It’s 2024, and the local high school football outfit on Omaha Street is getting ready to open its season. However, Palm Harbor University is not the first football program that has resided on Omaha.
In 1912, not far down the street on Omaha — donning leather “helmets” and very little else in terms of protective gridiron gear — a college football team got off the ground.
The first football game ever played here in Palm Harbor — once known as Sutherland — was contested in Oct. 1912, just prior to World War I. That year, Southern College — which is today known as Florida Southern and located not far from here in Polk County — played Stetson and several high school programs. Playing strong HS teams was normal at this time, as there weren’t many colleges or high school teams.
Tampa Hillsborough HS and what is now known as Ocala Forest came and played at Southern College in present-day Palm Harbor, just behind the school’s main structure (pictured above) that was once located at the juncture of Florida Avenue and Omaha.
Within one season of beginning football in 1912, Southern was playing the Florida Gators annually — never in Palm Harbor/Sutherland because the crowds would be too big, but typically in either Gainesville on The Swamp’s predecessor at Fleming Field, or a field in Tampa or St. Pete to accommodate the larger gatherings.
Yep, you read that correctly — a college in Palm Harbor played (and once beat) the mighty Florida Gators. This is a long-forgotten fact.
Southern College was once located in the former Sam Marino/GulfView Hotel that had stood at the Florida Ave./Omaha Street location since the 1880s when the nearby railroad was built (now the Pinellas Trail).
Sutherland’s name was changed to the present-day name of Palm Harbor in 1925 — so we have a centennial coming up, folks.
Florida Southern College burned down in Jan. 1921 and today there are homes located on that site. The college moved to Clearwater temporarily, then Lakeland permanently, and is known as Florida Southern today.
In 1913, Southern U. played the mighty Gators for the first time.
The score? Florida 144, Southern 0.
We’ll get back to the Gators/Southern “rivalry” in a second (and again, our local college did get revenge one day).
Southern University’s playing ground has been confirmed by the book The Playing Grounds of College Football: 1869 to Today. While present-day PHU played its first high-level football game in 1997 with its first varsity game, Southern College played host to games here until 1920 — nearly eight decades prior.
The last home game for Southern U. here in PH was Oct. 30, 1920, against Stetson University — which is now a Division I/FCS program out of DeLand, Fla. Consequently, Southern beat Stetson in that final college game in Sutherland/Palm Harbor — 14-0.
The biggest college win ever in our current community was on Nov 4, 1916 when Southern knocked off Rollins College here, 52-0. Games seem to have been played in the level area to the east of Omaha Street and behind where the hotel/college once stood at Omaha and Florida and between Georgia Avenue and Nebraska Ave.
The best season Southern ever had was 1919 — when it won the mythical “state championship”. Yep, the Blue and White “Methodists” from our town beat the damned Gators, 7-0. It made headlines all over Florida and beyond, with Southern’s team and its fans traveling down to St. Petersburg to a larger venue at McAdoo Field — an athletic field about 99.9% of people today probably can’t place.
It was just a vacant lot named for the owner.
The newspapers reported that a special train was chartered and departed the Sutherland depot with several hundred local fans.
So again, why haven’t you heard of this “McAdoo Field”? Because that Southern-Gators game in 1919 was the first and the last college football game ever played there. McAdoo Field stood at a lot at present-day Central Avenue and 11th Street.
The Tampa Tribune labeled the Florida Gators as guilty of “calm overconfidence” in the game story. It was also labeled the surprise of the season.
Get this: In 1919, the Gators beat their present-day SEC East rival South Carolina Gamecocks up in Columbia, S.C., but couldn’t beat our local team from Southern U. With Gardner plowing through the Gators all game, Southern kept Florida off balance. The lone touchdown of the game came when Southern QB George King — playing on defense — jumped on a Florida fumble and returned it for a score, then kicked the extra-point “goal” as they were called back then.
That was that. Southern U. 7, UofFlorida 0.
This came one week after the Florida Gators had fought the Georgia Bulldogs and lost at Tampa’s Plant Field. Who knows, maybe it was a hangover effect from the previous week?
Think Southern U. cared?
Nope.
With no Florida State, Miami, USF, or UCF back in those days, the state’s gridiron title came down to Florida, Stetson, Rollins, and Southern U. Head coach E.M. Multon’s Southern team finished 5-0-0 on the year and made national headlines. A state championship banquet was later held by President Alderman (name sound familiar?) and his wife.
So there you have it: Paul Harvey’s “rest of the story” when it comes to how football got its start in present-day Palm Harbor.
When you drive up Omaha and see that brick-wall facade, you can almost visualize that former luxury hotel turned college and a sandspur-choked field right behind it — with rickety pine trees serving as goal posts. This is where football got its start in our neck of the woods.
Good day!
