BY CLIFF SMELLEY
If her clothing and accessories don’t tip you off, then perhaps her vehicle’s Florida tag will as its letters spell out “UF OH MY.”
Take a visit to her home, and you’ll find one room filled with items related to the Florida Gators, such as footballs signed by Emmitt Smith and the three Heisman Trophy winners (Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow), basketballs signed by Billy Donovan and Al Horford and even a doll modeled after former UF women’s basketball player Monique Cardenas, a graduate of Keystone Heights High School.
In other words, you don’t need to be wearing Orange-and-Blue glasses to see that Keystone Heights’ Tina Bullock is a Gator through and through. Her passion for University of Florida athletics carries over into her involvement with the Clay County Gator Club, which will honor her and her late husband, Chuck, by inducting them into this year’s club Hall of Fame.
“It’s so heartwarming because (Chuck would) be so thrilled,” Bullock said.
Then, knowing how what her husband’s feelings would’ve been to the current state of UF football, she added, “He’d wish we were doing better, I’m sure.”
Bullock and her husband are charter members of the club, which will also be inducting Kristine Johnson, Cindy Roll and Janet Steffens into this year’s Hall of Fame. The club, which is an affiliate of the UF Alumni Association, began in 1997.
“I’ve made some lifelong friends there,” Bullock said. “One of them is one of the people I share my (football) tickets with now. She’s a retired teacher from Duval County.”
Bullock, who worked in education also, has served as the club’s president — a role her husband also filled — but first, she served as its entertainment chair. Another person had been filling that role and asked Bullock to help her with an event. Afterward, that entertainment chair said to Bullock, “Man, you’re so good at this, why don’t you take it over?”
“So, I did that for a lot of years,” Bullock said. “I wrote a little skit called, ‘The Farkles,’ which was a little spoof of Tennessee.”
Anytime Sam Kouvaris (who was a longtime sportscaster and sports director at Jacksonville’s WJXT-Channel 4) was the club’s guest speaker, he had a role in “The Farkles.”
“He loved all that,” Bullock said.
Bullock has made such a mark on the Clay County Gator Club that one year she received a UF Alumni Association Clubbie award, which usually goes to an entire Gator club rather than an individual member.
Becoming a Gator
Yet Bullock wasn’t always a Gator. In fact, she didn’t even go to school at UF.
Sports were a part of her life growing up, though, thanks to her father. When her brother became a UF student in 1961, the family began cheering on the Orange and Blue.
Then, Bullock met Chuck, who was a big sports fan. He loved the Gators, though some of his family members were FSU fans.
“We went on a lot of dates to games and things like that,” Bullock said.
Chuck was such a big fan of the Gators that when the Bullocks’ son, Chris, was deciding where to go to college, be told him, “Son, you can go anywhere you want, but we’re only paying for the University of Florida.’”
“He made the right decision,” Bullock said with a laugh. “He went to Florida.”
It was after Chris graduated that Bullock and her husband began purchasing season tickets for football games.
“We got tickets in the north end zone when my husband was alive,” Bullock said. “When he passed away, I thought, ‘This is hot and far to climb.’ So, we started looking around, and I found tickets in the south end zone in the shade.”
Whether you’re sitting in the shade or under that blazing sun that comes with watching games that kick off at 1 p.m., there’s nothing quite like watching a game at The Swamp as far as Bullock is concerned. She remembered her first time attending a game, saying she couldn’t believe how “electric” the atmosphere was.
“There’s nothing like it,” Bullock said. “Being at a game in person so much more exciting than watching on TV.”
Memories
Bullock and her husband got to attend some great games, of course, including all three that resulted in national championships. She especially remembers the 2006 title game, which was played in Glendale, Arizona. It was a challenge to get game and flight tickets as well as lodging, Bullock said, noting that Ohio State had wrapped up its berth in the championship game before Florida. The Buckeyes were the preseason number-one team and earned the number-one ranking in the Bowl Championship Series after going undefeated in the regular season and winning the Big Ten championship.
“There were so many Ohio State fans there,” she said.
It took a USC loss to UCLA and Florida’s SEC-Championship win over Arkansas to propel the Gators over Michigan in the BCS rankings and earn the right to play Ohio State.
Ohio State scored first in the BCS National Championship when Ted Ginn Jr. returned the opening kickoff 93 yards, but the Gators outscored the Buckeyes 34-7 the rest of the first half in building a 20-point lead.
“That was a great game,” Bullock said.
One of her memories had nothing to do with the game itself. The jumbotron displayed an image of UF and NFL standout Emmitt Smith, the running back who is a member of both the College Football halls of fame. A young Ohio State fan asked, “Who’s that?” Bullock mentioned that Smith played for the Gators and the Dallas Cowboys, but the fan still had no clue. Bullock then mentioned he was on “Dancing with the Stars,” which resulted in the fan saying, “Oh! Emmitt Smith!”
“He would just die if that’s what he was known for,” Bullock said.
