 
 ESPN.com: HELP | ADVERTISER INFO | CONTACT US | TOOLS | SITE MAP
Copyright ©2001 ESPN Internet Ventures. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and Safety Information are applicable to this site. Employment opportunities at ESPN.com.