Saturday was the first time I was able to be in the Swamp for a game since the 2014 heartbreaking loss to LSU. It was good to get back. It was my first time in the place for “Won’t Back Down”, which is a nice addition to the game. The new band uniforms look even better in person than on TV. There’s no substitute for being there.
On that last point, a surprising (to me) number of Tennessee fans agreed. There were a lot more of them there than I would have guessed, though maybe I should’ve put the number higher. More Vol fans have gone to their post-Georgia State home games than I would’ve thought too. It’s been obvious from the jump that this year’s UT team has not improved over last year’s, and if anything, it’s worse.
Yet, Tennessee fans seem like they’re transitioning into South Carolina fans by showing up in unjustifiably large numbers to support bad football. And thinking of the Gamecocks, this brings up something else.
South Carolina is not a rival of Florida’s. It’s a “division rival” in the sense than the SEC alignment forces them to play every year. It got a little salty for a few years there once Steve Spurrier started beating the post-Tebow Gator teams more often than not, but that’s all gone now even with a different former Florida coach leading the Gamecocks.
Tennessee was once a real, honest to goodness rival. On Saturday, it really felt to me like Tennessee is perilously close to being relegated to division rival status. Being there in person really cemented it for me in a way that merely watching on TV wouldn’t have.
I saw some Vols fans around before the game. If you could snap your fingers and make everyone’s clothes turn solid gray or something, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from people milling about on a Tuesday. There was no fire. There was no jawing. I didn’t witness any trucks driving around blasting “Rocky Top”.
And that’s another thing. The few times the Tennessee pep band played their adopted anthem, it didn’t make my blood boil. I felt nothing. It was like a reminder of something past that is now greatly diminished. And at one time, it’d be unthinkable that Tennessee wouldn’t go all out and send its full band and do a halftime show and everything for a road game at Florida, and vice versa. Last weekend, it barely registered.
With TV broadcasts, there are ways to use production values to pump things up. What’s there of a band can be mic’d. You get hero shots of a camera pointing up at the mascots while they celebrate a play, and tight shots of just the fans in visiting colors make their presence seem larger than it really is. Producers can pick out individual home fans looking frustrated or glum to compound it.
In person reality is unavoidable, and the reality was that there was very little anxiety in the stadium. Florida fans expected to win. Tennessee fans expected to lose. Both got what they thought they would. The only real questions were how long the turnover reviews would go and whether Tennessee would score at all. The missed holding flag was the only time the crowd collectively got mad.
The Gators have now defeated the Volunteers 14 times in 15 games. When it comes to long all-but-one winning streaks, I knew that was closing in on Kentucky and Vandy territory, but I wanted some more context. I used an all-time records tool to find out how many other teams UF has pulled this same kind of streak on.
To begin with, there are only 16 teams that Florida has played at least 15 times. For the Gators having played football for over a century, that number feels low.
Anyway, there are seven opponents that the Gators have taken at least 14 of 15 consecutive games against. A run over Kentucky is the longest, and it’s actually not the present streak. UF beat UK 37 times in 38 games from 1980 to 2017, so Dan Mullen needs to win a few more in a row to get the current run up to there. Vandy is of course second, as UF has won 27-of-28 from 1989 to now with this year’s game still pending.
The only other all-but-one streak to exceed 14/15 is against South Carolina. Florida won 17 of the first 18 games they played as division rivals from 1992-2009. You can add one to each of those if you want to count the prior game, a UF win in 1964. A streak’s a streak, I guess.
That leaves four teams that UF won exactly 14-of-15 against: Georgia, from 1990-2003; LSU, from 1988 to 2001; Tennessee, from 2005 to present; and (drumroll) Stetson, from 1911-53.
The Bulldogs are still a true rival despite that long streak. The Tigers are growing more and more into one as time goes along. The Hatters, um, restarted their football program in 2013.
The key for UGA and LSU was them getting good and winning some games against the Gators again. Notre Dame-Navy was never a rivalry. Both teams have to win some for the fire to remain.
With Tennessee, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The current coach was a bad hire, but the guy who hired him had only been AD for a short time himself. They can’t afford to replace the AD or the coaching staff because they’re still paying the previous staff not to be there. Plus they have a startlingly high amount of debt, and I’m sure the rough start to this year isn’t doing wonders for donations. UT has to hope those fans keep showing up in puzzlingly high number because they need those ticket sales.
I don’t know if we’ll look back in ten years and pick 2019 as the inflection point, but it’s hard to imagine ourselves a decade older still considering Tennessee a major rival on par with Georgia and FSU. The roots were never as deep since they only started growing in 1992, and LSU is almost certainly going to overtake UT in that span.
So it goes. It was a good run there for Florida and Tennessee, but once the all-but-one streak heads into South Carolina/Kentucky/Vanderbilt territory as it will next year, it’s not a true rivalry anymore.