by Barbara Drake (MFA ’04)

Photos from University of Florida Archives, George A. Smathers Libraries, unless otherwise noted

Excerpted from Fall 2023 Florida Gator magazine

Long, long ago, before there were 90,000 fans roaring in the Swamp, before a 22,000-seat facility named Florida Field was built on that same spot in 1930, self-proclaimed “foot-ball enthusiasts” gathered at fields on and near campus to cheer the UF varsity team, founded with the university in 1906.

From 1906 to 1910, home games were played at a ballpark near downtown Gainesville, and the team practiced on a grassy field on the north edge of campus. In early 1911, the university installed bleachers on this practice field, first known as University Athletic Field and then as Fleming Field, starting in 1915. There, through 1929, the Gators played for crowds of up to 8,000, initially as part of the Southern Intercollege Athletic Association (1912–1921) and later with the Southern Conference (1922–1932).

Fans at Fleming Field sat on wooden bleachers or stood, an all-male cheerleading squad led the school’s fight songs, and sideline commentators offered play-by-play commentary through that newfangled contraption, the radio. The era also saw the launch of some of UF’s most enduring traditions, including the Gators’ nickname and traditional song (although historians still hotly debate their origins).

UF lost student-athletes to the First World War, but the team gradually rebuilt in numbers and prowess, and by the mid-1920s had achieved national recognition. In 1928, under Coach Charlie Bachman, the Fighting Gators led the nation in scoring and lost only one game (to Tennessee), precluding an invitation to play in the Rose Bowl.

Here are photos, fight songs, poems and profiles from the Fleming Field era, 1906 to 1929.

Auspicious Start for “Pee-Wee’s Boys”

In their first varsity football game, held Oct. 13, 1906, Florida beat the Gainesville Athletic Club 16-6. The team would play six games that season (not eight, as is often cited), against amateur athletic clubs from Florida and George, as well as Mercer University and Rollins College.

The fledgling team was overseen by UF’s first head football coach and director of athletics, 24-year-old Jack “Pee Wee” Forsythe. During his three seasons at UF, Forsythe simultaneously coached and played on the team as a fullback, purportedly receiving $1,000 annually for his dual duties.

Other Gators who played two roles included Captain Roy Corbett, who also served as the athletics editor of the inaugural student newspaper, The Florida Pennant.

This photo of “Pee-Wee’s Boys,” as they were affectionately known, is inscribed, “We licked Savannah 6-0. Hallelujah. J.S.S.”  The initials may be those of left halfback Jim Shands, brother of William Shands (BA 1906), future state senator and namesake of Shands Hospital, who would join the squad the following year.

Whoever wrote those words, they were wrong. On Oct. 16, 1906, UF beat Rollins, not Savannah, 6-0. Three weeks later, on Nov. 4, the Orange and Blue lost decisively to the Savannah Athletic Club, 2-27.

Many sites, including UF’s own, list the Gators’ 1906 record as a winning 5-3; however, Florida Gators writer Scott Carter (BSJ ’95) reported differently in 2016. He revealed that a local teacher had dug through old records and pieced together that the Gators finished their inaugural season 3-3, not 5-3.

UF’s First Official Athletic Grounds

Originally referred to as University Athletic Field, Fleming Field began life as cleared land for varsity sports practice, student field days, and track and field activities. The field stretched east to west from Thomas Hall to Gale Lemerand Drive and, north to south, from West University Avenue to within 150 feet of the current Florida Field north end zone.

In 1915, UF renamed the field in honor of Francis Philip Fleming, Florida’s 15th governor. From 1911 to 1930, Florida’s football teams posted a 49-7-1 record at Fleming Field (which tended to flood in the rain, disarming opponents, according to The Florida Alligator).

In addition to being the first official home of Gator football, Fleming Field hosted home games for UF baseball and teams from Gainesville High School and Lincoln High School in the 1910s and ‘20s.

This photo shows a game in progress at Fleming Field in 1925.

Canvas Pants & Dog-Ear Helmets

1920s dog-ear helmet; photo courtesy Hunt Auctions

Jerseys, pants, and helmets: All evolved during the early decades of Gator football.

