FL/GA - Still the World's Largest Cocktail Party

Since I had to come back to America last week, I decided to swing through Jacksonville for the annual Florida/Georgia (or Georgia/Florida depending on which colors you wear) football game.  As the title of post says, I don't give a crap what the stupid UF President Bernie Mac's anti-drinking/anti-fun policies say or about him forcing Jacksonville to remove the title of "World's Largest Cocktail Party" from the event.  Everyone there knows that it is still the Worlds Largest Cocktail Party.

For those of you unaware, the annual Florida/Georgia game is a football game between the two school that has been played in Jacksonville every year since 1933 (except 94 and 95 when they were rebuilding the stadium in Jax).  As the following pictures show, it is quite a weekend.

• Top left: The hockey teams square off the night before, so I had to drop in to see my boys.  Yes, they beat Georgia.  Starting to make a habit out of beating them.


• Middle middle: A healthy Gator themed breakfast.


• Bottom left: Celebrating our getting the TV to work after over an hour of messing with it.  Turns out a remote control is helpful and practically required.  Also turns out that if you walk around a tailgate long enough and leave your wallet with someone who has a TV of the same brand, you can borrow a remote control that will work with your TV.


• Top right:  The start of the tailgate, a calm group of about 16 with some casual beer pong.


• Bottom right: You party through the injuries!


• Top middle: This is just the liquor table.  This does not include the keg, bottles, or Margarita blender.

As the day wore on, the tailgate grew.

• Top middle-right: These highly intoxicated gentlemen saw our liquor table and offered to pay us for a drink, but you don't charge fellow Gator fans.  Especially Gator fans with blow-up dolls wearing Georgia colors.  People of that caliber drink free.


• Bottom middle-left: I snapped a picture when the tailgate was starting to pickup.  I would say we had a good 40 people at one point.


• Middle middle: Thankfully, someone had the decency to dress a bulldog in a good looking color (blue).  I just feel bad for those dogs whose owners dress them in red or black.  You wonder if they would be better off at the pound?


• Middle left: At the game, after the win.


• Bottom left: After all was said and done (don't worry, we picked up our trash).


• Top right:  My older sister and father graduated from Georgia and my wife, myself, and my younger sister graduated from Florida.  Needless to say, each group lets the other group know what we think about the opposing school and their fanbase.  Typically, each group counts the number of opposing fans spotted wearing Jean Shorts (Jorts, which Florida is famous for) and sporting mullets.  It is best to keep score on the back of a car with window chalk.  We did not do that this year, but I must ashamedly admit that the best haircut spotted was the rat-tail on on this Florida fan.  You must commend this guy.  A rat-tail that long has been growing for more than 2 years...and that means that either no one has told him how ridiculous he looks, or worse...everyone he associates with thinks he looks fine.


• Middle right: After a late Friday night partying and getting up at 7 AM to start tailgating by 9 AM, naps are not unheard of.  Don't worry, they rallied later in the day.


• Bottom right: To quote Wayne's World, "You're partied out...again!"  This guy missed the game because he had to be taken to the hospital.  Don't worry, he was fine.  After they got some non-alcoholic fluids in him, he came back to the tailgate...wearing his hospital gown (which is all that you have to wear when the paramedics cut your shirt off of you).

• Nice view of the stadium.  They split the fans in the stadium in two, Florida on one side and Georgia on the other.  You can see the color change on the left hand side of the picture.

I have to commend the Georgia fans for their ability to party and the spirit that they bring to this game.  Georgia came into this game with 4 wins and 3 loses to play the undefeated, and ranked #1, Florida Gators.  You would not have known the records from walking around the tailgates and seeing the number of Georgia fans.  After Florida's victory this year, the Gators have won 17 of the last 20 games.  A Bulldog fans under 30 probably can't remember a time when they had a legitimate shot at winning this rivalry game, but the Georgia Faithful trek down to Jacksonville every year.  They party hard and cheer hard.  And, to be fair to Georgia, they have a nice lead on the overall series (46-39-2) and they have a 15-5 run in the 70's/80's.  But the fact of the matter is that in recent years, the Gators own the Puppies!  I'll end this extremely classy post with a very serious question.

Do you know why the St. Johns river flows North?  Because Georgia sucks!

LFM Hockey

This past Tuesday (February 10th) the LFM class of 09 faced off against the LFM X class (I don’t like the use of the phrase “X” class…but it is what has stuck among LFM and so I use it). The game was a ton of fun and continues to be a great tradition of LFM. The game was evenly matched (as always the X class was held in there by the stellar performance of it’s goaltender Travis) with a good back and forth. Each class has a few hockey players and a ton of ankle benders. Those of us who can skate try to keep the game moving and fun for the rest of the team.

Side note...typically I am a goaltender (the guy in the pads pictured above) and goaltenders just stand there...so if any of my hockey player friends heard that I included myself in a group of people who "can skate" I would be laughed off the ice...but alas, I digress.

As I said, the game was a good back and forth (no team dominated) and both sides were pretty much evenly matched. The 09 class went ahead early in the game 1 to 0 and maintained the lead well into the third period when the X class tied the game up 1 to 1. With a few minutes to go the 09 class pulled ahead with a commanding (given the limited time) 2 to 1 lead and despite a valiant effort, the X class was not able to tie it up. Hats off to the 09 class, they were the victors of the big game!

Both classes after the game. Picture taken from Rodolfo's facebook account.

After the game a large group of LFMs from both classes walked to the Thirsty Ear (a bar on campus) and partied until they kicked us out. The two classes faceoff again on February 23rd and it promises to be another fun event.