OVERALL RECORD: Georgia, 46-39-2
LAST 10 GAMES: Florida, 8-2
STREAK: Florida, 2
One of the things that gets lost in the 17-3 streak for Florida over the last two decades is that the World's Largest Outdoor Coctail Party was largely a Georgia affair before then. And it is the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, despite the conspiring against it. (They've even got Wikipedia.)
In any case, the Dawgs went 23-5-1 over the first 29 games, often winning by at least two touchdowns and sometimes more. The most lopsided game, in fact, was a 75-0 blowout in 1942.
Not that Florida never had a decade or two that went its way; the Gators were 13-5-1 from 1952-1970, though many of the defeats were more narrow than the earlier Georgia wins. (And the Dawgs still got in one 51-0 waxing in 1968.)
Of course, we all know what happened in 1990. Steve Spurrier began calling his ball plays at Florida, and there were few teams he seemed to revel in defeating more than Georgia. (Did he care more about winning against Tennessee or Georgia? I suppose that's a question we'll have to wait to hear him answer.)
Only three times in the 12 games Spurrier coached against Georgia did Florida score fewer than 30 points; from 1994-96, Florida outscored Georgia 151-38. That includes the 1995 game, when Spurrier supposedly decided to use a two-year home-and-home while the stadium in Jacksonville was being renovated to become the first visiting team to score 50 or more points in Athens -- even if it took a passing touchdown in the final few moments of the game to do so.
Spurrier's defenses also did their jobs; only four times did the defense allow more than 20 points in the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, and the 37 points in 1997 -- Spurrier's only loss to Georgia as a head coach -- was the only time the Dawgs scored more than 30.
But it seems to be more than Spurrier. Ron Zook only lost to the Dawgs once and Urban Meyer also has only a single defeat in the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. He's responded by winning by a combined 90-27 margin over the last two years.
The more things change ...