5 reasons Florida has owned Tennessee
It’s Tennessee-Florida week, which for SEC football fans of a certain age, used to mean SEC East title implications and a national spotlight. Before there was “LSU-Bama,” there was “Tennessee-Florida.”During the Spurrier tenure at Florida, the Gators and Vols played 5 games where both teams entered ranked in the top 5 of the AP or Coaches Poll.
In the past 50 years of college football, only Miami-Florida State in the ’90s, Florida-Florida State in the ’90s, Michigan-Ohio State during the “10-year War” in the ’70s and LSU-Alabama in the 2010s have matched that accomplishment. That’s a taste of how big this game used to be.
In fact, the last time this game was played in the month of December, Phil Fulmer gave the speech of his life (below) and Tennessee upset No. 2 Florida 34-32, capturing the SEC East and ruining Florida’s national championship dreams in the process. The game was one of the greatest SEC football games ever played, and SDS did a great job of discussing it in podcast form earlier this year.
In many ways, that game was a harbinger of the changes that would come to the SEC.
It proved to Steve Spurrier’s final game in The Swamp as Florida’s head coach, as the legendary Florida player and head coach left to coach the NFL’s Washington franchise a month later. The win sent Tennessee back to the SEC Championship game for the first time since their national championship season of 1998. Heavy favorites, the Vols were upset by an upstart LSU program headed by some guy named Nick Saban. Saban’s Tigers had lost to Florida by 40 points earlier in the season and it is decidedly unlikely the rematch would have gone much better.
Instead, LSU emerged SEC champions, setting the table for Saban’s first national championship and positioning him as the coach who would define SEC football in the early 21st century. Meanwhile, the loss may have marked the beginning of the end for Fulmer at Tennessee. Yes, the Vols returned to Atlanta multiple times after that season. But they never arrived in Atlanta with as good a team as they had in 2001, and it’s now been 13 years and counting since the Volunteers represented the SEC East in the SEC Championship game.
Fulmer’s been gone, at least as Tennessee’s head football coach, since 2008. A big reason for Fulmer’s dismissal by then UT athletic director Mike Hamilton was his struggles against Florida. Fulmer and the Vols beat the Gators just twice after that magical December afternoon in The Swamp in 2001, and when Fulmer stepped down, the Vols had dropped 4 straight to the Gators, including the previous 2 to Urban Meyer’s teams by an average of 31 points. The hope was a change of direction would turn the tide. It hasn’t.
Florida has now won 14 of 15 against Tennessee, turning what was once a very competitive rivalry that tilted creamsicle orange to an uneven rivalry Florida now leads by 9 games all time.
Here are 5 big reasons the Gators have owned the Vols over the last decade and a half. Please note that due to time constraints, we limited the list to only 5 and eliminated reasons 6-12,256.
Tim Tebow
It’s difficult to think of one player changing the fortunes of a rivalry more than Tim Tebow changed the trajectory of the Florida-Tennessee rivalry in the mid-2000s. The Vols had won 3 of 5 against the Gators and appeared poised to make it 4 of 6 in 2006, having really limited Florida’s traditional run game and stifled Florida’s starting quarterback Chris Leak.
Tennessee led by as many as 10 points in the 2nd half at a thunderous Neyland Stadium when Meyer decided to use his freshman quarterback Tim Tebow as a battering ram to help the Gators, who were struggling on 3rd-and-short, grind out first downs. It worked. Tebow played only 7 snaps, but 4 of them were runs for first downs on 3rd- and 4th-and-short, the most famous of which came on a 4th down on what would prove to be Florida’s winning touchdown drive. The Gators won 21-20.
A year later, Tebow kicked off his Heisman campaign in style by crushing the Vols 59-20. Tebow accounted for 360 total yards of offense and 4 touchdowns in a game that was close for 2 quarters but saw Florida run off 24 unanswered points to run away in the second half.
In 2008, Tebow and Florida weren’t as dominant, but were plenty good enough in Knoxville, with Tebow again producing 2 touchdowns in a 24-point Florida victory.
Finally, in 2009, Tebow completed the career sweep of Tennessee by rushing for 76 yards and a touchdown and spoiling Lane Kiffin’s only dip into the Florida-Tennessee rivalry waters. All told, the Gators Heisman Trophy winner simply overwhelmed the Vols for 4 seasons, turning the tables on a rivalry that Tennessee fans felt they had finally reclaimed from Steve Spurrier before Tebow’s arrival on the campus in Gainesville.
