GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Dan Mullen said he liked to use spring game attendance numbers to troll rivals, but when Florida announced its spring game attendance number of 39,476, a lot of fans and reporters trying to crack the code simply scratched their heads.

After all, Mullen had joked during the week that he liked to use the spring game attendance to poke fun at the score of a particular rivalry game.

"I know this: I have fudged it before. Well like, not like ridiculously, but for like silly stuff. Maybe like the attendance matches the score of a certain game or something like that during the season. We've done that type of stuff before.

"Yeah, 41,014. Yeah, 41,140. Right?"

In other words, sorry Florida State. (Florida won this year's contest 41-14)

But 39,476, the announced attendance from Saturday's game? It took almost 72 hours for anyone to figure out exactly what that one meant. Mullen even played it off after the game when asked about it by reporters.

"I’ll let you guys figure it out," he said. "You guys think about it and get back to me."

Then he paused, told a reporter he might have to do some math.

"You know, three plus nine is..."

Completely confused, the reporter finally conceded there was no meaning to the number and Mullen seemed OK letting it slide at that. On Monday, though, a particularly savvy Internet sleuth on the r/FloridaGators Reddit page came up with the answer. 39,476?

It's been 39 years since Georgia last won a national title. The Bulldogs have played 476 games since reaching the pinnacle of college football achievement.

Now, Mullen certainly hasn't been shy about trolling Georgia. In one of his first booster stops he took a shot at the Bulldogs, who were fresh off an SEC East division title in 2017 after the Gators had won the previous two.

"Listen, making it to one SEC Championship Game doesn’t make you a dominant program, you know what I’m saying?" Mullen said. "I mean, two out of the last three years we’ve still been to the SEC Championship Game. So even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while."

Earlier this month Mullen also suggested that Georgia adding Florida State to its future football schedule with a home-and-home series was Georgia simply trying to "catch up" to Florida.

He even subtly seemed to imply that Georgia might not be totally forthcoming in how it recruited Justin Fields, who promptly transferred to Ohio State after one season.

In any case, the spring game attendance troll seems just far too coincidental to be an accident. Of course, Georgia has won the SEC East each of the past two years and Mullen is currently sporting an 0-1 record against the Bulldogs while with the Gators.

So funny trolls aside, Mullen will have to crank it up on the field if he hopes to keep the Florida fans laughing going forward.