Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs caught in social media standoff over origins of ‘Bloody Tuesday’ practice

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Things could not be going much better for the Florida Gators to start the Jon Sumrall era.

Sumrall and his team are 4-0 with a 24-point beatdown of a top-five Ole Miss team less than one week ago.

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Recruiting is on fire and the whole program looks like a completely different monster than they did this time a year ago.

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Jon Sumrall looks on during a game in Gainesville, Florida.

A lot of that is due to Sumrall’s intensity as a head coach.

The 44-year-old first-time SEC coach has taken great pride in returning the edge that has been missing from Gainesville since Urban Meyer exited Alachua County back in December 2010.

Just hearing the man talk for more than 60 seconds confirms this, and in keeping with the theme of being an absolute psychopath (in the best way possible, of course), Sumrall is instituting a ritual for his Tuesday practices which will ensure maximum violence and physicality.

He’s calling it “Bloody Tuesday.”

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“We got a great indoor (practice facility) here,” Sumrall said on The Triple Option Podcast. “On Tuesdays, we don’t use the damn indoor. I don’t want anybody going in the indoor on Tuesday. We’re going to be outside. I hope it’s hot. Tuesdays have to be physical and violent, and you gotta strain, or you don’t know how to play way on Saturday.”

If you’re a Gator fan, you have to be pumped hearing that.

Jon Sumrall speaks at a press conference introducing him as the new head football coach.

After years and years of milquetoast scrimmages run by mealy mouthed head coaches, it’s refreshing to see Sumrall bringing some much-needed juice back to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

But not everyone is impressed with Sumrall’s “Bloody Tuesday,” particularly fans of Florida’s archrivals, the Georgia Bulldogs.

Dawg fans on social media have pointed out that Kirby Smart has been using the term “Bloody Tuesday” to describe his weekday practices since arriving in Athens in 2016.

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Uh-oh!

Is Sumrall guilty of copying Kirby’s homework and turning it in as his own?

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.

As Gator fans were quick to point out, the aforementioned Urban Meyer started calling his Tuesday practices “Bloody Tuesday” all the way back in 2009, and it perhaps dates back to an even earlier period in the Meyer era.

Georgia fans responded with articles from 2003 showing that former head coach Mark Richt used the phrase early in his tenure, creating a good old fashioned social media standoff.

So who’s right here?

The truth of the matter is, both of these fanbases are wasting their breath.

The term “Bloody Tuesday” isn’t some revelatory concept; it’s literally an adjective followed by a day of the week.

None of these coaches invented the printing press or discovered penicillin, and if you really want to get historical, Richt wasn’t even the first one to start using the term “Bloody Tuesday.”

Not by a long shot.

A quick Google search shows that legendary Penn State coach Hugo Bezdek coined the phrase back in the 1920s to describe his physical weekday practices with the Nittany Lions.

So, if anyone has a right to be upset with both of these programs, it’s the Penn State faithful, though I doubt any of those fans who were alive for Bezdek’s reign have an X account to be able to weigh in.

Much of coaching football is taking ideas from your predecessors and adopting them as your own with a personal twist.

Sumrall likely got the idea from Meyer, and Smart likely got the idea from Richt, who in turn adopted it from legendary Georgia coach Vince Dooley.

Kirby Smart, head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs, speaks at a podium during a press conference.

It’s like getting mad at Metallica for using power chords because Black Sabbath did it first.

There’s plenty of productive things to argue about between these two fanbases, and “Bloody Tuesday” is pretty far down the list.

Then again, this is part of what makes college football rivalries so great.

Hopefully at their press conferences next week, both Sumrall and Smart pay homage to the true originator of “Bloody Tuesday” so we can all just move on with our lives.

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It’s the right thing to do.

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