Urban Meyer reflects on how he got revenge against Georgia in 2008
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Urban Meyer was speaking from Iowa City on Saturday morning, at the site of Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show in the leadup to the big Wisconsin-Iowa showdown in the Big Ten.
But despite all of that, Meyer’s mind, at least for a segment of the show, was on what happened in Jacksonville way back in 2008, when he was the head coach at Florida. Meyer was immersed in a special season with the Gators that would ultimately end in a national championship, but a couple months before winning it all Meyer was all about winning against rival Georgia.
And doing it with boldness, brashness and a little bit of cockiness.
With Georgia and Florida playing each other on Saturday afternoon (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC), it was an appropriate time for Meyer to bring up that 2008 pounding of the Bulldogs, when Meyer’s Gators got some major payback for a loss to the Dawgs in 2007.
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Georgia beat Florida, 42-30, in Jacksonville during that 2007 season, and let’s just say Florida had a big hunger for some revenge on the Bulldogs a year later in the same stadium. That 2007 meeting came complete with a celebration penalty early in the game that almost turned into a fight, so all Florida could do in 2008 was fight back, so to speak, and it did just that in a 49-10 beatdown.
But Meyer’s Gators didn’t just win big. They rubbed it in the Dawgs’ face a little, too, with Meyer using his remaining timeouts during the final minute, just to, you know, prolong the agony for Georgia a little bit.
Meyer didn’t hold back on that day in Jacksonville in 2008, and he didn’t hold back on Saturday morning when talking about that glorious day 18 years ago.
“The payback was a 49-10 beating, and then at the end of the game, this was beautiful, there was like 50 seconds left in the game, I look up and I said, ‘timeout,'” recalled Meyer, who was also remembered that the official looked at him with question when calling that timeout. “Twenty seconds left, I said ‘timeout’ again and the coaches started laughing at me, the crowd went wild. The whole point was, you can leave when we say you can leave.”
Here is Meyer’s entire rant on that day in 2008 when Florida answered the bell against the Bulldogs:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