Burton breaks Dooley’s back
Derek Dooley had all the right stuff, résumé-wise, to lead Tennessee back to national prominence. A southern lawyer and gentleman with a national championship pedigree tutoring under Nick Saban at LSU, Dooley had more than the right last name to coach in the SEC. He was highly-regarded in coaching circles, especially as an offensive innovator. His Louisiana Tech teams weren’t great, but they were solid offensively, and given what had occurred in Ruston before Derek Dooley, a 17-20 career mark with the program’s first bowl win in three decades was excellent.
By 2012, Dooley, who played the part of Vols renaissance man, too, with his well-mannered interviews and sartorial splendor in orange sideline pants, appeared to have the Vols on the cusp of a breakthrough. The Vols entered the Florida game ranked in the Top 25 for the first time since the Fulmer era and with College GameDay in town, led the Gators for most of 3 quarters. Leading 20-13 late in the 3rd quarter, the Vols had Florida backed up deep in their own territory. That’s when Trey Burton, playing in the wildcat due to the ineffectiveness of Florida starting quarterback Jeff Driskel, broke the Vols’ hearts.
That was Burton’s 2nd TD run of the night, and it sparked a 24-0 Florida run to close the game. The Vols never recovered, falling out of the Top 25 and failing to reach a bowl game for the next 3 seasons. Dooley was dismissed before the 2012 season-finale.
Will Muschamp sends “all those people home disappointed”
If you are sensing a theme here, you should.
Florida owns this rivalry not so much for systemic reasons — though save the Butch Jones era, Florida has managed to recruit slightly better than the Vols for the last 15 or so years — but for specific ones. Mainly, almost every time it appears that Tennessee is set to seize momentum in the rivalry again, Florida finds a way to win and the Vols find a way to lose.
Florida has managed to maintain its dominance over Tennessee despite having their worst decade as a program from a winning percentage standpoint since the 1970s. No game better illustrates this than Will Muschamp’s win over the Vols in 2014.
Tennessee was favored by a touchdown despite a 2-2 record. It’s difficult to understate just how badly Driskel played under center as well: Florida’s junior quarterback was 11-of-23 for 59 yards and 3 interceptions before finally getting the hook from Will Muschamp in the 4th quarter with the Gators trailing 9-0.
Enter Treon Harris, who managed to find Matt Jones on a wheel route to set up 1 Florida touchdown and then move the Gators from the shadow of their own goal posts to Tennessee territory where erratic kicker Austin Hardin buried a 49-yard field goal to give Florida a 10-9 lead they’d never relinquish.
The game is probably best remembered for the embattled Muschamp telling ESPN’s Maria Taylor after the game that he loved seeing Rocky Top go home disappointed. Muschamp was fired later in that season, but he left Gainesville 4-0 against Tennessee.
Grier to Callaway
If Vols fans felt like 2014 was a nightmare, well, there probably aren’t any words (at least that we can print online) to describe how they must have felt about 2015.
The Vols led 17-7 at halftime and 27-14 with only 9 minutes to play when Florida’s offense woke up. Freshman Will Grier led the Gators on a long scoring drive to cut the lead to 6 with 4 minutes remaining. Tennesee then failed to get a first down, with Butch Jones electing to not give Alvin Kamara a single touch on 3 plays, and punted. The Vols appeared to have the Gators stopped, however, forcing a 4th-and-14. Then The Swamp saw magic:
Winning the Dan Mullen sweepstakes
Tennessee and Florida both went searching for head coaches in 2017, after the resignation of Jim McElwain at Florida and the firing of Jones (the only Tennessee head coach to beat Florida in the past 15 years) at Tennessee within weeks of each other that autumn.
Tennessee courted Mullen, who was ready to move on from a happy situation, but one with a limited ceiling, at Mississippi State. Mullen nearly left for Tennessee, but ultimately wasn’t certain it would be his best opportunity, especially with the Florida job also vacant. With Mullen wavering, the Vols set their sights elsewhere, ultimately landing on Greg Schiano.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
Led by longtime Vols fan and rabble-rouser Clay Travis, Vol Nation revolted against then-athletic director John Currie. Despite having a memorandum of understanding reached with Schiano, Currie and the UT administration backed out of the deal. This fostered litigation, and sent Tennessee down a long path that included being turned down by:
- Former offensive coordinator and Duke head coach David Cutcliffe
- Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy
- Cowboys tight end and former Vols All-American Jason Witten (who probably wasn’t ever formerly offered but made it clear he wasn’t coming anyway on Twitter)
- Former assistant Jim Bob Cooter (who wouldn’t even interview)
- Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm
- NC State head coach Dave Doeren (who led to another Vols fan social media revolt)
- Former Texas Tech head coach-turned Sirius XM analyst Mike Leach.
