The Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs meet for an especially big version of their annual rivalry game on Saturday.
Why the Cocktail Party is in Jacksonville every year
The game’s location is about mutual convenience.
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Since 1933, all but two games in this rivalry have been played in Jacksonville, Fla., and this one will be, too.
UF and UGA started playing continuously in Jacksonville in 1933, and they’ve played there every season except 1994 and 1995, when they played in Gainesville and Athens. Since the late ‘90s, the venue has been what’s now EverBank Field, home of the NFL’s Jaguars.
The series there has been pretty even, with the Dawgs holding a 44-40-1 edge in Jacksonville, compared to a 50-43-2 all-time advantage in all locales. The game has an unofficial name — the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party — that’s an homage to the legions of people who get drunk in the surrounding areas before and after.
The game is in Jacksonville because it’s mutually convenient.
Florida historian Norm Carlson explains:
“They moved that game to Jacksonville in 1933 because fans of both schools could easily get there by train, and it turned out right. The stadium was sold out the first year and from there on, that it was held in Jacksonville,” Carlson says there.
The game kept drawing fans even as others struggled during the Great Depression.
“And traditional games — the following year, the Notre Dame-Southern Cal game, which was the big national rivalry at that time, lost like 50 percent of their gate, just because of the hard times,” Carlson says.
Jacksonville is a manageable distance from Gainesville and Athens. From UF, it’s about an hour-and-a-half drive. From Athens, it’s five-and-a-half.
That’s a bit of a geographic home-field advantage for the Gators. But tickets are allotted evenly between the two teams, and both of their alumni bases are spread widely around the Southeast, making this a genuine neutral atmosphere. Last year, Georgia students didn’t claim their full ticket allotment, because a road trip like that is hard for college kids. Georgia fans quickly scooped up the extras anyway.
The ‘Cocktail Party’ has been around since the 1950s, but the schools don’t officially acknowledge it.
Alcohol’s a difficult subject for universities.
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.
Jacksonville may not be the location forever, but also, it could be.
For this game to keep getting played in Jacksonville, the two schools have to keep re-upping a contract with the city. They last did so in 2016, ensuring that Jacksonville will keep being the site of the game through at least 2021.
It’s a big event for Jacksonville tourism with an annual country music concert and something called the Georgia-Florida Luncheon and Hall of Fame Ceremony.
And for the schools, it works out fine. Both still play seven scheduled home games most years, with the Cocktail Party only wiping out a road game.
Neutral-site games have taken over the sport in recent years because teams have been able to get paid big without sacrificing home games. They’re especially popular as TV-money grabs during the season’s opening week before NFL games start.
Florida-Georgia is an exception, though. It’s pure, like the Texas-Oklahoma Red River Rivalry at the Cotton Bowl. I hope they keep doing this in Jacksonville forever.
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
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