The Third Saturday in October between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Tennessee Volunteers used to matter. Now it’s just a guaranteed victory for the Tide.
One of the reasons SEC football matters so much in the national college football landscape is the nature of its many rivalry games. You have to remember that major professional sports didn’t make their way to the Southeastern United States until the late 1960s at the very earliest.
For states like Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, college sports were, and remain big time, especially college football. Every blue-blood football program in the SEC has at least three bitter rivalries in-conference every season. Georgia despises Auburn, Florida and South Carolina, while LSU loathes Alabama, Arkansas and Ole Miss. You get the picture, right?
And for the most part, most of these big-time SEC college football rivalries continue to captivate us fall Saturday after fall Saturday. From the Iron Bowl to the Egg Bowl to the Magnolia Bowl to the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry to the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, the creative names help set the scene as a backdrop for what usually are interesting games in competitive series.
However, there is one SEC rivalry with a great name that used to matter and sadly no longer does. The Third Saturday in October will be on Oct.19. For older college football fans, this was a clash between SEC titans featuring the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Tennessee Volunteers. For younger college football fans, it’s just a day on the October calendar. What in the hell happened?
Alabama and Tennessee first met on the gridiron back in 1901 in Birmingham, resulting in a 6-6 tie. These two schools played annually up until 1915. After a 14-year hiatus, the Tide and the Vols have played every season except for 1943 due to World War II.
This rivalry game was given its name back in 1939, with the game alternating between Alabama and Tennessee every year. From 1932 to 1997 when Alabama hosted, it would be at Legion Field in Birmingham. It has since been back in Tuscaloosa when the Crimson Tide has hosted since 1999. Every game in Tennessee has been played in Knoxville.
This was a game that defined the SEC and helped cultivate the legendary status of two of the sport’s greatest coaches: Robert Neyland of Tennessee and Paul “Bear” Bryant of Alabama. Both won so much in their illustrious careers that their respective stadiums are named after them.
Beginning in the 1950s, victory cigars were handed out to the winning team of this rivalry game. While the NCAA forbids it, the winners self-report the infraction to celebrate the win the way it was intended to, bringing back the stogies for good in 2005. Unfortunately for Tennessee, only the 2006 Vols have lit up these coveted celebratory cigars since they came back. So here we are.
Tennessee has lost 12 straight games to Alabama in this once bitter rivalry. The Vols have never beaten the Tide once Nick Saban was named Alabama’s head coach. His program has had to report 12 minor infractions to the NCAA for his team’s complete and utter domination of Tennessee. In the all-time series, Alabama leads Tennessee, 56-38-8 and it’s getting worse.
In truth, this rivalry series is known for its streaks. Alabama has four winning streaks of at least seven victories over the Vols, while Tennessee has four winning streaks of at least four victories over the Tide. Before Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa, the all-time series was Alabama leading Tennessee, 44-38-8.
This was a competitive series and a great one that defined the SEC. It was so important to the fabric of the SEC that when the league expanded to 12 teams from 10 when Arkansas and South Carolina joined the conference in 1992, thus forcing Alabama and Tennessee into separate divisions, cross-divisional rivalries became a thing in the new 12-team conference.
Of course, it wasn’t just the Third Saturday in October that forced cross-divisional rivalry creations on its own. The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry between Auburn and Georgia and to some degree Florida versus LSU where other big reasons for it. This game essentially led to Ole Miss versus Vanderbilt and Kentucky playing Mississippi State annually since 1992.
When the SEC expanded again 20 years later in 2012 to include Missouri and Texas A&M, these cross-divisional rivalry games were kept intact, despite maintaining an eight-game conference schedule. So outside of Alabama, Tennessee only plays one other SEC West team out of six a year in conference play. All because this rivalry game that hasn’t mattered in years still has to exist.
So what led to this once captivating late October rivalry game to become as stale as a month-old loaf of bread? Well, Tennessee fired its long-time head coach Phillip Fulmer after a 5-7 campaign in 2008. He had won 152 games as Tennessee’s head coach, including five SEC East division crowns, two SEC Championships and the 1998 National Championship. Then came the chaos…
Fulmer’s 2009 replacement in Lane Kiffin left Knoxville to become the USC Trojans head coach in 2010. While the Vols made a bowl game, Kiffin’s abrupt departure to the then-Pac-10 sent shock waves all through Rocky Top. Next came three years of bad nepotism football under Derek Dooley, followed five years of redundant clichés and high-end MACtion football under Butch Jones.
After Jones was fired in 2017, Tennessee became the biggest joke in college football due to its inept inability to find a new head coach. Tennessee fired its athletic director after a botch-job of a coaching search only to put the coach it never appropriately replaced in charge of the athletic department. So Fulmer went with former Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt in 2018.
Pruitt had been a successful defensive coach throughout his career, with notable stops at Florida State, Georgia and at his alma mater Alabama. He may have not known what asparagus was back at Hoover High, but he sure knew defense. But did he know how to be a head coach? Was he even ready?
Well, Pruitt has gone 7-11 (3-8) in his first 18 games as the Tennessee head coach. Don’t kid yourself for even a second to think he’ll be the first Saban protegé to beat his mentor. It’s not happening on Saturday, as Alabama will stay perfect and Tennessee will fall to 2-5 (1-3) on the season.
On the other sideline, Saban has turned Alabama into one of college football’s two concurrent dynasties, along with Dabo Swinney‘s Clemson Tigers of the ACC, who happened to play his college ball in Tuscaloosa for Gene Stallings’ Tide in the early 1990s, winning a national title as a wide receiver in 1992.
Since leaving the Miami Dolphins after the 2006 NFL season, Saban has officially gone 147-21 (83-13) as Alabama’s head coach. After going 7-6 in his first year leading the program in 2007, the Tide has won at least 10 games every season. Outside of 2007 and 2010, Alabama has lost no more than two games in a season.
Saban has won nine SEC West division titles, six SEC Championships and five national titles at Alabama. He has a 6-3 record in the College Football Playoff, as the Tide has made the final four all five years of the tournament’s existence.
Meanwhile, Tennessee hasn’t won its division since 2007, Fulmer’s second to last year as the Vols head coach. Interestingly enough, that 2007 campaign was Saban’s first year back in the SEC at Tuscaloosa after two years in the NFL coaching the Dolphins.
This is no coincidence. The tide has shifted monumentally in Alabama’s favor by prying Saban out of Miami. The Vols signed up for dysfunction the minute they fired one of its three greatest head coaches in school history. Dare I say it, Tennessee somewhat volunteered for this. Regardless, they’re still paying for mistakes made over a decade ago.
For as long as Saban is still in Tuscaloosa recruiting at an elite level and as long as Tennessee has its issues hiring and empowering the right head coach, look for the streak to continue into the next Third Saturday in October. No. 13 is coming right up. Get your match sticks ready, Tide. Enjoy not reporting a minor infraction to the NCAA, Vols. You’ve at least got that going for you this year.
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