A Clash of Former SEC Titans: The Tennessee-Florida Rivalry Still Matters to College Football

On Saturday, the SEC is going to be the focus of the college football world. There are three games involving two ranked teams playing each other, two of them involving a clash of undefeated teams, and all six games are conference games.

How can you not get excited about the SEC slate? Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Texas A&M and the Mississippi schools could be the six best teams in the country, and they all play each other this weekend. Gameday is coming to Ole Miss for the first time ever. This is what you love about SEC football.

But hidden beneath those games is another SEC game. It features two unranked teams playing a divisional game at noon on the SEC network. Two teams who are trying to determine exactly where their programs stand. And two teams who once stopped the college football world when they played.

Welcome to the SEC East battle between Tennessee and Florida.

From 1990 to 2006, the Tennessee-Florida rivalry wasn’t just a great college football game. It defined SEC football. Everybody in the country was crazy for doing anything else other than watching this always-exciting early season game. From Memphis to Miami, the edges of both states, the game was like the Super Bowl. And if you did anything during that game, we had to question if you even watched football.

But this year, for the first time since the two teams started playing on an annual basis in 1990, neither team is ranked going in. And Florida is in the midst of a nine-game winning streak, so we now have some fans claiming that this is not longer a rivalry. After all, Florida took the lead for the first time ever in the series in 2009 and has added on another four victories to go up by five games.

Who can take this game seriously if they started watching football in 2007?

Everybody who knows college football should. This game still means a lot more than you would think.

Despite the fact the Florida has the Vols’ number recently, they are lying to you if they say they don’t care about the game. Of course it matters. And this year, they care about it as much as Tennessee does.

Let’s start with the fact that while the SEC West is great, mediocrity has made the East wide open. Anybody could win the division, and this early-season game that once always decided who won the East could do the same thing this year. In a crazy way, the magnitude of the game, which made the rivalry explode in the first place, is still there. It’s just on a different scale.

This could also be a game that determines the trajectory of the programs.

The Gators are desperately trying to stay afloat in Will Muschamp’s fourth year and prove that the program is in great shape under him. A loss Saturday would cement the fact that this team is spiraling in a downward direction, and it would increase the tension in Gainesville.

Tennessee, on the other hand, is growing with optimism each week in Butch Jones second season with such a young team that was highly recruited, and with another great recruiting class appearing to be on the horizon next year, it’s clear the the program is on the rise. A win against Florida would definitely show how far the program is coming along. It would also be the biggest win for the Vols in a long, long time.

The changing trends of both programs, with one on the rise and one possibly falling, could make this an explosive game as the lines criss cross. Or perhaps both programs are on the rise, and the rivalry is set to break out again in a few years. Let’s admit that we all want to see it back.

The Tennessee-Florida rivalry didn’t just explode because of the importance of the game on the field, although that was huge. The winner of the game won the SEC in 1990 and 1991, and from 1992 to 2001, only Tennessee or Florida represented the SEC East in the SEC title game. Each of them also had a national title during that run.

But there were off-the-field factors that made this exciting as well. You can’t talk about the rivalry without mentioning the Spurrier-Fulmer rivalry.

In 1992, as an interim head coach, Fulmer became a fan-favorite by leading a 31-14 upset over Spurrier and the Gators. That win played a large role in his securing the job full time from Johnny Majors two months later.

Then you had the Peyton Manning storyline, where he could never beat Florida despite beating everybody else, which media critics inexplicably and annoyingly use against him to this day. You also had Danny Wuerffel stealing the spot on the Sports Illustrated Cover in 1995 from Manning after he and Spurrier ran up the score on Tennessee.

During that time there was also the Spurrier jabs at Tennessee that made Vols fans hate him even more.

And you also had the rescheduling of the game to the last one of the season for both teams after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, setting up an epic clash that at the time would determine who would win the East, have the chance to play for the SEC Title, and have the chance to play for a national title with both teams in the Top 5 that game.

On the field, you still had epic clashes, including the four-year span that involved the Vols storming the field after an overtime win in 1998, Florida holding off a comeback for a 23-21 win in 1999, Florida winning off a 91-yard drive in 2000, and the Vols running it down the Gators’ throat for a 34-32 thrilling upset in the swamp in 2001. Even later in the rivalry, you had a Vols kicker go from goat to hero after missing an extra point and then kicking a 52-yarder to win the game in 2004, and you had Tim Tebow’s breakout play on a 4th and 1 against Tennessee in 2006 as Chris Leak led a rally for the Gators to win 21-20.

There were also issues with officials for both teams, which include the touchdown that was an incomplete pass in Florida’s victory over Tennessee in 2000 and a terrible personal foul call in 2004 that allowed Tennessee to set up for the game-winning field goal in 2004. But after that Chris Leak comeback in 2006, the rivalry hasn’t mattered. It has been Florida dominance.

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Now, with Florida down as well, this is just another game on the SEC slate. Once the biggest SEC game of the year, it’s not even mentioned when we bring up a weekend of amazing SEC games. It takes a little perspective to realize how tragic that is.

The game used to be on CBS every year to accommodate anybody in the country who didn’t even have cable. Now, on the SEC Network, it won’t even accommodate people who subscribe to every cable channel in some places.

But it still matters. It matters for the SEC. It matters for college football. And it matters for all of the fans that will be watching it on television, fans going to bars, restaurants, and friends’ homes because they can’t get the SEC Network at their home, and it matters for every fan, coach, and player that will be at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville on Saturday. Don’t forget what this rivalry means.