For every Georgia or Florida fan — not once but whenever they want it — there is an instant when it is not yet 10 in the morning on the last Saturday in October or the first Saturday in November, and they cross the Matthews Bridge and look down on the St. John’s River and the orange-and-blue and red-and-black tent-laden grounds below, flags unfurling in the air, smoke rising from smokers and grills big and small, and it’s all in the balance.

It can be cold and blustery and feel like God has forsaken Florida and winter is coming. Or it can be hot enough to where you melt like Crisco in the furnace of a sun that forgot autumn. And you feel it, either way.

The Florida-Georgia, err, Georgia-Florida game. The weight of it. The way it matters. The type of game that explains why we southerners set our seasons by football. To not feel passionate about this game is to invite suspicion.

“When you cross that bridge, and you see the stadium and all those people, many that don’t even have tickets, that’s when you get it,” Urban Meyer told SDS. “That’s when you realize this game is just different than any other game. I’ve coached in big ones. That one in Jacksonville is unique.”

“There’s not anything like the ride into the Florida game,” Georgia legend Nakobe Dean remembered last autumn. “You see all those people, waiting, celebrating just being there. It’s unlike anything you’ll ever experience as a player. To say you get a knot in your stomach doesn’t begin to explain it.”

Every year, come hell or high water, another chance at the Cocktail Party beckons. When you miss an opportunity, well, there’s at least 1 chapter in the book of Job that directly addresses the trials and tribulations of teams whose hearts have been broken in Jacksonville. You’ll never convince me otherwise.

The Cocktail Party is a place where a program turns the corner, where it takes a hobnail boot to the demons of too many heartbreaks of the past.

That’s what Florida did in 1990. Led by favorite son Steve Spurrier, the Gators routed Georgia, 38-7, snapping a 3-game losing streak and a spell of 10 losses in 12 tries in the process. Spurrier had felt his share of heartache against Georgia, losing the Cocktail Party — and the SEC championship with it — to an unranked Georgia team in 1966.

“It hurt to lose that one as a player,” Spurrier told SDS. “It was a game we knew was biggest. If you want a chance at any of your goals, whether you are at Florida or Georgia, you better figure out a way to win the game in Jacksonville.”

Spurrier did just that, building on the blowout in 1990 and going 11-1 against Georgia in 12 years as Florida’s head coach, with 3 wins over a Dawgs team that featured a safety named Kirby Smart.

Upsets and Cocktail Party heartache aren’t limited to Spurrier and Smart. In the past 40 meetings between the SEC East heavyweights, the Cocktail Party has seen an unranked or lower-ranked team beat a ranked or higher-ranked team 14 times. A staggering 8 of those upsets happened this century. There has been a top-ranked team go down (Florida in 1985) and 5 more top-5 teams falter (Georgia in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2020; and Florida in 2012).

Smart was so scarred by Jacksonville that he lobbied to get the game moved. He blamed the loss of a critical recruiting weekend, but deep down, we southerners know better. We know that Smart rallied against going to Jacksonville because when he took the job, Florida had won 20 of the prior 26 meetings, including 3 against him. Why should the Dawgs have to travel 342 miles to play a game in Jacksonville when the dreaded Swamp Lizards have to drive only 73 from Gainesville to the banks of the St. John’s River?

Now that Smart is 5-2 against Florida and has won consecutive national titles, he’s less vocal about moving the game. He even took time out to praise the game and the environment this week.

“I know what a special week this is and what it means to our fans and players and me. The chance to play in an incredible stadium in Jacksonville. It’s just different. It’s special,” Smart said this week.

It’s more special when you win.

SEC fans do lose, of course, even if the past 24 times Georgia has played football, it has not.

When you lose the Cocktail Party, the humid air feels even heavier.

I’ve seen coeds leaving EverBank Stadium with mascara running down their cheeks, their Atlanta in December dreams dashed by the hated Lizards or the mystifyingly good Mutts. The landscape fades from the verdant, lush Florida green to gray. It feels a little like being a kid after all the presents are open on Christmas.

“It’s absolutely spiritual; there is no tomorrow,” says Mike Foley, master lecturer and Hugh Cunningham professor in Journalism Excellence at the nation’s top-ranked public university, which also happens to be the University of Florida. Foley knows about crossing the Matthews Bridge as a fan. He has a tattoo of a Gator on his right shoulder.

It’s a game where all that heartache helps build champions who vanquish it.

Young teams learn to win here. Champions finish here.

Take Meyer’s 2005 team, which revamped its offensive scheme during Florida’s bye week to make the offense more “Chris Leak” friendly. The Gators scored on their first 2 possessions with the tweaked offense and upset No. 4 Georgia, 14-10. A year later, they would win the program’s 2nd national championship.

Like the Gators under Spurrier and Meyer, Georgia figured out how to close like a champion in Jacksonville. It erased all the demons of Cocktail Party fiascos past when it routed Florida, 34-7, in 2021, months before a generational defense that my friend Ryland Grant said “liked to chew gum and knock the hell out of people like they were all out of gum” led the Bulldogs to their 1st national championship in more than 40 years.

Florida enters Saturday’s tilt with the youngest team in the Power 5. The Gators list 30 freshmen or sophomores on the 24 positions (kicker and punter) of their 2-deep roster for the Georgia game. For many of these Gators, Saturday’s trip over the Matthews Bridge will be their 1st. For others, the knot in their stomach, as Dean put it, will not begin to explain the nerves.

For Georgia, a group of champions who last felt regular-season defeat as a program in 2020 (at where else — the Cocktail Party), the atmosphere will be old hat.

“The key when you are really good is remembering that the moment itself is special,” the late, great Vince Dooley told me a few summers ago, as we wandered his rose bushes.

“Winning is a habit,” Spurrier agreed. “You have to learn to win first, though.”

Georgia has gotten awfully good at remembering the habit of winning. The Bulldogs are rarely snakebit, and even when stung, they tend to bow up and fight back ferociously.

Faulkner wrote that memory believes before knowing remembers. The great author’s southern sensibilities apply, I think, to Florida’s young football team. The Gators remember the failures of Kentucky or the losses to Georgia in the past. Do those memories help them believe Saturday can be different? If Florida believes it can win and loses, is that part of the process of knowing how to win — of remembering? I think it would be, the same way Stetson Bennett IV had to learn through failure against Florida in 2020 to ultimately never lose a regular-season game again.