Deep South Smack Talk: Florida Hate Week Edition
Well, there have been a lot of strong words and emotions thrown around in these Deep South Smack Talk posts this year. We’ve had Alex call the Dawgs “Pop Warner wanna-be’s” and The Vol Abroad question my parenting skills. This is to be expected when debating the merits of SEC football teams. I don’t think anything has aroused so much passion from Southerners since Sherman torched Atlanta. But, in character for a Gator fan, no one has struck so ruthlessly as Jamie did this week. Taking a cue from the Republican playbook (one that he attests to loathe) he has thrown down the ultimate gauntlet – he has questioned my patriotism, has cast aspersions on my citizenship in the Bulldog Nation. Karl Rove would be proud.
Jamie, exhibiting a way with words surprising for a Florida alum, aptly describes the panorama of fans found in our north Florida high school. He is correct in his statement that the amount of red in the team’s uniform was directly proportional to the amount of red in the fan’s neck. He is also correct that I was not a Georgia Bulldog fan in high school. If the truth be told, and this is shameful, I was a casual Gator fan in high school. But upon graduation, I bolted north for college and have not looked back since.
But what he fails to mention is that high school was two decades ago and I think that Jamie and I are both proud of the fact that we are nothing like the people we were in high school. Hell, we were both Republican supporters in high school and I
suspect that he cringes in shame as I do when he recalls working to elect George I in 1988. I’ve evolved since high school, I’ve made the transition from the boy I was in 1989 to the man I am today. But, like the mascot they revere, most Gator fans have sat in evolutionary stasis since the Cretaceous period (thanks for the talking point, Gypsy).
When did I become a fan, Jamie? How many games did I attend? I feel as if I’m under some sort of political inquisition - I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Wait, wrong topic. I became a fan some time after I enrolled in the University of Georgia in 1996 as a “mature” student. I’d urge Jamie, and anyone else inclined to question my loyalty to read this post for more detail about my evolution as a Dawg fan. I didn’t get to take my seat in Sanford Stadium as many times as I would have liked because I worked two jobs while studying at the university full time. I spent virtually every game day serving coffee, beer or checking the IDs of red and black adorned fans. I became a lifelong fan on a June day that I did get to take a seat between the hedges. This time wearing a black gown and a mortar board. On that day the University of Georgia, the finest university in the South (I’m not winking, Gator boy) became my alma mater. As Jamie no doubt knows, that Latin translates to “nourishing mother” and questioning my loyalty to the University of Georgia is equivalent to insulting my own mother.
Damn, I hate Gator fans.
Now that we’ve cleared things up a bit, let’s talk about Saturday. Up until last year, Gator fans liked to throw around a lot of numbers – 15 of 18 was one of their favorites, referring to the number of times that Florida had won the game in the last 18 years. What’s funny is that you don’t hear a lot of numbers coming from Gator fans anymore. I think that even Gator fans, with their simple reptile brains, realize that what happened in the River City last year was a transformative experience. When the Dawgs drove for the first score and the whole team took the field in celebration, the Gators’ death grip on this series slipped. When the scoreboard read Georgia 42, Florida 30 at the end of the game a new day dawned for the Bulldog Nation.
Jamie’s given you a borderline apocalyptic version of what he predicts will happen in Jacksonville. Sounds more like the Book of Revelation than a Saturday in northeast Florida, but I’ve got to give him credit for pretty words. But pretty words aren’t going to do much for his alma mater this weekend. The simple fact is that Urban Meyer and his unevolved reptiles fear their canine tormentors. Tim Tebow, last year’s Heisman Trophy winner and the Florida quarterback, had his worst game of the year against the Dawgs. This is largely because he spent most of it on his back. What do you think is going to be running through Tebow’s head as he faces up against the Georgia defensive line for the first time on Saturday afternoon? A defensive unit that made him their bitch last year?
This game rarely has much to do with the superior football team and I’m not sure which team has more talent this year. It is a game of passion and history and hate. The team that brings the most of those three things typically wins. Last year’s pounding has made the Gators angry, but it has also filled them with fear. Florida Coach Urban Meyer was so shaken by the game last year that he now speaks only in the third person. When the two teams take the field on Saturday in Jacksonville what we’ll have is a quivering band of nervous little boys, with their reptilian brains playing back their humiliation of 2007. On the other side of field will be a proud and confident legion of men in red and black ready to strike another blow for all that is right in the world.