Some of the losses are even memorable. The Bullocks were able obtain tickets to the 1996 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, which pitted the Gators against Nebraska. The tickets had them sitting with the families of the Florida coaches. They were warned beforehand to not say anything negative or be critical of the Gators in any way.
Bullock said that was hard for Chuck since Nebraska routed Florida 62-24.
“I think he did a lot of biting his tongue that day,” Bullock said.
Watching games creates memories, but so, too, do positive experiences. Bullock said her husband, who passed away in 2014, wanted to make the trip to College Station, Texas, to watch Florida play Texas A&M in 2012 — Texas A&M’s inaugural year in the SEC. The personnel at the Aggies’ Kyle Field helped Chuck, who was ill and on dialysis.
“They were so nice,” Bullock said. “Where our seats were, they were very hard to get to. They actually let him walk across the field to get to our seats because it was a closer walk.”
It was a great experience overall as the Gators won 20-17. Plus, Bullock said she “learned more about boots that day that I ever had in my life.”
“I didn’t know there were all these types of boots,” said Bullock, who received an education from some of the Texas A&M students.
Bullock said Kentucky fans were some of the nicest she encountered, but added that was during a time when Kentucky wasn’t very good in football. She remembered going to a game and being impressed with the student turnout. She said as much to a stadium security member, who replied, “Well, we have a little secret. They don’t get their basketball tickets unless they come to this game.”
Favorite Gators
When it comes to her favorite UF football coach, Bullock said it’s Steve Spurrier. She admired his quick with and quips.
“I have a whole book of quotes from Steve Spurrier,” she said.
Bullock once wrote a letter to her favorite coach, but not because she was a fan. She did so on behalf of Jimmy Brumbaugh, who played defensive line for the Keystone Heights High School football team. Bullock was the KHHS principal at the time and knew that Brumbaugh really wanted to be a Gator, but he told her no one from the school would even attend a game to give him a look.
Imagining Brumbaugh going to another SEC school and helping that team beat the Gators served as inspiration. Bullock told her husband she was going to write a letter to Spurrier. Chuck’s response was, “Have you lost your mind? You think he’s going to look at a letter sent by you?”
Bullock has a number of Spurrier playing cards, representing the different teams he played for and coached. She made copies of those cards and covered the outside of her letter’s envelope with them.
Spurrier himself didn’t respond, but Bullock did receive a call from a UF coach, who told her, “We just don’t need Jimmy’s position.”
Still, her effort did result in a UF coach attending a KHHS game.
“At least he got a look,” Bullock said of Brumbaugh, who played for Auburn and now coaches at Coastal Carolina University.
As for her favorite UF football player, Bullock said it’s probably Tim Tebow, explaining that it’s more about who Tebow is as a person.
“That’s what people should aspire to — not just to be a great player, but a great person as well,” she said. “He has high morals.”
Bullock said her husband’s favorite player was probably a different UF quarterback.
“He loved Danny Wuerffel,” she said, though added that Chuck, who grew up on Gators football, liked a lot of the old-school players as well.
Club fun
The Clay County Gator Club has had UF football coaches as guest speakers. Bullock said she remembered when Ron Zook spoke after he was hired to replace Spurrier. Zook said he had spent so much time traveling that he called his wife and asked, “How do I get home?”
When it comes to the Gators, it’s not about just the sport of football for Bullock. The same, of course, can be said about the Clay County Gator Club. Bullock said she enjoyed having Kelly Finley, the women’s basketball coach, as a guest speaker. Finley shared a story in which a player complained to her about playing time. The coach’s response? “Look, if we don’t win, I get fired. If you don’t win, you’re still playing.”
Guest speakers have also included sports journalists, such as the aforementioned Kouvaris, the late David Lamm and Dan Hicken, who is an Action Sports Jax (CBS 47/Fox30) anchor.
Spurrier’s parents, Graham and Marjorie, who are deceased, were members of the club. Ron Coleman, a current member and a member of the club’s Hall of Fame, was a track-and-field athlete at UF. He was the school’s first Black scholarship athlete.
“It spans all walks of life,” Bullock said of the club’s membership. “We’ve got people who are very wealthy in there to regular people like myself in there. We all have one common goal: to talk about Gator sports.”
Actually, the club has two common goals, as another is to help young people get through college.
“We usually give about 10 to 13 ($1,000) scholarships every year,” Bullock said. “The nice thing about our scholarships is they’re renewable. We’ve had kids who got it start their first year as a freshman and go all the way through their master’s program.”
Presenting scholarships, listening to guest speakers, participating in watch parties and traveling to games — that’s what the Clay County Gator Club is all about. If you’d like to know more, please visit claygators.com or “Clay County Gators” on Facebook.
Soon-to-be Hall-of-Fame member Bullock can’t think of a better way to enjoy UF athletics than in the presence of so many others who bleed Orange and Blue. She jokes about driving from Keystone in the opposite direction of Gainesville to board a bus in Fleming Island that then takes her to Gainesville for a game.
“It’s all about the camaraderie,” Bullock said.
