The football team is traditionally the most
popular sport at the university, where even the spring practice Orange
and Blue Game has drawn crowds in excess of 50,000. [2]
Florida plays an eight-game conference schedule, headlined by annual SEC
Eastern division showdowns against Tennessee and Georgia, the latter
being held in Jacksonville, Florida every year and dubbed "The World's
Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party." The permanent SEC West team the Gators
face every season is LSU. In addition, the team has a yearly
out-of-conference meeting with Florida State at the end of the season.
Charley Pell took over from Dickey, bringing the Gators back to
respectability on the field, but had troubles off of it. Though he began
his career with an 0-11 season, the Gators turned it around with an
eight win season the following year, which set an NCAA record for win
differential in a year (this has since been surpassed). He went 33-15
after the winless opening season. He was fired during his (and, at the
time, the Gators’) best season in 1984 in light of major NCAA
violations.
Galen Hall coached the team from the middle of 1984 to 1989 with much
success, including an SEC title in 1984 and 1985, though these were to
be stripped due to NCAA violations committed by Pell. Future NFL stars
such as Lomas Brown and Emmitt Smith headlined the rosters. Hall went
40-18 at Florida. He had his own violation scandal, however, and was
fired during the 1989 season. Gary Darnell finished the season for him.
The football team has been one of the winningest in Division 1-A since
1990, the year Spurrier returned to his alma mater as coach. That year,
the Gators finished first in the SEC for the third time ever (the others
being the title-stripped years of ’84 and ’85), but were ineligible for
the SEC title. They won their first official SEC championship in 1991.
The team played for the championship in the first ever championship game
in 1992 but lost to the eventual national champions, Alabama. To date,
the team has played in the most championship games of any team in either
division, winning five times (1993-1996, 2000) in seven appearances.
The 1996 team, led by another Heisman winner, Danny Wuerffel, went 12-1
and won the national championship game in the Sugar Bowl, avenging an
earlier loss to rival Florida State. Their other national championship
game appearance was in 1995 in the Fiesta Bowl, later nicknamed the
“Fiasco Bowl” for its lopsided score in favor of Nebraska (62-24).
