Top 5 upsets at The Swamp: Florida football aims for win not seen since invention of Wi-Fi
Florida State is unbeaten and aiming for a national championship. One team and one game stands in the way of a perfect regular season for the Seminoles.
That would be the Florida Gators, who are 6.5-point underdogs to FSU. The spread would be more if FSU quarterback Jordan Travis hadn’t wrecked his knee last week, but most sober observers still don’t see how UF can deny FSU an unbeaten regular season.
Sound familiar?
Upsets have been rare at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, and the home team has been the victim in some of them. But the point remains: Surprises happen.
If Billy Napier wants to lay a little a historical inspiration on his team, here are the five biggest upsets in the history of Florida Field.
2008: Ole Miss 31, Florida 30
The Gators were 23-point favorites over the Rebels, who were playing only their fourth game under coach Houston Nutt. He ended up winning only 23 more games in four years at Ole Miss. None were more shocking than this one.
Quarterback Jevan Snead had two TD passes and ran for another score. The Gators could usually rely on their offense to bail them out back then, but Tim Tebow had an un-Tebow-like day.
He passed for 319 yards, but Ole Miss held him to seven yards rushing on 15 attempts. The biggest stop came with 40 seconds left. UF faced 4th-and-1 from the Rebels’ 32-yard line.
“I thought I’d will myself to the first down,” he said.
There was a will, but there wasn’t a way. But all was not lost for the Gators.
A red-eyed Tebow apologized profusely, vowed to out-work every human on Earth and said, “A lot of good will come of this.”
His post-game soliloquy became known as “The Promise.” Sure enough, the Gators won 10 straight games and capped it off with BCS National Championship Game win over Oklahoma.
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1969: Florida 59, Houston 34
The Cougars were ranked No. 7 in the AP poll and No. 1 by Playboy when they rolled into Gainesville for the season opener. Hugh Hefner had reason to be impressed. Houston had beaten Tulsa 100-6 the year before, while Florida had lost to Georgia 51-0 the previous fall.
That team couldn’t pass a lick. The Cougars knew it and stacked the line of scrimmage. What they didn’t know was Florida was unleashing sophomores John Reaves at quarterback and Carlos Alvarez at wide receiver.
They connected for a 70-yard touchdown bomb on the third play of the game. Reaves finished the day with 342 passing yards and five TDs.
The Gators hadn’t scored that many points since playing Washington and Lee University in 1928. The Super Sophs and a new era of Florida football had arrived.
2001: Tennessee 34, Florida 32
Both teams were 9-1, but there was supposedly no doubt which was better. Florida was a 17.5-point favorite. Its average victory margin in the SEC was 37.3 points, about 25 points better than Tennessee was managing.
The game was rescheduled after the 9-11 attacks to the end of the season. The winner would clinch the SEC East and be favored to advance to the Rose Bowl for a national-championship game against Miami.
It was all there for the Gators, but they neglected to tackle Travis Henry for most of the afternoon. He gained 226 yards as the Volunteers took a late 34-26 lead. The Gators scored with 1:10 left and went for two points, but Rex Grossman’s pass missed Jabar Gaffney in the end zone.
“It’s The Swamp, I guess,” Tennessee tackle Albert Haynesworth said, “but we made it into a pond.”
Nobody knew it at the time, but it would also be Steve Spurrier’s last home game as Florida’s coach. Losing to longtime foil Phil Fulmer. What a way to go out.
2013: Georgia Southern 26, Florida 23
The Gators had lost five straight heading into the game, and Will Muschamp was about as popular as toe fungus among UF fans. All that, and Florida was still a 27.5-point favorite over the Eagles.
They were an FCS team, and the Gators were 15-0 against lower-division schools. They’d beaten the previous seven FCS opponents by an average of 45 points. Course, that was about how many points Muschamp’s teams generated per season in Gainesville.
On this day, the defense joined the offense in the tank. Georgia Southern didn’t complete a single pass, but didn’t have to. The Eagles ran for 429 yards, the most UF had allowed since losing 62-24 to Nebraska in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl.
But that was Nebraska.
“It’s just hurt and shock,” UF linebacker Darrin Kitchens said. “Losing that type of game is embarrassing.”
1997: Florida 32, FSU 29
Scientists had long been working on Wi-Fi, but this was the year everything came together and was rolled out to the public. Scientists had also been working on stopping FSU that year and weren’t having any luck.
The Seminoles were unbeaten, ranked No. 2 and obliterating opponents by an average of 27.3 points a game. Florida was 8-2, and Spurrier had spent much of the season pulling hair out over his beloved passing game.
Weary of the erratic play, Spurrier decided to alternate Doug Johnson and Noah Brindise every play so he could “coach them up in the play when they weren’t in the game.”
It worked well enough, but the Seminoles seemed to have survived when Sebastian Janikowski’s field goal gave them a 29-26 lead with 2:30 left. Then came the biggest catch at Florida Field since Reaves hit Alvarez in 1969.
Johnson connected with Jacquez Green on a hitch-and-go for a 63-yard gain. The eruption of noise probably could have been heard all the way to Tallahassee.
Two plays later, Fred Taylor ran it in from the 1-yard line. Florida had derailed the Seminoles’ perfect season and their dreams of a national championship.
Sound familiar?
Probably not to players who’ve never known a world without Wi-Fi. But Napier will surely inform them that if it happened once, who’s to say it can’t happen again?
David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidEWhitley
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Top 5 upsets at The Swamp ahead of Florida football vs. FSU
