Sports Biz

Photo By: Ken McCown Gatorade

Yes, it's true. A drink called "Seminole Firewater" was at some point made by an FSU trainer before Gatorade was invented. We confirmed that there was in fact an article written Sept. 26th, 1962 in the Tampa Tribune, which turned out to be one day after the date the clip said it was written.

But as I've said all along "Seminole Firewater" was not the predecessor to Gatorade as ABC had claimed. This morning, ABC/ESPN is backing down from their "Did You Know?" segment and Florida State, to their credit, is ending the debate.

First, Florida State's comments. The University of Florida student paper, The Daily Alligator, called their rival school and a spokeswoman said: "Nobody at FSU is claiming that we invented Gatorade. That's silly." FSU went a step further by saying they didn't think that "Seminole Firewater" was the same formula as Gatorade.

• Update: Credence To 'Seminole Firewater'
• Ok, What's All This About FSU "Inventing" Gatorade?

Now to ABC, whose games are produced by its brother ESPN. ESPN spokesman Mike Humes said in a statement: "We made a mistake. While we had multiple sources for the information we did not research that information thoroughly enough to put it on the air."

The real kicker is the fact that Alligator reporter Thomas Stewart got to FSU president T.K. Wetherell, who played for the FSU team from 1963 to 1967. Wetherell told the paper that he remembers the name of the drink but that it was Kool-Aid.

As I found out from researching the Gatorade story for my book on the topic, there were plenty of teams who were throwing salt pills in water and flavoring it with Kool-Aid.

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