History of the Gator Chomp

 

It was September 26, 1981, at a Mississippi State away football game in Jackson, Mississippi.

 

Two members of the University of Florida Fightin Gator Band, Adren Hance and Monty Musgrave, heard the Mississippi State Band play a familiar tune, the theme from the movie Jaws. Adren told us, It was during the third quarter. They only played it once. Monty and I looked at each other and said, Bulldogs? When we got back to Gainesville, we asked permission from our band director to write music for the tuba and trombone.

 

That piece of music was entitled Gator Jaws. At the next home game, on October 10, 1981 (the Gators beat Maryland 15-10) the Band played their new song for the first time at The Swamp. Adren: As I raised my trombone up and down to keep the beat (for the tuba player, who was some distance away), band members and fans spontaneously began doing the chomp, in time.

 

According to several University of Florida Cheerleaders, they soon modified an old cheer, Eat Em Up Gators, Eat Em Up, which had a chomping motion, to fit the beat of Gator Jaws. In the 1983 Tower Annual, there is the first picture of a cheerleader doing the Chomp, with the caption, Jennifer Conti leads Gator fans in the jaws chant.

 

Over time it became the Gator Chomp.

 

Gator Chomp

Home

Florida Goal-liners