‘The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party’ is THE name of Georgia vs. Florida

Since 1915, with few exceptions, these two rivals have met in Jacksonville, Fla. nearly every year. No, we’re not talking about the 1904 game Georgia beat Florida Agricultural College (a predecessor, housed in Lake City, to the modern University of Florida).

The game’s popular nickname, The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, goes back to the 1950s:

According to The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, former sports editor Bill Kastelz first used the phrase in a 1950s column when he wrote about a drunken fan who stumbled up to a uniformed police officer and offered him a drink.

It is a sweet nickname and one that is as unique as any in college football.

But with alcohol comes complications. In the mid-1980s, after fans rushed the field in consecutive years, the city moved to drop the name. By the mid-2000s, after issues related to alcohol consumption surrounding the game, the schools and the SEC decided to ditch the name as well.

At the time, Greg McGarity was an assistant athletic director at Florida; now he’s the AD at Georgia. He admitted dropping the name was a Sisyphean task at best.

“We are not going to be able to prevent that tag from being used, but it is our responsibility to do everything we can to educate,” McGarity said. “We are aware of the problems in the past and will do everything we can to stop things from happening in the future.”

They’ve done what they can to moot the atmosphere. They’ve put in sideline safety zones outside the stadium offering water, first aid, and things of that ilk for all fans. The police walk through tailgates and hand out Minor In Possession citations like they’re going out of style.

Still, there’s no pretense about what will go on in the parking lots outside of TIAA Bank Field this week.

That shot in the beginning with the folks jumping up and down on the pickup truck? That’s my fraternity, and I’d bet I’m only slightly out of frame of the camera shot. We may or may not have ruined the shocks on that pickup that day. I’ll neither confirm nor deny.

But without the WLOCP distinction, the game is a matchup without a name officially.

It’s one boring default. It’s alphabetical. Every other year, it’s the logo that’s draped on the side panels at the stadium ...

... and it’ll do.

But there’s no panache here. If you’re speaking to the uninitiated, it’s easy enough, but we can do better.

It doesn’t go according to the alphabet. However, the logo for this game does switch every year, since the home team swaps each year. For 2018, Georgia is first.

In 2017, a spokesperson for Georgia told SB Nation: “It’s the Georgia-Florida game (or Florida-Georgia game from the Gator point of view).”

Absolutely not.

In the last couple of years, merchandise with that name and logo appeared online.

It was not an official attempt at a new name:

That’s not an official name for the game, according to Alan Thomas, Georgia’s associate athletic director for external affairs.

He points out that “licensees have used a number of references in the past around the game on product (including this one).” Georgia and Florida “have not designated any kind of naming to the game in any manner other than allowing licensees to create product bearing the marks in association with their other (artwork).”

A Florida spokesperson told SB Nation: “We do not allow our licensees to officially name/tag a game in a way that is used across the board. We do allow them to be creative with their design elements for product being sold at retail.”

This isn’t something either school created internally, and they certainly haven’t promoted it. Which is good, because nobody liked it at all:

So, this is the teetotaling attempt by some to have something that sounds like the old thing.

But it’s honestly a word-of-mouth thing more than anything else. Google searches don’t yield conclusive results as to the origin of this attempt to name the game, and it’s not a very popular movement. But, uhh, I swear it’s a thing. A very lame and minor thing.

This might be the best attempt at renaming the game. The Okefenokee Swamp straddles the border between the two states and is just northwest of Jacksonville. Both student governments put their heads together and cooked this 10-foot oar up.

There’s a Florida side ...

... and a Georgia side.

Unfortunately, It’s not something either team runs and grabs and parades around the field after the game. It’s swapped by the student governments and displayed in the student union of the winning school between matchups.

As far as attempts to name the game, War for the Oar is pretty good.

But as far as Florida’s concerned, it ain’t gonna fly as any official moniker. And if you’re trying to make a shirt, WLOCP’ll probably get ya sued too.

“We do not allow our licensees to use the phrase World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, or anything with the terms war or battle,” a Florida spokesperson told SB Nation.

Fans on both sides still call it The Cocktail Party, as do people in Jacksonville.

“Oh a lot of people,” said Georgia long snapper and Jacksonville native Nate Theus, when asked how many people still use the cocktail party name. “There’s a ton. Everyone in Jacksonville does. You see it on Facebook and everything like that.”

How does he refer to the game?

“I refer to it as Georgia-Florida,” Theus said, smiling.

And even Verne Lundquist — the former, longtime play-by-play announcer on CBS, the SEC’s premier TV partner — referenced the name a week before 2016’s edition.

“What are they going to do, fire me?” Lundquist joked. (He was retiring anyway.)

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. In this case, you can change the name, but spirits in Solo cups and flasks will still be smuggled into the stands this Saturday during what’s historically been college football’s least predictable rivalry.