OCALA – It took seven years but the final product is an amazing 702 page mastery of insightful knowledge and mind blowing statistics from over the last 50 years in Richard Burton inaugural book, ‘Seeds of Greatness, A History of the Florida High School Football Championships from 1963-2017.
The hottest book in the state is a master piece of the beginning of the high school football state playoffs full of nuggets, playoff recaps, district tiebreaker shootouts, wins over No. 1 ranked teams and the state polls entering the playoffs for each season.
While covering the state junior college basketball tournament in Ocala seven consecutive years and researching information about the JUCO tournament each year; Burton got the idea to research our state high school football history.
“I was the Sports Information Director at Central Florida Community College and we hosted the state junior college basketball tournament each year and I began to research information about the tournament as no one had ever done it before; and as I got all the records for that I traveled out to the Panhandle to research that and thought I should do this for high school football as well.”
Burton spent hours and hours during the week and on weekends traveling all over the state gathering information over the years looking at newspapers from Pensacola to Jacksonville to Orlando to Key West.
“A lot of the research was done at the University of Florida library, I also traveled to Lakeland, Fort Walton Beach and Jacksonville, about 25 libraries around the state, although I never traveled to Miami or Fort Lauderdale, as I was able to do some research online on Google News,” Burton said. “It was all me doing research although I dragged my step son with me a lot, I would spend eight hours a day on the weekends from about 10 a.m. till 6 p.m. and from about 5-11 p.m. on the weekdays.”
The book which weights 7.5 pounds, originally was 2300 pages but the printer would only print 800 pages according to Burton, so he tweeked it to 702 pages, adding he had about 280 pounds of research into it at one time.
Among the many things, Burton features in the book is several surprising runs by local teams over the years in addition to the stories about state powers Trinity Christian, Bolles, University Christian and Raines.
“Lee never winning a title is surprising considering how they have been over the years, if not for a goal line stand by Gainesville one year Lee may have won the title that year,” Burton said. “In 1984 who could forget the Lee-Escambia playoff game, the only defense to hold Emmitt Smith under 100 yards; and also how dominate Bolles has been over the years as well.”
Burton remembers one particular team that stood out to him, including my senior season at Orange Park, when we went 12-1 and were nationally ranked as high as No. 15 by USA Today, before falling to Bradenton Manatee in the state semifinals.
“Your Orange Park team in 1992 may have been one of the best 5 teams in the state to never win the title, you guys would club people back then,” Burton said.
There are plenty of other local teams that stand out to Burton as well, including Bolles, Raines, Palatka and Bradford.
“The 1996 Bolles team may have been the best team ever to not win state due to injuries in the title game, or what about the 1997 Raines team finally winning Jacksonville’s first ever public school state title,” Burton said. “That 1973 Raines team featuring Terry Lecount who went on to play for the Vikings was a good one, as was the 1966 Bradford team that won the second of back-to-back state titles featuring Larry Brown, who became the first Florida guy to score in a Super Bowl game.
“The 1981 Palatka team with John L Williams averaged about 400 yards rushing a game in the playoffs they beat Lee in the playoffs with their only loss that season to Gainesville in the regular season,” Burton stated. “In 1983 it was one of those rare occasions a team plays twice as Palatka lost to Titusville twice once in the regular season and once in the state title game.”
The very first year of the playoffs in 1963, the No. 5 Fletcher Senators (9-2) lost to No. 1Tampa Robinson 7-0 at Jack Taylor Stadium in the state semifinals thanks to a Randy Smith quarterback sneak for the Knights.
By the second year, the state split into two classifications in 1964 and had their first major upset as tiny Wildwood upset Columbia 12-7 in the Class 1A state championship game at the University of Florida, in what some to this day call the greatest upset in high school football.
“That Wildwood win over Columbia was the biggest playoff win ever to this day by a lot of people,,” Burton added.
That same year, No. 10 Lee made it back to the state finals after knocking off No. 5 Clearwater 17-0 in the state semifinals, before falling again to No.1 ranked Coral Gables 14-7 in the title game.
In 1965, No. 9 Bradford (12-0) held off Auburndale 14-7 in the state semifinals on its way to winning the schools first of two consecutive state titles with a 39-0 win over Hardee County at Florida Field in Gainesville.
In 1992, No. 1 Orange Park (12-1) squeaked through the state semifinals with wins over Niceville 14-13 and Mainland 10-7, before a fourth quarter collapse allowed Manatee to rally from behind and knock the Raiders out of the playoffs 37-17 in the state semifinals.
Earlier that year, Orange Park traveled to the tiny town of Candler outside of Ocala and left with a 41-8 win over host Lake Weir to take control of District 2-5A that day, little did I know that Burton and myself had played against each other that day.
“I remember your linebacker tattooing our receiver in that game,” Burton said. “We played everybody tough we were just the Cleveland Browns back then with several close losses. We were 3-7 in 1991, 2-8 in 1992 and 0-10 in 1993 and went 0-3 against Orange Park, 0-3 against Columbia, 0-3 against St. Augustine, 0-2 against Buchholz but went 2-1 against Middleburg.”
Other notable teams in the book are the Raines Vikings, who won the areas first public school state title over twenty years ago.
In 1997, Raines became the first public school state champions from Jacksonville after rolling through the playoffs with wins over Englewood 47-8, Pace 21-0, Eastside 20-17 and Madison County 24-12 in the state semifinals. In the championship game. the No. 3 Vikings (15-0) surprised No. 1 Glades Central 32-27 behind Mac Frazier’s 10 yard touchdown pass to Derrick Gaffney with 1:23 left in the game.
That was just a small taste of what’s in the book, to learn more about local football playoff history, go purchase the book.
So what’s next for Burton you ask, perhaps a second book in store.
“I have thought about that, maybe a basketball book or maybe another football book with just a lot of extra stuff, most of the stuff that was cut was excessive stuff,” Burton said. “I definitely have a lot of stuff to put in a book. It was a lot of fun to talk to people, I didn’t do It to get rich just did it really for fun.”
To purchase your own copy of the book, you can buy it online at storebookbaby.com just type in the name of the book or on Amazon and/or Barnes and Noble both on December 6.
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