History of The Jacksonville Jaguars - Jacksonville Football History

Jacksonville Football History

For decades, Jacksonville had earned a reputation of being a good football town, hospitable for both college and pro football. Every year the city hosts the Gator Bowl, an annual civic highlight traditionally accompanied by parties, ceremonies, parades and other events leading up to the game. Jacksonville is also host to the Florida vs. Georgia Football Classic, the annual college football rivalry game between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Florida Gators.

The Gator Bowl stadium was built out of steel trusses and was frequently built onto, with the final addition of the reinforced-concrete west upper deck coming in 1982. The stadium hosted short-lived teams in both the World Football League (Jacksonville Sharks/Express), American Football Association (Jacksonville Firebirds, a team that coincidentally used the Jaguars name in its earlier years) and the United States Football League (Jacksonville Bulls) and the occasional NFL exhibition game. The city briefly attempted to lure the Baltimore Colts, whose team owner Robert Irsay famously landed a helicopter in the stadium as thousands of Jacksonville citizens urged him to move the team there. City leaders also attempted to get the Houston Oilers to move to Jacksonville at one point in the late 1980s. Great efforts were made to lure the Oilers, including the creation of a "Jacksonville Oilers" banner and designation of a specific section of the Gator Bowl as a non-alcohol, family section for proposed home games. Though the efforts proved unsuccessful, it did serve as a launching pad for the city's attempt to gain an NFL expansion team.