Between Archie, Peyton, Eli, and now, Arch, the Mannings have been a part of America’s football consciousness for nearly 60 years. Only one of the family’s college football rivalries, however, has included a spelling test, years of shade, and has spanned generations.
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Within that lore, holding a spot that goes beyond merely an opponent, are the Florida Gators. First as haters-in-chief, then as part of the redemptive end to the family’s first college football run, Florida was there.
While Archie Manning never played Florida in three seasons with Ole Miss from 1968 to ’70, the Mannings are 2-3 as starters against the Gators. On Saturday, Texas QB Arch Manning, with a lot of family history behind him, takes his turn in The Swamp (3:30 ET, ESPN).
It will be the next entry in what was once a salty family vs. school rivalry that featured an all-time hater.
A brief history lesson
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The current Cheez-It Citrus Bowl was previously the Capital One Bowl and, before that, just the Florida Citrus Bowl. While the Orlando-based game annually hosted top-10 teams and was where Georgia Tech beat Nebraska to earn a share of the 1990 national title, it is a tier under the major bowl games. Secondly, this Manning-Florida rivalry began in the era before the BCS, let alone the College Football Playoff and the nascent days of conference championship games. So, one loss could doom a season, or at the least, keep a team from a conference title and a major bowl.
Arch Manning might already know this, but it’s important to the lore of this rivalry and will make sense later.
The visor’s world
Peyton Manning’s recruitment was a big deal. His father’s legacy in the SEC combined with Peyton’s ability made his college decision one of the biggest recruiting decisions ever in the sport. By the time Peyton landed with Tennessee in 1994, Steve Spurrier was going into his fifth season at his alma mater.
The Gators would win five of the first six SEC championships. That’s what Peyton Manning was stepping into. The Tennessee-Florida rivalry would become the SEC’s biggest game for much of the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2000, eight of the 11 meetings would be top-10 matchups.
Manning wasn’t a part of the Vols’ 31-0 loss to No. 1 Florida in 1994. In the 1995 game, Manning and the Vols bolted out to a 30-21 halftime lead only to see Florida outscore Tennessee 41-7 in the second half and lose 62-37.
“It’s a 60-minute game. They don’t stop the game after 30 minutes,” Florida tackle Mo Collins said after the game.
The refrain would be played more than “Rocky Top.”
Manning was solid in the game, going 23-of-36 for 326 yards and two scores. The problem: Florida’s Danny Wuerffel was better. He threw for 381 yards and six touchdowns.
It would be the only game Tennessee would lose that season, but it would keep the Volunteers out of the SEC title game and relegate them to the Citrus Bowl. An amazing Manning performance in an excruciating loss to Florida and a less-than-satisfying bowl trip.
Before the 1996 game, the trash talk went wild.
Florida defensive lineman Tim Beauchamp all but guaranteed victory.
“They look vulnerable, very vulnerable,” Beauchamp said before the game. “… It should get pretty ugly.”
Beauchamp also took a shot at Manning. “He gets rattled,” Beauchamp said.
Archie Manning offered advice to his son ahead of the game, saying “spend the week with a smirk on your face, have some fun,” Sports Illustrated reported at the time.
When the game between the No. 4 Gators and No. 2 Volunteers began, that smirk might have turned into a grimace. Florida went for it on fourth down on its first series and scored on a 35-yard touchdown pass. Manning was intercepted on Tennessee’s first series. He was intercepted once more in the half and the Gators built a 35-6 lead at the break.
Manning, who attempted 65 passes in the game, would lead a second-half rally. He threw for a school-record 492 yards and four touchdowns but also had two more interceptions, which came at the goal line when Tennessee was threatening to score.
“We would’ve liked to have been accused of running up the score, but it didn’t work out that way,” Spurrier said after UF held on for a 35-29 win.
The Gators would go on to win the SEC, go to the Sugar Bowl and win their first national title. Tennessee was off to the Citrus Bowl. Wuerffel, the first of many QB foils for Manning, threw for just 155 yards in the game against Tennessee, but had four touchdown passes and, crucially, no interceptions. He would go on to win the Heisman Trophy that season as well.
How do you spell Citrus?
Just a reminder — the “Head Ball Coach” loved hating on his team’s rivals. Spurrier surely meant what he said about running up the score on Tennessee in 1996. In 1994, he called Florida State “Free Shoes U” for allegedly failing to monitor agent activity. He called Ray Goff, who coached the Georgia Bulldogs from 1989-1995 and never beat Spurrier, “Ray Goof.”
