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Your first Gator Chomp

Escambia94

Aerospace Cubicle Engineer (ACE)
Moderator
When did you do your first Gator Chomp? Can you recall seeing your first Gator Chomp? I did not realize that the gesture was created in 1981, according to Wikipedia. I do not recall seeing a Gator Chomp until the 1990s. My high school was the Gators, so I remember doing my first chomp in early 1990s high school.

How about everyone else?
 

DRU2012

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Staff member
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When did you do your first Gator Chomp? Can you recall seeing your first Gator Chomp? I did not realize that the gesture was created in 1981, according to Wikipedia. I do not recall seeing a Gator Chomp until the 1990s. My high school was the Gators, so I remember doing my first chomp in early 1990s high school.

How about everyone else?
Oh yes--it was at the FSU game in the then-still-named "Florida Field", day after Thanksgiving, 1980--and I was there.
I believe I have told this one before, but here is the short(ish) version:
As we arrived at the stadium that day for a mid-afternoon start (sometime between 1:30pm and 3:00pm kickoff, as I recall), members of the cheer-leading squad were waiting at key points around the place, handing out single-sheet step-by-step instructions (complete with hand-drawn pictures of each step in "The Chomp") with the repeated exhortation, "We'll do it for the first time at the start of the 2nd quarter--Let's have FUN with it!"...No one really knew what to make of it, at least us students heading in that day, but this was FSU, and we hadn't beaten them any of the years I was there, and I was a Senior. Anyway, come the 2nd quarter, the announcer directed our attention to the Gator sideline "where the Cheering Squad will lead us in our inaugural Gator Chomp!", and further instructed the crowd in what they and the band would be doing to "support" us. I believe the score at the time was Gators 7, 'Noles 3.
Anyway, the cheerleaders demonstrated/led us from the "opening position", and the Band commenced that "Jaws"-like theme for the very first time. The crowd, the whole stadium, had stood for this, and quite solemly and with focused determination to get-it-right, began shooting up its right arms high and left arms low and CLAPPING once on the beat, slow at first, then faster and faster in perfect unison...I swear it looked like the Nuremburg Rallies, for goodness sakes--The Seminole players both on the field and sidelines were looking around in complete and baffled bewilderment; you could tell it rattled them, they just didn't know what to make of it.
It did more than that, as it turned out. They came completely unglued...From that point on the game became a blow-out. Having come in thoroughly confident they had our number, they never even threatened to score again--while we just had a field day. We did "the Chomp" one more time early in the 4th, but by then it was more celebration: we HAD them, it was long over, and a Gator tradition was born. Oh yeah...Final Score, Gators 35, Semi-holes 3.
 

Escambia94

Aerospace Cubicle Engineer (ACE)
Moderator
I have heard that it was Wilber Marshall that did the first on-field Gator Chomp. Does that sound right?
 

DRU2012

Super Moderator
Staff member
Super Moderator
Escambia94
I'm talking about the formal Chomp-Cheer itself--before that, fans did this thing with their hands, "hinged" at the heels of their palms--nowhere NEAR as dramatic or intimidating, right? (Actually kind of a bit silly-looking; Not something me and my friends were doing...)
I hadn't heard that Wilbur Marshall-story, but among the handful of players likeliest to have made a point of doing it on-field once they'd seen it, Wilbur is among the top candidates, I figure. Our players seemed as surprised by it as the 'Noles that first time, though--only THEIR "surprise" was much more positive and enthusiastic, obviously--you could see 'em looking around and smiling, some even taking off their helmets and stood grinning, hands-on-hips and slowly turning in place to look around the stadium, as I remember it. I still can feel the chills that ran up and down my spine, when I talk about it now.
 

DRU2012

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Can't pin point it, but my grandfather took me to Florida games ever since I can remember. I was LITTERALLY raised a Gator fan CHOMP CHOMP!!!
Ha! The Gators were about the only thing my Grandad (my father's father) and I ever agreed on...by the time I was maybe 8 or so, Saturday afternoons were about the only time I even liked him anymore, the hard-assed crusty old F*ck (he actually stopped talking to me when I was 9--basically for "being a smart-ass"...I'm told he was a "brilliant tactician", though, and he did love the Gators and college football: Though a duty-bound Army-fan too, he would have secretly had a real problem had they played each other--he wasn't real good at keeping his true feelings hidden: too arrogant to believe he OUGHT to).
 

Escambia94

Aerospace Cubicle Engineer (ACE)
Moderator
I asked my uncle, the one that introduced me to Gator football, and he says that because we caught all our games on the radio (thank you NCAA sanctions) that I was never able to "see" the Gator chomp. He assures me that the family has been Gator Chomping since the 1980s. I only caught a few Gator games on TV. Keep in mind that I grew up in the panhandle, the poorest part of Florida.
 

