Florida-Georgia Rivalry, Politics

In the realm of college football, rivalries abound. Some of them get pretty intense, with fighting often breaking out around the stadium among fans of opposing schools. With the Florida-Georgia rivalry, this is partially explained by the fact that they play their games each year at a neutral site: Jacksonville, with each side getting an allotted number of tickets, essentially resulting in neither team having a home-field advantage from year to year. So the unfortunate spin-off of this is that there are more incidents of scuffles between immature and usually drunken fans, supporting opposing teams and acting easily offended at the others' taunts. But there is a larger picture to see regarding this unique arrangement between two proud, perpetually dueling football institutions.

First of all, in college football, having a home game gives a team an enormous advantage over the visitor. Often this results in a weaker team defeating a stronger one, sometimes ruining the better team's title hopes for that year. With Florida-Georgia, though, the stronger team, be it Georgia or Florida, usually wins the game since it doesn't play under the handicap of being an "away" game. So this system favors both schools in the long run as the record has shown: both Florida and Georgia have enjoyed their share of conference and national championships while almost miraculously avoiding stepping on each other, rivals that they are. This year was an example of this: had weak Florida played stronger Georgia at home in Gainesville, they might well have beaten them, damaging the Bulldogs' chances at winning the conference division race.

In a larger context, politicians from the two major parties could learn a lesson from this arrangement. Democrats and Republicans are obviously major rivals, but there are times when they need to sit down at the table and agree to their own arrangements, which are necessary to an effective system of government. Right now, though, compromise and reason seem to be dirty words to those "principled" ideologically-driven politicians who are currently wrecking our political process and damaging our national interests. Too many of them are only concerned about the next scheduled election and what the mass media talking heads are saying about them instead of tending to the people's business.