I’m the Greta Garbo of sports fans. Hunched in front of the TV watching Indiana Hoosier football and basketball on the Big Ten Network, I want to be alone. To suffer in silence in defeat. To breathe a sigh of relief in victory.
It has been this way since I was a kid listening to games under the covers at night on my AM transistor radio. Admittedly not a healthy way to go through life. So, since misery and joy both love company, how come I never sought company in, say, a sports bar?
To begin with, I grew up before sports bars were invented. I was 29 when a retired L.A. Rams lineman opened Legends, said to be the first sports bar in America with a satellite feed, in Long Beach, California.
There had always been bars with a TV or radio tuned to a game. But their DNA contained booze, not ball. They were not sports bars. It’s a fine distinction but a crucial one, as “Big Country” will tell you.
Big Country is the handle for Josh, a stone-cold look-alike of country-music star Jelly Roll: ample jeans, billowy checked shirt, key ring on belt—everything but the tats. I met Big Country on a rainy Saturday in October at The Thirsty Gator sports bar on the eastern outskirts of Winter Park.
“My drinking bar is Muldoon’s,” he explained, nursing a beer as he monitored the Florida-Texas game. “When I think of football, this is the place. I’m always here for my Gators and my Cowboys. This is home.”
The Thirsty Gator helped Big Country rediscover his love of the game. He used to spend all day on the couch playing Fantasy Football. “Two screens, a phone, a laptop,” he grumbled. “It got to where I hated football.”
I was there because it was time for me to sample the world of sports bars, which has grown into a $40-billion ecosphere unto itself while I was home curled up in a fetal position. Researchers report that in 2025, there were some 20,000 sports bars in the U.S., including 105 in greater Orlando. That’s a lot of chicken wings and celery.
To find one to visit I Googled “best sports bars in Orlando.” The first to pop up were vast, gleaming palaces on I-Drive that boasted such amenities as giant stadium screens, dozens of HD televisions, live fan-cams, state-of-the-art LED media walls, “chef-inspired” dishes and “electrifying” sound and light effects.
Ugh. I wanted to crawl back into my hole. I refined my search from “best” to “oldest” and discovered The Thirsty Gator, the second-oldest sports bar in Orlando and it shows, tucked in a weathered strip plaza on Goldenrod Road.
About the size of a large 7-Eleven, The Thirsty Gator has 11 screens, one pool table, three dart boards, Atari-era video golf and bowling games, and state-of-the-last-millennium media walls covered with every imaginable form of Gator football memorabilia, including a painting of a UF gator devouring a Georgia bulldog.
You can’t get a Cucumber Fizz or a Hibiscus Mule at The Thirsty Gator, but they do have Vodka and Fireball shots. Poached lobster and shrimp tacos and goat-cheese croquettes aren’t on the menu. But the cook-inspired offerings include fried cheese, Cajun boiled peanuts and a “Florida Chili Dog.”
One menu item sticks out like a tuxedo at a tailgate: fresh oysters. Tim Groves, 66, was a star quarterback at Oak Ridge High who played at UF and in the now-defunct United States Football League. After retiring, he wanted to open a sports bar and found a shuttered business on Goldenrod Road. It was kismet.
“Believe it or not, this place was already called The Thirsty Gator,” recalled Groves. “It was an oyster bar and didn’t hit on the University of Florida theme at all. But I thought it was a great name—a perfect fit for what we were trying to do.”
Groves kept the name and the oysters, a friend painted pugnacious-looking Gator mascots on the storefront windows, and The Thirsty Gator was reborn a sports bar in June 1986. (To fans of Spatz, a sports bar on East Fairbanks, I know that your hangout opened in 1981, but founder Gerald McLaughlin died in 2024. I picked The Thirsty Gator for this column because it still has the original owner.)
All five Thirsty Gator servers are college grads, including Groves’s daughter, Katie, a star tennis player and now assistant women’s coach at Rollins College. Three employees have been there for 30 years. Anthony Skyles, the cook, has been there for 38 years. Groves’s wife and co-owner, Lynn, runs the business. (Their son, Timothy, is a local attorney.)
“We’re all more than co-workers, we’re family,” said server Stephanie Sorantino, 61, who left her job as an inspector with the state department of environmental protection three decades ago for what she thought would we be a short-term gig. “The same people have been coming in for 30, 40 years. I know their kids, and now they’re bringing in their kids.”
It’s one big crazy loving family. “I can’t tell you how many oysters Tim has shucked for me,” said Big Country. “He’s just a salt of the earth guy. Now Stephanie—she’s a pain in the ass but it’s worth it.” Stephanie heard him and shouted: “Enjoy your last beer!”
Some fans have reserved seats. “They’re like, ‘If I’m not in that same seat we’re not gonna win,’” noted Groves. Some store their personal beer koozies on hooks behind the bar. One Iowa fan brings replicas of Hawkeye trophies.
Becky and Jeff from Orlando are regulars with reserved seats. Everyone knows about Becky’s superstition. “It seems like any time I go to the rest-room the Gators score,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, ‘Go back to the restroom!’ or ‘Stay in there!’” On this day, though, it didn’t work. It was Texas that scored in Becky’s absence. Still, UF won in an upset so the superstition endures.
The Thirsty Gator has survived the challenges of at-home satellite viewing, the financial collapse in 2008, the attacks on 9-11 and the lockdowns of COVID-19. It has even survived several sorry seasons of underperformance by the team—but not without taking some hits of its own.
Although the bar’s capacity is 99, just 65 to 70 showed up for the Texas game. Was it the rain? “No,” said Sorantino. “It’s because the Gators aren’t very good. When they’re good, this place is packed.” Added Groves: “But we’re still very blessed with the people we have. We try to embrace anybody who walks through the door like they’re our last customer.”
What does that mean? Well, for example, it means staying open until 3 a.m. so two fans can see the end of the Dodgers-Blue Jays 18-inning World Series game. Said Groves: “I know if the Gators were in triple overtime, I’d feel pretty bad if they closed on me.”
I plan to go back sometime when I’m off duty. But it won’t be a day both IU and UF have games. It turns out there is a limit to what Groves will do for his customers. I asked if he ever puts different games on different screens. “It’s all Gators on all the screens,” he said. “I gotta tell ya that.”
Right. It’s The Thirsty Gator, not The Thirsty Hoosier. Garbo gets it.