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1979 Florida Gators football team

American college football season

Field	Value
year	1979
team	Florida Gators
sport	football
conference	Southeastern Conference
short_conf	SEC
record	0–10–1
conf_record	0–6
head_coach	Charley Pell
hc_year	1st
captain	Bill Bennek
captain2	Nap Green
captain3	Chuck Hatch
stadium	Florida Field

The 1979 Florida Gators football team represented the University of Florida during the 1979 NCAA Division I-A football season. The season was Charley Pell's first of six as the head coach of the Florida Gators football team. Pell arrived in Gainesville with a new plan for building the Gators football program—new offensive and defensive schemes, new assistant coaches, a new attitude and new boosters fund-raising model to support the program and improve the stadium and training facilities. Pell's plan would produce many on-the-field victories over the next five years, but his first campaign as the Gators coach produced the most losses in any single season in Gators football history, ending with a winless 0–10–1 overall record and a 0–6 record in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The team, which was plagued by injuries, placed last among ten SEC teams. This was the last time until 2013 that Florida fielded a team with a losing record.

The 1979 Florida team had 4 starting quarterbacks: Tim Groves, Tyrone Young, John Brown and Larry Ochab, and John Brantley also played at quarterback, though he did not start. Brantley was projected to start at quarterback, but he was injured in the preseason.

Schedule

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Roster

Vince Kendrick (RB)

Postseason

The next year, in 1980, the Florida Gators made a remarkable turnaround. They won the first three games of that season before a loss to Louisiana State crushed Florida's hopes of being undefeated, but they ended the regular season with 7 wins and 4 losses, and in the Tangerine bowl they defeated Maryland 35-20 to improve to 8-4. At the time, this Florida season was an NCAA record turnaround, and this was the first team to make a bowl game after being winless the previous season.

References

''[http://web.gatorzone.com/football/media/2015/media_guide.pdf 2015 Florida Gators Football Media Guide] {{webarchive. link. (2015-12-08 '', University Athletic Association, Gainesville, Florida, p. 107 (2015). Retrieved August 16, 2015.)
(September 16, 1979). "Backup Elston guides slumbering Coogs past Florida". Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
(September 23, 1979). "Tech, Florida: A 7–7 standoff". The Macon Telegraph & News.
(September 30, 1979). "Bulldogs upset Gators". The Daily Advertiser.
(October 7, 1979). "Florida leads early but loses to LSU 20–3". Tallahassee Democrat.
(October 14, 1979). "Gators lose, Tide rolls 40–0 in 'laugher'". The Orlando Sentinel Star.
(October 28, 1979). "Tulsa outlasts Florida, 20–10". The Daily Oklahoman.
(November 4, 1979). "Auburn squeaks past Gators". Fort Myers News-Press.
(November 11, 1979). "Georgia tramples winless UF, 33–10, eyes Sugar Bowl". The Miami Herald.
(November 18, 1979). "Sun shines on Portela, Jaffe as UK rips Florida". The Courier-Journal.
(November 24, 1979). "Seminoles win, but Gators happier". The Palm Beach Post-Times.
(December 2, 1979). "Coleman picks off Gators, 30–24". The Miami Herald.
"1980 Press Guide University of Florida". University Athletic Association, Inc..

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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