Gator Growl. The world’s largest Student Run Pep Rally. I’ve lived in Gainesville for 13 years now and never have I once attended. This was mainly due to a variety of reasons primarily comedians I wasn’t interested in and music acts that I was even less interested in. This year however, was a bit different.

In my humble opinion, past Gator Growls have often skewed a little too much towards the alumni or *cough* Older Money *cough* demographic. This years Growl still featured a comedian I didn’t care about…Dana Carvey…see above remark about catering to the old alumni…but it featured a musical act…OAR that I was interested in seeing along with the Jabbawockeez the ridiculously good dance crew. The girlfriend bought tickets and insisted on taking me so…off we went.

Pre-event festivities included a nice dinner at Mildred’s Big City Food with Jodi and her boyfriend Ian along with Jodi’s parents who are the proprietors of Sun Country Sports. Dinner ran a bit late so we were lucky to find a parking spot semi-near the stadium and hurried over in the first chilly night air of the year. We missed the first few 20-30 minutes of the show but none of the main acts and squeezed ourselves into seats that were designed for people under 5’8″ apparently…no wonder how they fit 90,000 people into the stadium…they’d only fit about 10,000 non-midgets. Speaking of the size of the crowd, the stadium looked half empty to me but I was later to find out that the crowd of 35,000 was actually a very large crowd!

The night started rather slow with mostly student skits that were more miss than hit and the introduction of various sports teams. Also were various famous alumni and famous stars in general shown in video clips saying, “Let the Gator Growl”. Danny Wuerffel was actually pretty damn funny during his parts of the show leading into the introduction of the Seniors on the Men’s Football Team. This was highlighted by Brandon Spike’s busting out a few lines of the Black Eyed Peas song “I Got A Feeling” and the introduction of Tim Tebow which of course elicited a huge reaction.

Next up was Dana Carvey and personally I’d give his performance a C-. He had a couple of funny jokes but he is at his best when doing imitations or characters, not as a standup comic. His act was a mix of jokes you feel as if you’d heard before basically telling a joke to the student side and then to the alumni side. Nothing too special.

The next major act were the Jabbawockeez who performed on the student side of the stadium. You could feel the energy as the students went ape shit as the crew came out. The alumni on the other hand were like, “WTF? Who are these guys?” The performance was fantastic…standard fair for the Jabbawockeez I’m sure but absolutely amazing to see in person…I feel lucky to have been there just for this one act. You could tell the Jabbawockeez had never performed in front of 35,000 people and were incredibly pumped out…they were all jumping around and having a great time when the performance ended.

The closing performance of the night was OAR…known to most people for their recent hit song “Shattered”. I had never heard any of their music before and came away a big fan. Their musical style ranged from Pop to a ska-reggae-style aka Sublime. These guys are great musicians as many of their songs featured brass instruments and at times multiple drummers…once again…well worth the price admission and it is rare to see the variety of instruments played by the band and true talent in a world often dominated by Tween Pop BS.

I had a fantastic time, I’m thankful to my Girlfriend for purchasing tickets and taking me…a new adventure experienced and more important survived!