1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s
1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
2000s        
Frustrations might be expected at a school that was thwarted by a piece of deadwood in its first official game. Dr. T. H. Taliaferro, the newly arrived president of Florida Agriculture College in Lake City (the school's name until 1906, and its home before the move 50 miles downstate to Gainesville in 1905). He enthusiastically endorsed intercollegiate competition for a team that had been unable to find any since beginning play in 1889. On Nov. 22,1901, the squad at last took on Stetson at the Fairgrounds in Jacksonville. Trailing 6-0 late in the second half, FAC marched to the eight-yard line when, as the Florida Times-Union reported, 'A stump in the field interfered with the play and the ball had to be carried to one side, to Lake City's disadvantage. That stopped the drive." The team and the school became accustomed to ill fortune.

In 1904 it lost its five games by a combined score of 22~0. But when wiry workaholic G.E. Pyle took over in 1909, he brought several innovations. One was success: Pyle's Gators teams went 26-7-3, a career winning percentage of .763, which is surpassed in the Florida record book only by Spurrier's .849. Pyle coaxed brilliant performances out of Earl A. (Dummy) Taylor, a gifted dropkicker and broken-field runner, and in 1913 the coach engineered a 144-0 blitzing of Florida Southern.

Pyle also took the Gators to their first postseason games -- a pair of Christmastime exhibitions in Havana, Cuba. Florida won the first, but Pyle pulled his team off the field during the second in protest of one referee's ham-handed officiating. The Cuban police claimed that forfeiting a game before paying customers was against the law, so they arrested Pyle. After entering a plea at the station house, he gathered his troops and set sail back to the U.S. an hour before the trial was to begin. The 1912 Gators are fugitives from Cuban justice to this day.

 

Last Updated November 19, 2006