Can Georgia's Kirby Smart reverse the "Spurrier Curse?"

When Steve Spurrier, the 1966 Heisman Trophy winner at Florida, returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1990 he got…

When Steve Spurrier, the 1966 Heisman Trophy winner at Florida, returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1990 he got some very early advice:

Move the Florida-Georgia game out of Jacksonville, where it had been since 1933.

“They felt that Georgia was dominating the game too much and that the Bulldogs had too big of an advantage,” Spurrier told me not long ago. “They thought it would be smart to just play the thing home and home.”

Spurrier would have none of it.

“It didn’t make any sense to me,” said Spurrier, who is now an ambassador to the Florida athletic association and will be a coach in the new Alliance of American Football that launches next spring. “The stadium was a short drive away from our campus (in Gainesville). Georgia had to fly to get there. Shoot, the name of the stadium back then was the Gator Bowl.”

The game was not moved.

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Spurrier’s record against Georgia as Florida’s head coach: 11-1.

Spurrier won six SEC championships and a national championship in his 12 years as the head Gator. But I have always believed that one of his greatest accomplishments as a coach was to flip the entire psychology of the Florida-Georgia game.

In fact, the momentum from Spurrier’s run against the Bulldogs was so powerful that it continued even after he left Florida in 2001.

Spurrier became Florida’s head coach in 1990. In the 28 years since the Gators are 21-7 against Georgia.

Call it The Spurrier Curse. And on Saturday No. 7 Georgia (6-1) will meet No. 9 Florida (6-1) in a game that will go a long way in determining who wins the SEC East.

Georgia had its dominant coach in the series as in 25 years (1964-1988) Vince Dooley was 17-7-1 against the Gators.

There is an irony to 1964 because Dooley’s first season at Georgia was also Spurrier’s first season as Florida’s starting quarterback. Spurrier was 1-2 as a player against Georgia, which denied him an SEC championship in 1966. Spurrier’s desire for revenge on Georgia is one of the things that drove him to save his very best for the Bulldogs once he became a coach.

Since Dooley retired after the 1988 season (ironically his last game was in the Gator Bowl against Michigan State), Georgia has been looking for a coach to exorcise the Steve Spurrier curse and return command of the rivalry back to the Bulldogs. None of four coaches since Dooley has even posted a winning record against Florida.

Could the coach that ultimately turns the rivalry back towards Georgia be Kirby Smart? The Georgia people certainly hope so. He’s 1-1 in his first two meetings with the Gators, including last season’s 42-7 thumping on the way to an SEC championship and a spot in the CFP national championship game.

Meanwhile, Florida thinks it has found the long-term answer at head coach with Dan Mullen, who was an assistant to Urban Meyer from 2005-2008, and coached in four Florida-Georgia games.

"This game," Mullen said this week, "is why you come to Florida."

As we mentioned earlier, the 1964 season was Vince Dooley’s first as Georgia’s head coach and Steve Spurrier’s first as Florida’s starting quarterback.

So just for fun, we went back and looked at how the Georgia and Florida coaches stack up in the rivalry in those 54 years. You’ll find that only one Georgia coach after Dooley (Mark Richt) posted more than one win against the Gators. He was 5-10.

You’ll also find that since Spurrier, four different Florida coaches have posted winning records against the Bulldogs.

GEORGIA COACHES VS. FLORIDA SINCE 1964

Coach (Years)…………………..Record vs. Florida

Vince Dooley (1964-1988)……..17-7-1

Ray Goff (1989-1995)……………..1-6-0

Jim Donnan (1996-2000)………..1-4-0

Mark Richt (2001-2015)………….5-10-0

Kirby Smart (2016-2017)…………1-1-0

Total……………………………………..25-28-1

FLORIDA COACHES VS. GEORGIA SINCE 1964

Ray Graves (1964-69)…………………2-3-1

Doug Dickey (1970-78)……………….3-6-0

Charley Pell (1979-84)…………….….1-5-0*

Galen Hall (1985-89)…………………….1-4-0

Steve Spurrier (1990-2001)………….11-1-0

Ron Zook (2002-2004)……………………2-1-0

Urban Meyer (2005-2010)………………5-1-0

Will Muschamp (2011-2014)…………..1-3-0

Jim McElwain (2015-2017)………………2-1-0

Total……………………………………………..28-25-1

Total since Steve Spurrier……………..21-7-0

*--Galen Hall took over for Charley Pell during the 1984 season and was head coach for Florida’s 27-0 win over Georgia.

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