In 2015, after a fire at Auburn’s library destroyed 20 books, Spurrier said “the real tragedy is that 15 hadn’t been colored yet.”
“He’s the needler champion of the world,” former FSU coach Bobby Bowden told Mark Schlabach in 2014.
Give him a national title (that came in a rout of rival FSU) and a summer booster tour and he could be in his hating bag like he was when he uttered his most famous barb.
“You can’t spell citrus without U-T.”
The brevity. The sass. The deeper, historic context. It was Spurrier’s masterpiece of hating on Tennessee.
He also had something for Manning, who had announced he was returning for his senior season, as well.
“I know why Peyton came back for his senior year,” Spurrier said. “He wanted to be a three-time star of the Citrus Bowl.”
Despite being a No. 3 vs. No. 4 matchup, it wasn’t the wild shootout the previous two games had been. Manning was 29-of-51 for 353 yards and three touchdowns, but he also threw two picks. The Gators again shredded the Vols’ defense. Fred Taylor ran for 134 yards and Florida QB Doug Johnson threw three touchdowns in the Gators’ 33-20 win.
That was it. Manning would never beat Florida. He lost five games as a college starter. Three came to the Gators. Tennessee would go on to win the SEC in 1997 only to be crushed in the Orange Bowl by Nebraska. Ironically, due to losses to Georgia and LSU, Florida would land in the Citrus Bowl.
“It bothers me that we never did beat Florida, but hey, I can’t control the way other people view Tennessee or view my career,” Manning said after the game. “I’m sure Coach Spurrier will go make a few more jokes. That’s fine. He’s got a good ballclub.”
Eli’s coming
In the moments after Peyton Manning’s last game against Florida, Archie Manning was feeling the weight of watching his son’s very public athletic struggles.
”Everybody talks about how great and wonderful it is to be at all the games and see your son playing. But I’ll tell you something: It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Archie Manning told The New York Times afterward.
”Sometimes I wish someone would just knock me out and tell me what happened when it was over. This wasn’t fun.”
Five years later, in 2002, Peyton Manning was going into his fifth season with the Indianapolis Colts, and Spurrier was about to start his ill-fated tenure as an NFL head coach. After being turned down by then-Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan and then-Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, Florida hired Ron Zook, a longtime assistant in college and the NFL, to replace Spurrier.
After choosing Ole Miss, his father’s school, and becoming the starter as a sophomore in 2001, this is what Eli Manning was stepping into for his first crack at the Gators in 2002.
While the game featured two eventual Heisman Trophy finalists and Super Bowl QBs in Manning and Florida’s Rex Grossman, it was not an aerial bonanza like those in which Peyton played.
Manning was 18-of-33 for 154 yards and no touchdowns, and Grossman was 19-of-44 with two touchdowns and four interceptions. One of those picks was returned for the winning touchdown.
The 2003 game allowed Manning to exact a bit of vengeance on his family’s nemesis. It would also mean a return to The Swamp for the Mannings. Following Peyton’s last game there, Archie Manning claimed he’d never go back. But he was there nonetheless.
“[Archie] had one last trip and he got to end it on a good one,” Eli Manning said after the game.
In the 20-17 Ole Miss win, Manning threw for 262 yards and led a 50-yard scoring drive to win the game. The lore of the family history and status of the Gators was, perhaps, not lost on Eli Manning who got a shot on Florida afterward.
“That team is beatable,” he said after the game. “They’re really not the team they were a couple of years ago when they had [Danny] Wuerffel and all of those other guys.”
That Manning ended 2-0 against Florida.
Next Manning up
Prior to the 2025 season, when Arch Manning was the preseason favorite for the Heisman, Spurrier found a little more hating in his heart.
“They’ve got Arch Manning already winning the Heisman,” Spurrier said on the “Another Dooley Noted” podcast. “My question is, if he was this good, how come they let Quinn Ewers play all the time last year? And [Ewers] was a seventh-round pick.”
Spurrier might have been right. Prior to putting up huge numbers against Sam Houston State, Manning was 124th out of 136 QBs with a 55.3% completion rate and struggled in his only other road start at Ohio State. On the other side, Florida is 1-3 after starting the season ranked No. 15 in the AP, and coach Billy Napier is on the hot seat.
Saturday will mark 22 years to the day since a Manning played the Gators. While Arch Manning has not yet met the preseason hype, he will have his chance to continue the family winning streak and another rancorous chapter to the rivalry.
