Jesse Simonton’s piece at VolQuest this week produced a familiar answer to a fun late-July question. What’s Tennessee’s most important game?
It’s Florida. It’s almost always Florida.
There are quotes Tennessee fans will like in Jesse’s piece, offering some behind-the-scenes insight on how Jeremy Pruitt’s staff seems to understand the importance of Vols/Gators around here. And while Florida has been a consistent answer to that question since the divisional format began in 1992, why the game is so important has shifted over the years from Tennessee’s perspective.
It’s easier to think of seasons when Florida didn’t feel like the most important game in late-July. It’s also fun to look at the impact of the Florida game at the end of each year. Here are a few thoughts on the pre-and-post-season answers to Tennessee’s most important game since the Vols and Gators have been together in the SEC East:
1992-95: The Bama Streak
Even though the Vols and Crimson Tide aren’t in the same division, Alabama still felt like the most important game of the year until the Vols broke what became a 10-year streak. It took that, in 1995, to really turn the attention of Tennessee fans fully toward Gainesville, where by then Florida had picked up a three-year run of its own over Tennessee. Looking back, only the first of these years in 1992 wasn’t also defined by what the Vols did against Alabama in the end. Phillip Fulmer’s takeover made the Florida game the most meaningful at the end of the ’92 season, both the best memory from that year and the one that most assisted Fulmer in becoming Tennessee’s next head coach. 1993’s longest-lasting memory is the tie against the Crimson Tide, a near-miss at the goal line the longest from 1994, and that jubilant night in Birmingham still sings 23 years later from 1995.
1996-2001: Tennessee/Florida as a National Rivalry
With the exception of a rebuild in 2000, in every one of these years you knew there were national championship implications on the line when Tennessee and Florida met. And only once, when the Vols lost to Florida in 1997 but still made the SEC Championship Game, did the outcome fail to define Tennessee’s season. These six match-ups were #2 vs #4, #2 vs #4, #2 vs #6, #2 vs #4, #6 vs #11 in 2000, then #2 vs #5. That’s all you need to know.
2002-03: A Brief Intermission for Miami
Having drained The Swamp and watched Steve Spurrier leave for the NFL, the Vols were free to dream a little bigger heading into the 2002 season. The defending champs from Miami would visit Neyland Stadium that November, and with the Vols in the preseason top five it felt like the biggest bulls-eye coming in. Of course, the 2002 season didn’t go as planned, starting with a rainy day against Florida that ended up being the longest-lasting memory from that year. The following season Florida was back in its rightful place atop the most important list at the start of the year, but a surprise upset in the return match with the Hurricanes (and a three-way tie in the SEC East) made the win at Miami the season’s most memorable.
2004-09: Change on the Horizon
With Ron Zook at Florida, Georgia took advantage. Florida won the BCS title in 2006, but it was their only SEC East crown from 2001-07. Tennessee and Georgia split the other six, making the Dawgs the most important game on the front end in 2004 and 2005, plus Georgia’s preseason #1 turn in 2008. It lived up to that standard in 2004, as the Vols stunned #3 Georgia in Athens en route to the division crown. And while it may not have felt like the most important game coming in, wins over Georgia in 2007 and 2009 were the best memories from those years. During this span the Vols also had critical early-season non-conference games that mattered a great deal in perception: California in 2006, and UCLA for Lane Kiffin in 2009.
2010-17: You’re not really back until you…
Beat Florida. During the Derek Dooley and Butch Jones tenures, only once was Florida not the most important game of the year coming in: 2013, in Jones’ first year, with Vanderbilt on the rise under James Franklin and the Vols having lost to Kentucky in 2011 and Vanderbilt in 2012. After the Dooley era, beating the Gators felt like too big of an ask for Jones in year one, the most sober we’ve been as a fan base (and maybe even more sober than we are right now). I’d listen to an argument for 2015, that more people were invested in that Oklahoma game in Neyland than Florida in The Swamp coming into the year, but I’m not sure I’m buying it. For Dooley, only in the end was the Florida game truly the most important: his first team turned it over to Tyler Bray at South Carolina and seemed to turn a corner; his second team threw all that right in the fire at Kentucky, which should never ever be your most impactful game of the year. Butch Jones got more positive out of beating South Carolina in 2013 than losing to Vanderbilt, but Florida has been the most painful memory in each of the last four years. Three losses that absolutely should not have been, and one spectacular win that couldn’t stand the test of time by season’s end.
By my count, Florida has felt like the most important game coming into the year in 15 of the last 22 seasons since the Vols broke the Bama streak. And it has been the game with the longest-lasting impact on Tennessee’s year 11 times in those 22 years, including five of the last six. It’s a far cry from what we saw in the late 90’s, but the stakes still feel quite real. They’re all important for Jeremy Pruitt, including West Virginia. But the answer is almost always Florida. It’s Pruitt’s job to raise those stakes even higher.