DRU2012

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Staff member
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Escambia94
My lifelong friends from college are from (and back in) the Panhandle--Defuniac Springs (spelling?), and live there again now, after years elsewhere...their family owns large swaths of land there, a good portion of the farm-land between Fort Walton Beach, Destin and the Alabama border--"land-rich, cash-poor", the way they used to tell it (and I saw it with my own eyes back then, though things have changed since, with the value of the land , especially near and at the coast), but they're not the farmers in the family...anyway, they are ALL Gators, the whole family, in an area that (as you well know) divides their population's loyalties 4 ways, with the Gators the smallest minority ('Noles, Tide, AUBURN Tigers, and Gators)--5, if you count LSU--and we will NOT.
 

Escambia94

Aerospace Cubicle Engineer (ACE)
Moderator
I would say that between Tallahassee and Pensacola, the team loyalties depend on whether you live in the city, country, beach, farm, or suburb. Farm kids seem to follow Alabama or Auburn since the farms are closer to the Alabama state border. Florida and FSU split the suburbs and cities largely based on where the star players go from recent years. My family is by the beach or bayou, which is predominantly Florida Gator country.
 

DRU2012

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I would say that between Tallahassee and Pensacola, the team loyalties depend on whether you live in the city, country, beach, farm, or suburb. Farm kids seem to follow Alabama or Auburn since the farms are closer to the Alabama state border. Florida and FSU split the suburbs and cities largely based on where the star players go from recent years. My family is by the beach or bayou, which is predominantly Florida Gator country.

Well, the tradition in their family was the "ones who were fixin' to be college-bound" went to UF--as her father once said to me: "If yer gonna do it and got the head for it, why go anywhere but The Best?"--which is how UF was seen , as "Florida's Ivy League", or "The Harvard of the South": While he was one of the males who was a farmer thru' and thru' and had no interest in college ("Came out with dirt under my fingernails"), HIS wife's father, my friend Tammy's Grandfather, was a former Florida Blue Key President AND Fla. Supreme Court Justice who spent almost 20 years as the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court--his book, "You and The Law" (ya can't make this stuff up) is considered the definitive overview of the development of the Florida laws and courts and is still required-reading in pre-law at UF and elsewhere--and when still alive back in the late-70s drove around in a big ol' Caddie with the very first UF-Vanity License plate with the actual custom letter/number combo, "UF 1", with a Fla. Blue Key-symbol between the "UF" and the "1"...
Anyway, I gathered even then that their loyalties were unusual in those parts, something that "set them apart" and, since the sprawling Jones family is distinctly rural, what you say about the divisions' standards go a long way towards explaining some of the comments and attitudes towards them and us when I would visit there--that and the fact that I was a smart-assed young guy with a military-mohawk, running around their county in my new dark-silver Mustang Turbo with "those wild Jones girls"--"and like them, a Gator, on top of all that!". Man, I miss those days...
 

DRU2012

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robdog
When you see it/do it in the stadium that first time, think back on that ORIGINAL "First Time" for ANYONE, as I described it above, back in 1980--a full stadium earnestly performing it together according to the "demo-sheets" and the help of a lone Cheer-squad member each planted in front of a full section, miming each step in exaggerated detail--and everything coming to a complete halt for a moment even down on the field, as officials, coaches, and players all paused to look up and around and take it all in...As I say, it had that goose-bump-producing chill, hairs standing on your neck-and-back kind of effect: I think it actually intimidated the 'Nole-players. They looked shocked and bewildered, took the longest to get set again, and really never fully "recovered"--we just rolled over them and controlled all aspects of the game from that point on. We were all still laughing and talking about it as we left Florida Field after the game...you can tell I STILL remember it vividly: All in all, as much or more even than our first National Championship (which I was at, having made a pact among friends years earlier that "if/when it finally happens"--which entailed being at the Nebraska game the year before, as well, which STILL hurts--we'd be there) ALSO against the 'Noles, that "first" (for us) win over FSU, day-after-Thanksgiving my Senior year, is (in my mind) "the Gator Chomp game", and most memorable win of all I attended, at least so far...
 

FrozenGator

Gator Fan
I've never done one with any other fans. Just in my living room. And I'm embarrassed about that, but Florida is very far from me.... :p
 

DRU2012

Super Moderator
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FrozenGator
:laugh: (laughing) Hey, ANYONE of us who says they haven't done it alone to the TV-set in the heat of a game, especially in the Tebow days, or late-game back-at-a-player after a score, etc. is LYING!

(PS How did you get that teenie-weenie print???)
 

DRU2012

Super Moderator
Staff member
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FrozenGator
Huh! Hadn't even thought to try that...after checking out pretty well everything else the first couple of days...kinda dumb on my part--Thanx, tho'...Guess I hadn't had the situation that required it, so far, but you found a PERFECT place for it! (Heh heh...I could really go nuts with this...better cool it, consciously stay away from that option, maybe ALL the options, for the most part--well, we'll see...meanwhile, we're down to talkin' print-size, instead of football.)
 

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