Tell you what steve - I’ll give this another try and the more polite manner. everyone else can ignore the long cat. I applaud your attempt at a no true Scotsman by continually trying to link me to Aggy, but let’s return to the main point. A few posts above your post someone said that Florida and Auburn could not be rivals because they didn’t play as many games as (I forget who the hell they said)
You followed up with a comment that many of these rivalries, including SEC rivalries, should not actually be considered rivalries. You do realize that you followed up and confirmed that (paraphrasing) “ the SEC has too many rivals that aren’t rivals“ in your second post, right? I get you had your hackles up because of my post.
I’ll try to be as quick as I can.
1) Florida, and Auburn started playing in 1912, and we’re both charter members of the SEC
2) about half of our games in our rivalry were decided by a touchdown or less
3) those assholes did not lose a game at home to us until 1973. I can’t even describe how painful that was and how it produced a hate fest rivalry
4) even with the away game suckage, our overall Series record is 43-39 (favor lesser tigers)
5) late in the fourth quarter in 1966 Spurrier kicked the winning field goal. SOS was not our kicker - but our kicker was dicey and Spur-dog said “fuck it, I’ll try it coach!”. That positive press was the reason he won the Heisman Trophy that year. UF’s first. Against the hated Tigers.
6) 1985 was one of our greatest game; we held Bo Jackson to 40 something yards and beat Auburn. The next week we had the first number one ranking in Florida’s history. Again against Auburn. Auburn hated that.
7) we consider one of the greatest plays in Florida football history to be the 1987 win over Auburn. Behind 17-0, our quarterback, Kerwin Bell kept fighting back, despite being demolished by Auburn’s defensive line. In Bell’s last drive he was limping significantly, and because he had no mobility, he kept getting clobbered. Somehow we scored to make it 16-17 with 34 seconds left. We lined up for a two point conversion to win the game. We tried to pass, but Bell was quickly chased out of the pocket. He ran for the end zone at a speed that made Case McCoy look like Usain Bolt and barely scored to win 18-17.
8 ) those toothless shits also beat us several times when we are highly ranked (and even number one). It got worse. The hated Bobby Bowden’s drunk dwarf kid was their coach.
The reason I bored you with this is because I assume, naturally, you neither knew nor or cared about our history. So my small but snarky point was that if you were not a gator or an Auburn tiger, you have no standing to declare what the rivalry means to us, or tell us that our history and reasons aren’t sufficient.
I have to say, it’s a bit rare for anyone on Surly to protest the normal surly tone. But it’s cool, as I’m sitting here with a 101 temperature wondering what the fuck that is. Was I snarkier than my normal? Dunno Steve. I’m sure the first Texas-Florida game will have a kick-ass tailgate party, and I look forward to buying you a drink or seven.