By John Kriz
Gator Week! What a week when we are preparing for the annual game with the Gators. This is what college football is all about! If a player was caught wearing ANYTHING orange, he would be assigned DAWN PATROL. Dawn Patrol occurred before the sun would rise, before classes, and preferably before breakfast! A coach would meet you on the field with his beloved whistle and you would run until he was tired. Needless to say, you did not want to run Dawn Patrol.
Game day brought several traditions that I believe are still in place today. First, the Training Table pre-game meal would serve Gator meat. Each player was given a piece whether he asked for it or not. And yes, it did taste like chicken!
Pre-game, all the players literally put on war paint. By the time you went out on the field for pre-game warm-ups and finally when you ran out on the field, you had an adrenaline rush that has yet been compared to anything else I have experienced since.
On a side note, my last game was played on Florida Field. I have my game helmet from that day and you can see a Gator blue paint streak on it. Now what I don’t tell a whole lotta folks is that paint streak is located on the lower part of the back of my helmet. How the heck it got to that location is indeed a mystery of the ages.
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