1. Red Bethea played at the halfback position at the University of Florida and set the Florida Gators football single-game record with 218 rushing yards against the University of Chicago in 1930.
10 Facts About Red Bethea
1. 2.
Red Bethea was selected as a second-team halfback on the 1930 College Football All-America Team.
3.
Lee Roy Bethea was born in 1905 to Giles and Malinda Bethea in a farming community in Trenton, Florida.
4.
The Red Bethea family migrated from South Carolina to north central Florida shortly after the US Civil War.
5.
Red Bethea enrolled at the University of Florida in nearby Gainesville, Florida, where he played at the halfback position for coach Charlie Bachman's Florida Gators football team from 1928 to 1930.
6.
Red Bethea scored the first touchdown in a 71 to 6 beatdown of Sewanee, and the first touchdown in a victory over Georgia.
7.
Red Bethea was the star of the historic victory over Chicago, rushing for a Florida single-game record of 218 yards.
8.
Red Bethea left that position in August 1933 to attend to his business interests in Gainesville and Cedar Key.
9.
Red Bethea owned a farm in Hastings, Florida in his later years.
10.
Red Bethea was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great" in April 1986.