Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan lauds Florida-Georgia’s impact on the city
Florida-Georgia week is here and Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan stressed the importance of the game and its history in the city, going back to 1933.
My introduction to Jacksonville came through Florida-Georgia football games.
It was the late 1980s and early 1990s, shortly after I followed my wife from the University of Missouri to Florida, taking a job in Brevard County and heading to Jacksonville on some spectacular fall days.
I have some vague memories of the actual games, of a pair of former quarterbacks (Steve Spurrier and Ray Goff) coaching their schools, and of players like Shane Matthews and Garrison Hearst.
But mainly I remember the atmosphere inside and outside of the stadium.
This was back when it still was called the Gator Bowl, when the schools and city still openly embraced the title of “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party,” and when Jacksonville still was a few years away from becoming an NFL town.
This was a college football town.
To some degree, it still is.
But as the Gators and Bulldogs prepare to meet one more time before heading to Atlanta and Tampa while Jacksonville builds the “Stadium of the Future,” it’s hard not to wonder about the future of college football and a game like this. And there aren’t many games like this one.
If you want to argue that Army-Navy is the best neutral site college football game, I’ll give you that, especially after going to one of those a few years ago in Philadelphia. But that game moves around. It doesn’t have a sense of place.
For that, there’s the Red River Rivalry, the Texas-Oklahoma game between border rivals played at the Cotton Bowl since 1932, and Florida-Georgia, played in Jacksonville since 1933.
It will be three years, 2028, before Florida-Georgia is back. Think how much has changed in college football in the last three years, how those running the show — the NCAA, conferences, schools, TV networks — have been simultaneously selling the tradition of college football and putting it up for sale.
$169 million in coaching buyouts (so far)
I’ve always loved sports that felt rich in history and tradition, from the green grass at Wimbledon to the green jacket at the Masters. Take me out to Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. Give me Lambeau Field. And if there ever was a sport that was steeped in tradition, it was college football.
Compared to the NFL, college football felt less orchestrated, more charming, more pure.
Some of this always was an exercise in suspended disbelief.
College football has long been as much about money and distorted civic priorities as the NFL. And in some ways, it was worse because it pretended to be otherwise. But once upon a time, I could pretend, too.
Not anymore.
Just this season (and it’s far from over) schools have paid college football coaches $169 million to stop coaching their teams. When Florida fired Billy Napier, it involved a $21.2 million buyout — a bargain compared to what LSU will pay Brian Kelly ($53 million) and Penn State will pay James Franklin ($49.7 million).
The quarterback on last year’s team might be playing somewhere else this year, not because he graduated, but because he got a better offer.
I have mixed emotions about all of this. In the past, it felt wrong that the athletes were the lifeblood of a billion-dollar industry and yet they could get in trouble for accepting some free shoes. It was wrong that a coach could promise recruits that he wasn’t going anywhere, then bolt for greener pastures while the players had a much harder time moving on.
So, to a degree, I welcome change. And I certainly can make myself ignore the money and enjoy the game. I’ve been doing that with this year’s World Series, appreciating the baseball, not thinking about the payrolls.
But with college football, it’s more than just what anyone is making.
What is the future of neutral-site games?
I’ve lost track of the conferences. I grew up with conferences still making at least some geographical and numeric sense. The Big Ten Conference actually had 10 teams, all somewhat from the Midwest. The Big Eight Conference had eight teams (even if it really was the Big Two, Nebraska and Oklahoma, plus six other schools to beat up on every year). The Southeastern Conference was southeastern, the Southwest Conference was southwestern, the Big East was from the east, the Pac-10 had teams from closer to the Pacific than the Atlantic, and so on.
Yes, there were some notable exceptions to all of this. But for the most part, it made sense. The regional rivalries, the sense of place and history, didn’t diminish college football. They made it.
While the Big Eight has been gone for nearly 30 years (a fact which makes me feel old), the Big Ten now has something like 37 teams (slight exaggeration), stretching from California to New Jersey (no exaggeration).
There has been speculation that college football could be heading for an era with more neutral-site games for a very predictable reason: money.
Florida and Georgia will each receive $7.5 million for playing in Atlanta next year. And to bring the teams back to Jacksonville in 2028, the city and schools announced a memorandum of understanding last year, guaranteeing a minimum of $10 million to each school in 2028 and 2029 and $10.5 million in 2030 and 2031 — a total of $82 million over four years.
To offset those costs, the city would keep revenue from tickets, concessions, sponsorships and parking. But it’s clear that the price of hosting a neutral-site game is only going to keep going up. And it makes me wonder: As college football is selling off so many other traditions, does it diminish this one? Or does it make it even more special?
I’m not sure. But we’ll have a few years to think about that before Florida-Georgia returns to Jacksonville.
We know what the stadium will look like then.
But who knows about college football.
mwoods@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4212