Silencing the nickname no longer adds up for the Georgia-Florida football game
There was a press conference in Jacksonville this week to discuss the Georgia-Florida football game.
Or is it Florida-Georgia?
Anyway, the interesting thing was how the mayor and other city officials never used the game’s most popular and enduring name.
Can you say, “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party?”
Not without getting the side-eye from the people who run the extravaganza on the banks of the St. John’s River. Like liquor during Prohibition, authorities banned the name synonymous with the Georgia-Florida football game.
They believed it conjured visions of drunkenness, debauchery and Ron Zook wearing a beer helmet.
It did, though there is no evidence the Zooker ever slammed pregame Bud Lights at the Palatka Gator Club tailgate party.
There was and is a lot of drinking. So to clean up the image and avoid the allusion they endorsed any mayhem, the City of Jacksonville stopped using the alcohol-infused name in 1988.
The schools dropped the name in 2006. They got with the SEC and asked CBS to do the same. Verne Lundquist would no longer greet viewers with, “Welcome to the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.”
It’s time to welcome it back.
A lot has changed in the past 20 years. Namely, Jacksonville and the two universities are now in the booze business.
In essence, they are wagging a finger with one hand and serving you a $9 Dos Equis with the other.
Florida began selling alcohol at games in 2016. All SEC schools eventually followed, though Auburn and Georgia initially only sold alcohol in premium seating areas.
They both joined the party this year. Beer is now available to every fan old enough to drink at Sanford Stadium.
The last parcel of the moral high ground has been lost. Or, more accurately, sold.
Georgia’s projected to generate about $1.4 million from alcohol sales this year. That will pay for about two top-flite receivers and a decent linebacker these days.
Between NIL, the transfer portal and the Atlantic Coast Conference expanding to California, college traditions are becoming as extinct as $3 pitchers of beer. “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” has been around since an Army guy (Pete Dawkins) won the Heisman.
Bill Kastelz, the sports editor of the Florida Times-Union, was walking through the Gator Bowl parking lot in 1958 and saw a drunk offer a beverage to a policeman. He penned a five-word description, and it quickly became a brand name.
And why not? Good rivalry names are hard to come by. This one was catchy, succinct and oh-so-precise.
Many others have been floated as a replacement. The River City Showdown. The St. John’s Shootout. The War for the Oar.
That last one is named for the trophy that goes to the winning school. It’s a 12-foot-oar carved from a 1,000-year-old oak tree in the Okefenokee Swamp.
I doubt anyone outside the swamp knows it exists, whereas every football fan knows about the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.
It’s a nickname, not an endorsement of debauchery. Nobody thinks “The Holy War” between Utah and BYU inspires fans to pick up their swords and go on a crusade against infidels.
That said, I get the angst over promoting a party image. This isn’t 1958. If “The Andy Griffith Show” were being filmed today, Otis the town drunk would be written out of the script.
Real-life incidents flared in the mid-80s. Fans stormed the field two straight years to celebrate.
An inebriated UF student fell to his death in a parking garage in 2004. A year later, a student was beaten to death after leaving a downtown bar area.
As tragic as those incidents were, would calling the game “The St. John’s Shootout” have changed anything?
If authorities really want to curb such dangers, here’s a suggestion:
Stop selling alcohol to fans.
Since that’s not going to happen, here’s another suggestion. After decades on CBS, this is the first year ABC is televising the game.
Let Rece Davis welcome America back to “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.” Let fans say it without getting the official side-eye.
Otherwise, it looks like you’re throwing the world’s largest hypocrisy party.
David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun’s sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on X @DavidEWhitley
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