Former longtime Gainesville Sun sportswriter Pat Dooley contributes on a weekly basis to Gators Wire with “Pat Dooley’s Book of Lists,” chronicling his thoughts on the past, present and future of Gators sports. Look for more frequent contributions during football season.
Let me set this up because I was thinking about this recently. When Gator fans start talking about some of the great games in school history, not all of them resulted in a championship.
Steve Spurrier has been asked about whether the 1997 FSU game is the greatest ever played in the Swamp and he is always quick to point out that Florida didn’t win a championship that year.
So, while he strategized his way to somehow beating the Semis with alternating quarterbacks, at the end of the day the only trophy Florida won was for the Outback Bowl.
[exco_embed id=”e5869bc6-faf6-4b7a-8c06-b5610c96a8fe”]
And seasons that end with bowl trophies feel like seasons that end with participation ribbons.
Let me be clear – these were all great wins. They are the games that you can watch over and over again on a loop. They give you a kind of warm and fuzzy feeling all over when you think about them.
But in the bigger picture, they didn’t mean as much as the ones that gave Florida a championship.
And that includes the SEC East title seasons. It’s my list.
And when I say these are only “Modern Era” wins, I consider the Modern Era to have begun the day I saw my first game, which was Auburn in 1962. If I didn’t experience it, I’m just writing what someone else felt that day.
As many times as I have heard stories and written a chapter in a couple of books about the 1960 Georgia Tech game, I was five and more concerned about Hoss Cartwright than Lindy Infante.
Here are my 10 — maybe some are more personal for me than they were for you.