It’s time for the big dog to eat, Jamie. Saturday’s menu features one of those Sunshine State specialties – fried gator tail.
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Georgia vs. Florida kicks off Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern (6:00 a.m. Adelaide) in Jacksonville on CBS. Expat fans can watch the game online by using a loophole to get around CBS’ U.S. only regulations. Send me an e-mail if you want to know how.
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Athens, Georgia’s own Vic Chesnutt seems a fit for this post. The legendary songwriter has recently released a new album done in collaboration with fellow Athenians Elf Power. “Dark Developments” (Orange Twin) was recorded over last winter in Chesnutt’s home and the album has the feel of a winter day spent inside in front of a fireplace. Chesnutt and Elf Power are blogger friendly artists, so if you like what you hear, buy the whole album here.
Popularity: 52% [?]

In celebration of the imminent humiliation for the state’s flagship university, I’m happy to present an expanded
I would be curious to know when Chris actually became a fan of the Dogs and how many games he actually attended, because it did not really seem his style while he was living in the, I admit, most pleasant town of Athens. I suspect, like myself, he became a true fan years later after having left Athens. My first year at UF I went to all the games like any other stupid newbie, but a trip to Mexico and the lefty political types I hung around with soon convinced me that football was for the brain-dead, plastic-fantastic mainstream. I started scalping my tickets after that (I was also desperately poor, so that made it easier). And while I was more likely to find myself being asked to leave a political rally by a smartly dressed law enforcement agent (I like to imagine it was Secret Service) for yelling to Dan Quayle “Can you spell “cat”?” than attend a football game, I still went to a game or so a year for old time’s sake. But I was no longer a fan, even the indifferent one I had been in high school. I became a true fan again only after I had moved away, and as a Florida boy, was freezing my ass off experiencing winter for the first time in Pittsburgh and wondering why people thought I talked funny. It took a few years, and by then I was way too lefty and, I imagined, hip to publicly admit I cared about football. But I did; it gave me a connection to home, and to my surprise I found myself depressed after a UF loss (next year!) and elated after a victory. So I should forgive my friend for his apostasy, I suppose, as the heart of the college football fan is a strange and unmapped territory.
On the first day of the eleventh month of the two thousand and eighth year in the Faulknerian fever swamp of Jacksonville, two forces will meet, one representing good and the other the most foul and pestilential evil. Our beloved Gators will come for vengeance. The force of arms shall be our only ornament-our only rest, the fight. Upon entering the arena, as Urban Meyer brings forth the machine he has constructed of the blood and sinew of mere mortals, he will turn to the assembled Bulldogs, shaking but perhaps still confident in their arrogance, and proclaim: “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
Be forewarned, I’m a little pissed off today. So much so, in fact, that my hatred of the Florida Gators is going to have to sit the bench for a bit.
I got bogged down in the perfect storm of work obligations last week, resulting in a weekend spent almost exclusively writing lectures, exams and reports. The only thing that kept me from becoming A Bitter Man was that I managed to wrangle myself a day off on Tuesday. A free midweek day with Boy Z is enough incentive to plunge through an Australian spring weekend spent hunched over a computer.














Teaching kids that were born the year I graduated from high school is sometimes a slightly demoralizing experience. I like to consider myself a relatively “cool” guy - down with the kids, so to speak. But nearly every day my students come up with some bit of slang that just mystifies it entirely. Clearly they aren’t as awed in my presence as they should be or they would be speaking in proper English. After all, I am a university lecturer. I guess the sad fact is, that I’m just getting old. Verging on that stereotypical aging hipster that you generally find in “Modern Poetry” classrooms at liberal arts universities.
AFM: Do you bristle at the emo label being applied to your band?
With apologies to William Shakespeare,
Wee Z doing his best Knowshon Moreno impression.












