GAINESVILLE, Fla.\u00a0\u2013 Blake Cox swears he once saw the late George Edmondson do his iconic “Mr. Two Bits” routine in person. Cox, a second-generation Gator, is 23 years old. Edmondson last did his thing at Florida Field in 2008.\u00a0
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\n“I was pretty young, but I’m pretty sure I saw it a couple times,” Cox said.\u00a0
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\nThe scene must have had a profound impact. It wasn’t long after watching Edmondson that Cox donned a\u00a0yellow shirt, tie and khakis to dress as “Mr. Two Bits” on Halloween.\u00a0
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\nNow, he gets to do it again. For real.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2013, the University Athletic Association began the tradition of having a notable former Gator or person from the UF community take the role of a celebrity “Mr. Two Bits” to lead the pregame chant. In 2022, the UAA invited the sitting student body president to do the honors for the annual Orange & Blue Spring Game. That annual invite turns five years old this year.\u00a0 Or does he?\u00a0
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\nAs such, Cox will follow presidents John Brinkman (2025), Olivia Green (2024), Lauren Lemasters (2023) and Cooper Brown (2022), while also kicking off the “Two Bits” ritual for the Jon Sumrall<\/a> era.\u00a0
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\n“I’m really excited about Coach Sumrall,” Cox said. “I feel like every day the students’ impression of him gets better and better. He’s done a good job of showing he’s a Gator and how excited he is to be here. It’s hard not to be fired up for him.”
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\nAnd it’ll be hard for Cox not to feel the same way about his game-day task.\u00a0
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\nHe attended Winter Park (Fla.) High and graduated last year with degrees<\/a> in political science and agricultural education and communication. His ’25-26 academic year has been spent working toward a master’s in management that he’ll finish this summer before starting law school at UF In the fall.\u00a0Along the way, his student government put in the work to, among other things, get health and athletic fees increased, build up the UF food pantry and partner with the UPD to address safety improvements on campus.\u00a0
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\nBoth the process and accomplishments\u00a0have been rewarding, but now comes one of the perks of residing in the president’s office. And he’s already got the “Two Bits” attire to match.<\/p>\n
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\n“I doubt it still fits,” Cox said.\u00a0
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\nFair enough.
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\nHe’ll have the routine down, though.\u00a0
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\n“I know the chant, but I’ll definitely be watching some videos to get the perfect technique,” Cox said. “I don’t want to do anything different. I’ll do it like the original.”
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\nEmail senior writer\u00a0Chris Harry<\/a> at\u00a0chrish@gators.ufl.edu<\/a>.\u00a0Find his story archives\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GAINESVILLE, Fla.\u00a0\u2013 Blake Cox swears he once saw the late George Edmondson do his iconic “Mr. Two Bits”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-222327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}