Jenni Carlson, Sports columnist
Gator fans serious
BCS title game Florida faithful loud and rowdy
By Jenni Carlson
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241
Published: December 23, 2008
In this April 2, 2007 picture provided by the University of Florida, a student attempts to climb a greased light pole among a crowd of fans in the streets of Gainesville, Fla. moments after the men's UF basketball team won its second consecutive championship win. The University of Florida can raise a glass to another national title - best party school in the country. The Gators, known for wild celebrations following national championships in football and basketball, wrested the party title away from West Virginia University this year. AP Photo/University of Florida, Kristen Bartlett Grace
NORMAN — Bob Stoops was once loved by Florida fans.
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Soon, the lauding will change to loathing.
The Oklahoma coach, after all, is on the opposite sideline now. He will be the enemy in the BCS national championship game. He will be in hostile territory in
Miami, the Gators’ backyard.
He will hear it.
Everyone in crimson and cream will.
Prepare yourself,
Sooner Nation. Gator fans are serious about their team.
Their natural habitat, The Swamp, was once dubbed "the loudest, most obnoxious and notorious piece of real estate in all of college football. Mardi Gras with a mean streak.
Woodstock on bad acid.”
Yikes.
Despite OU’s storied football tradition, it has never played Florida. That means the fans of both programs have never interacted. Sooners and Gators have never mingled on South Beach. Never mixed in the
French Quarter. Never gathered in Old
Scottsdale.
Sooner fans will see Gator fans up close and personal for the first time next month in Miami.
They might not like the view.
Mark Bradley, who writes sports for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, did a fun ranking before the season. He rated
SEC football fans on their level of obnoxiousness.
He ranked LSU fans at a demure No. 8.
(Sooner fans who strolled the streets of
New Orleans a few years back might dispute that number. If you want to fire up the Sooner Nation, just mention LSU fans and their "Tiger bait” chants.)
At the top of Bradley’s list: Florida.
His assessment: "Gator fans didn’t become obnoxious when
Steve Spurrier started beating everybody. They were obnoxious when their team couldn’t win the SEC to save its life.”
Ouch.
In the SEC, Florida football fans are a hated bunch. That’s saying something considering the passion of the fans in that conference.
Thing is, Gator fans were long the annoying little brothers of the league. They chirped. They chided. They crowed.
But they talked a better game than their team played.
Florida was long a conference cellar dweller. Between 1933 and 1979, the Gators won only 54 percent of their games. They couldn’t even win a conference title, much less a national title.
The past couple decades have been a different story. Since 1980, Florida has won two national titles, seven SEC titles and become one of the nation’s elite programs.
Still, the fact that Florida fans cheer a program that needed 50-plus years to win its first conference crown is a sore spot for fans around the SEC.
Then there is the atmosphere at The Swamp.
More than 88,000 have packed the place for 123 consecutive games, and with its steep-seat configuration, all the noise they create has less chance to escape.
Playing there in 1991, Florida State drove inside the Gator 10-yard line late in the game. With the crowd roaring, the Seminoles jumped offside twice, killed the drive and secured victory for the Gators.
ABC had a field-level decibel-reading devise that said the noise during that drive was equal to that of a jet engine.
The Swamp isn’t just loud. It’s rowdy, too.
Gator fans have been known to pee in cups, then throw them at folks not wearing orange and blue.
Vicki Fulmer was physically assaulted at The Swamp when her husband, Phil, and his
Tennessee team played there in 1993.
There’s even a story floating around that a press scribe wore a "Gator” cap from the parking lot to the press box to blend in with the masses.
To hear Stoops talk, you’d think
Gainesville is nirvana.
"I have got great feelings and memories,” he said of Florida earlier this month during a press conference in suburban Miami.
Those feelings and memories might change after this. Stoops, after all, isn’t guiding the Florida defense or wearing a Gator visor anymore.
If you’re not for Florida, Gator fans are against you.
And as Stoops and the entire Sooner Nation are soon to find out, they’re not shy about letting you know it.
Jenni Carlson: 475-3314.
Jenni Carlson can be heard Monday-Friday from 3-6 p.m. on KEBC-AM 1340.
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Dana, Tacoma - . . . . . . .
Just wondering if around Tacoma you're known as Delusional Dana because if you'd look at a map you'll clearly see that even at it's lowest point, Oklahoma is at least 400 feet above Forida. And on January 8th you'll see that Superior and Sooners are 1 and the same. Cheers!