It’s Cocktail Party week.

For many Florida and Georgia fans, it’s a week that sets seasons.

The border war on the banks of the St. John’s River is stitched into every red and black and orange and blue color of life for these fan bases, with memories as thick as the salty Jacksonville air.

Run, Lindsay, Run.

Knowshon Moreno … meet Brandon Spikes.

A dance party in the end zone.

Rex Grossman breaks Georgia’s heart.

Florida is No. 1 no more.

Have a day, Kyle Trask.

The biggest games are known by a simple phrase, and the most devoted Georgia or Florida fan remember them fondly or fearfully, depending on allegiance.

There aren’t many rivalries in any sport, let alone college football, where a single phrase beckons to a specific moment, frozen and immortalized in time.

There aren’t many rivalries with their own Hall of Fame, either, but the Cocktail Party has a Hall of Fame honoring the game’s greatest participants.

The best coaches in this game are revered and reviled forever, immortalized with nicknames that tend to feature a pejorative or expletive, depending on the bestower.

“That Damn Dooley,” as the Miami Herald dubbed Georgia coach Vince Dooley after his Georgia team manhandled then No. 1 Florida 24-3 in 1985, ending Florida’s brief, maiden trip to the top of the AP Poll.

“The Evil Genius,” as Mark Bradley dubbed Steve Spurrier, who terrorized Georgia for 11 wins in 12 tries at the helm at his alma mater.

And then there’s Kirby Smart, or (EARMUFFS!) Kirby, as Florida fans on a choose your expletive adventure have come to refer to Georgia’s coach during his 8-plus seasons in charge at Georgia.

Smart is 6-2 against the slimy Swamp Lizards, but it might as well be 30-2 the way he seems to relish in slicing the scales off the overmatched reptilians.

Sure, Kirby might not go as far as the Evil Genius and actually admit out loud that the Cocktail Party means more to him than any other non-championship game, but his actions say that loudly enough.

Take 2021, when No. 1 Georgia walloped the Gators 34-7.

The win was a slice of humble pie for Dan Mullen’s Florida program that had bested Smart behind a brilliant Kyle Trask just one year prior.

For Smart, it was a chance to flex.

First, Smart lost his temper on his staff after Florida scored a late touchdown, spoiling Georgia’s chances at shutting out the Gators, who carry the nation’s longest consecutive game streak without being shutout into Saturday’s game at EverBank Stadium — 455 and perhaps counting.

Then Smart went into the postgame press conference and addressed the reason his program was ascending college football’s summit as Mullen coached his final games at Florida.

“You recruit in this sport or you die. You better be recruiting all the time. It’s 25% evaluation, 50% recruiting, and another 25% is going to be coaching, but if you don’t recruit, you’ve got no chance,” Smart said, before setting his sights directly on Mullen, a masterful play-caller and game-planner whose hubris never allowed him to realize he couldn’t simply out-scheme everyone he played.

“There is not a coach in the world who can out-scheme talent all the time. If you believe you can out-scheme talent every Saturday, you won’t win.”

Smart didn’t bury the hatchet from that 2020 loss after 2021, either.

Just last season, after his Georgia team humbled the Gators 43-20 in a game not remotely as close as that lopsided score, Smart teed off on Mullen again.

“I don’t see it or hear it, but I know it’s out there,” Smart said when asked about a prediction by Dan Mullen that the Gators would upset Georgia. “Somebody texted me before the game, all these people predicting we’re not going to win today. Golly, where’s that coming from? Supposed to be my friend. He didn’t like to recruit, though.”

Those comments are just a snapshot of how deeply personal the Cocktail Party is to Smart.

An All-SEC safety at Georgia, Smart was 1-3 against the Gators as a player. One loss, in 1995, was played in Athens and that 52-17 Florida win was the most lopsided defeat for Georgia in Sanford Stadium history. Another loss, a 31-point debacle in a cold Jacksonville rain in 1998, cost Smart a 10-win season as a senior.

“(Smart’s) message for that game was it means so much to everyone at Georgia. But we knew it meant so much to him. He never forgot the way they used to get crushed in that game. It’s personal when you lose,” Georgia’s unanimous All-American, Butkus Award winner and current Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean told SDS. “He told us all our goals are ahead of us if you win that game. But it means more than that to him.”

In that respect, Smart mirrors Spurrier.

Spurrier struggled as a player against Georgia, and nearly 60 years later, he’s still sore about a 27-10 loss to an unranked group of Dawgs in his 1966 Heisman campaign that cost the Gators the SEC Championship.

Spurrier took that vendetta to the sidelines when he became head coach at his alma mater, just as Smart has years later.

The Florida legend used to take jabs at the Dawgs whenever he could, from wondering “what happened to all the 5-star players Georgia gets under Ray Goff once they get to Athens” to claiming he wanted to score “half-a-hundred between the Hedges” in 1995. But Spurrier also understood what Smart does, which is that for Florida or Georgia winning the Cocktail Party is a prerequisite to a championship caliber season in the SEC.

“You have to win the game in Jacksonville if you want a chance to win the game in Atlanta,” Spurrier told SDS of the Cocktail Party last year. “We told our guys that every goal you have runs through that football game. It worked out for us approaching it that way.”

You can make those jokes when you win all the time.

Smart, who has won 6 Cocktail Parties and 60 SEC games in 70 tries, gets to make those jokes and his Georgia teams frequently get to play for championships. Correlation isn’t always causation, but when it comes to the Cocktail Party, the historical evidence is overwhelming that the school (and coach) that controls this rivalry is in the driver’s seat to accomplish SEC and national goals.

How correct are Spurrier and Smart to prioritize this game? How about this reality: Since the SEC Championship game was born in 1992, the loser of the Cocktail Party has won the SEC Championship just twice (2002 and 2005), and Georgia’s loss to Florida in 2002 cost Georgia a shot at the BCS National Championship.

Cocktail Party celebrations beget bigger championship celebrations.

The loser? They make a fatigued and forlorn drive home, stuck waiting another long calendar year for redemption.

Smart isn’t peerless in the college football coaching profession because he dominates the Cocktail Party, but his ownership of it is part of the story of Smart’s and Georgia’s rise to nation’s best coach and program.

On Saturday, another chance to compete in the Cocktail Party presents itself for Florida and Georgia.

Kirby Smart will have Georgia focused and ready.

If Florida wants to become great again, they’ll need to figure out how to answer the bell.