Georgia football legend Vince Dooley says Florida rivalry more intense than ever

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Georgia legend Vince Dooley has a warm place for the rivalry game with Florida, and the former football coach and athletic director says it’s only getting hotter.

“I think it’s just gotten more intense,” the six-time SEC champion coach told DawgNation. “It has been unusual in that there’s been chunks where teams dominated for periods of time, as opposed to back and forth.

“It’s become, to Georgia, the biggest rivalry because of the domination of Florida for a period of time.”

Dooley beat Florida with some degree of regularity during his 25 years as the Bulldogs head coach, going 17-7-1 including wins in nine of the last 11 meetings.

Dooley said the Georgia-Florida rivalry has always mattered, but it wasn’t the most important one during his coaching tenure.

“Florida was always big, but Auburn was bigger because usually the championship was riding on the Auburn game, and not just the Florida game,” Dooley said. “The toughest thing when I was coaching that we ever had to do was to play those two teams back to back.

“I vowed that I was going to get those two games (Florida and Auburn) split up on the schedule, and so we got it finally when I was the athletic director.”

Dooley was the UGA athletic director for 26 years, 16 of them coming after his College Football Hall of Fame coaching career.

The Georgia-Florida rivalry has come a long way in many respects over the years, he said.

“At one time it was all Florida, and by that I mean they had 50-yard line seats, Georgia had 20-yard line seats,” Dooley said. “And then all of the ticket takers all wore Florida caps, so we fought that for a long time.”

Dooley said there were times the Bulldogs’ discussed moving the game from Jacksonville.

“We’ve threatened it a coupe of times, but then they always go the extra mile to get some equity in the game,” Dooley said. “But yes, Florida has to get on a bus and drive 60 miles, we have to get in an airplane and fly down, but they balanced that out, too.”

Fact is, when Dooley was dominating Florida, the Jacksonville site wasn’t a big deal.

“When Georgia did well, we just felt Jacksonville was an extension of south Georgia, that’s how it was viewed,” Dooley said. “But then when Florida started dominating, then Georgia people said, ‘well, it’s a Florida home game,’ so it just depends, I suppose.”

This season’s version of the annual border state grudge match also known as the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” pits two top-10-ranked SEC teams in No. 7 Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) and No. 9 Florida (6-1, 4-1 SEC).

The 3:30 p.m. Saturday matchup at the TIAA Bank Field, the home of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, will be nationally televised by CBS and features marquee buildup with both the SEC Network and ESPN’s College GameDay set on hand.