On the left, 1910 captain and star athlete Earle Abbott “Dummy” Taylor (BS 1913) models what his teammates wore in the aughts and teens: a dark wool jersey, breeches, leather shoes and socks (which eventually rose from ankle to knee length). Players wore padding of various thicknesses under or over their jerseys. Pants were made of padded canvas reinforced with wooden reeds. They laced up the front and were cinched with a belt.

In 1921, the Gators adopted a uniform in the school’s colors: a blue-and-orange jersey and orange-and-blue-striped socks. The back of the jersey featured the player’s number for identification, and the uniform design changed slightly from season to season. Above, left, J.C. Waldron (BSAE ’32) poses on Fleming Field in the Gators’ 1929 uniform.

The most popular protective headgear of the late teens and 1920s was the leather dog-ear helmet, whose flaps tied under the chin. Its extra padding offered better protection than that of earlier flat-top models. Helmets were not mandatory in college football until 1939, and early games typically featured a mixture of bare heads and a wide variety of helmets.

“The cheering was vociferous and encouraging”

The UF cheerleading tradition began on Oct. 25, 1906, when Florida beat the Rollins Tars, 6-0, at the downtown Gainesville baseball park (home to UF sporting events before bleachers were installed on Fleming Field).

Whipping up enthusiasm that day were UF cheerleaders – all male, of course – marshalled by a designated leader. The local University News reported: “Mr. S. A. Sanborn, leader of yells and college songs, stood in the middle of the group and loosed his lusty lungs through the magnificent medium of a massive megaphone. The cheering was vociferous and encouraging.”

Throughout the Fleming Field era, UF cheerleaders were instrumental in boosting school pride. In addition to performing at games, they organized pep rallies and roused freshmen from their beds to march down University Avenue in midnight pajama parades before gameday. This 1929 yearbook page shows four UF cheerleaders, dressed in “F” sweaters, demonstrating their fight poses.

When Florida Became the Gators

The year 1911 was a milestone for Florida. Playing a total of six games, the team finished with a victorious 5-0-1 record, making it UF’s only undefeated season to date. For the third year in a row, they were state champions. Public enthusiasm was so high, 2,000 fans and the Gainesville Brass Band greeted the players when they returned from beating Clemson, 6-5, on Oct. 26, 1911.

But a media event the prior week had even greater import for the team – and the university.

On Oct. 21, 1911, Florida played the South Carolina Gamecocks in Columbia, tying 6-6. According to Smathers Libraries records, “the earliest printed references to the team as the Alligators occurred on October 20th in both the South Carolina and Florida newspapers. ‘Gamecocks clash with Alligators’ was the headline in The State, South Carolina’s leading newspaper.”

That month, sportswriter Laurence “Kiddo” Woltz also referred to the team as the ‘Gators in his daily column for the Florida Times-Union.

Florida students liked the name so much, they adopted it as their own. The following spring, they voted to change the student newspaper’s name from The Florida Pennant to The Florida Alligator.

This cartoon from the 1912 UF Seminole yearbook commemorates the Gators’ victorious 1911 season, complete with the team’s new reptilian mascot.

Did “Bo Gator” Inspire the Nickname?

Historians give conflicting accounts of who or what inspired the team name “Alligators” and its diminutive form. One popular explanation is the mascot appeared on pennants sold at a Gainesville soda shop starting in 1908.

Retired University Historian Carl Van Ness (MA ’85), however, believes the name derives from the 1911 football team’s larger-than-life captain, Neal “Bo Gator” Storter (class of 1912), shown here, center, holding a football.

A child of wild Florida, Storter grew up in the Everglades and Fort Myers. At age 16, in 1907, he took his first-ever train ride to Gainesville, where he joined the university’s meager student body of 100 young men. According to a 1962 speech given Thomas W. Bryant (BS ’12, JD ’15), senior class president of 1912, Storter’s Everglades origins and his unsophisticated mannerisms earned him the nickname of “Brother Gator” or “Bo Gator,” and he quickly formed a circle of rowdy compatriots known as the Bo Gator Club.

“More fictional than real, the exploits of the Bo Gators are chronicled in several student publications in the years 1907–1910,” explains a UF Libraries page. “More than any other student group in its day, the Bo Gators typified the early Florida students. It would be logical to suggest that the origins of the nickname lie in this fugitive student organization whose leader was, by chance, the captain of the football team.”