The Florida Gators are the intercollegiate sports teams that represent the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida. The "Lady Gators" is an alternative nickname sometimes used by the Gators women's teams. The University of Florida, its athletic program, its alumni, and its sports fans are often collectively referred to as the "Gator Nation." The Gators compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Southeastern Conference (SEC), and are consistently ranked among the top college sports programs in the United States.
The Florida Gators athletic program has been recognized as the best overall in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) over the past two decades, and consistently as one of the best in the nation. During the 2013–14 school year, the Gators men's and women's teams combined to win the Southeastern Conference All-Sports Trophy for the twenty-fourth time in the past twenty-seven years. Every year since 1983, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) has recognized the Gators athletic program as one of the ten best overall Division I athletic programs in the country in its annual NACDA Directors' Cup standings. The men's athletic program was also the winner of the 2010–11 and 2011–12 Capital One Cup; the women's athletic program won the Capital One Cup in 2013–14.
All Gators sports teams compete in NCAA Division I, and twenty of the twenty-one Gators teams compete in the SEC. The University of Florida was one of the thirteen charter members who joined together to form the new Southeastern Conference on December 8 and 9, 1932. Previously, the university was a member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association from 1912 to 1921, and the Southern Conference from 1922 until the SEC began play in the fall of 1933.
The University of Florida sports teams adopted orange and blue as their official colors in 1910, purportedly representing a combination of the main colors of the two primary institutions that merged to form the university in 1905. The alligator, or "gator," was incidentally chosen as Florida's mascot when a Gainesville merchant sold school pennants with an alligator emblem in 1908; the football team subsequently adopted the "Gators" nickname in 1911. Albert and Alberta are the official costumed mascots of the Florida Gators. Albert and Alberta are unique among the SEC's mascots as the only male-and-female pair.