Ultimately Currie was fired for whiffing on all of the above choices. Tennessee then hired Fulmer as athletic director and his pick, Jeremy Pruitt, as head coach. If all of that made your head spin, well, it should.
But keep in mind choice No. 1 for Currie was Mullen, who thought long and hard about it, couldn’t decide, and ultimately bowed out when his old boss Scott Stricklin and Florida swooped in to hand him his dream job 3 autumns ago.
Mullen is now 27-6 in his first 33 games at Florida, a better record to start a tenure than Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier had before him. Pruitt has lost 5 consecutive games and is on the hot seat despite a buyout that doubled this past September when Fulmer gave the head coach an extension — essentially for beating Indiana in a game of tackle football.
Winning the Mullen sweepstakes seems to be the latest blow to the Vols in this once competitive rivalry, and Mullen has returned the favor in kind, winning the first 2 contests with Pruitt by an average of 4 touchdowns.
Surprised you didn’t mention losing to Feleipe twice in two different looking games.
That bomb from Feleipe to Cleveland was awesome but the play from Grier to Callaway was way more exciting
Yeah those were some good ones. My only pet peeve is that everyone calls the Cleveland game winner a “hail mary”. Not a hail mary, just a very long accurate pass. Cleveland was the intended target on the play call and Feleipe dropped a 65yd dime into his cradled arms.
I don’t think any game was more fun to watch than 2018 when they turned it over I think it was 6 times, and UT fans started leaving shortly after halftime
I agree with the first point. It was not a hail mary, but he was not THE intended target. The play was supposed to get 20 yds or so and get out of bounds. To set up for a FG. Franks got flushed out of the pocket and Cleveland caught the safety sleeping. Funny thing is, as I was walking out of the swamp that day I remember thinking, “we will talking about this for the next 20 years”. So far so good.
I love that the play (Train Right Open, Big Ben In) that beat UT with Grier to Callaway, is the same one that beat UT with Franks to Cleveland lolz
I vote the “Heave to Cleve”!!!!!
UT Having coaches dressed in pumpkin costumes can’t help.
LOL
A pumpkin-spice flavored burn.
“…essentially for beating Indiana in a game of tackle football.”
Funniest line I’ve read all month.
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
lol
I’ve wracked my brain, wrung my hands and gnashed my teeth for nearly 20 years trying to understand WHY Tennessee has developed such horrible sports karma?!
Perhaps Bama fans were right all along—God that hurts—and this is simply payback from the Universe for Fulmer snitching them out?
But it can’t be just that, right?! I get the football woes, but that doesn’t explain the other areas we’ve suffered in this millennium; (Basketball Vols getting “almost there” nearly every year, the Baseball Vols—though Tony Vitello has them playing competitive lately they’ve been a doormat for 15 years), and even the Lady Vols with all the misfortune they’ve gone through including losing the best coach in the game in such traumatic fashion.
For the life of me, I just can’t get why one University could have such horrific things happen to them in such an utterly degrading way.
Maybe Peyton really DID teabag that reporter all those years ago.
It’s def. that god awful hunter orange. If Tennessee would change their colors and theme song they would start winning again.
Dude that’s just ignorant. There is nothing wrong with orange and our shade of orange. You do realize florida has orange? And a terrible shade of orange at that.
“Dude,” UT’s Orange is way more obnoxious than UF’s. Plus there is a good contrast with the blue. Plus That Rocky Top song is annoying.
Plus we are good and your team is not.
LOL
Our orange is better than yours. Your orange is too dark to go well with dark colors and ONLY looks god on the uniform, not even the helmet. Our orange looks great on merchandise and uniforms.
Sometimes the tennessee orange is too creamy looking. Other times I think it looks sharp. The gator orange is loud and you’re right that it doesn’t go well with much but I think it looks great on the uniform with the blue
Volman I don’t know about other sports but football wise I think it really just came down to UT making some really bad calls with their head coaching choices and got screwed somewhat by Kiffin. I thought he was a good hire until he bailed. Pruitt looks good on paper but as it turns out he’s on the same level with Muschamp, good DC but no HC material. His stubbornness is beyond our understanding to stick with one QB.
There’s a reason Tampa Bay stopped using that god awful Tennessee creamsicle color. It’s weak, doesn’t intimidate, and nauseates. Gator Orange is waaaaay better and goes great with blue. Just ask the Mets! Go Gators!
Kiffen could’ve had it all there at Tennessee…Majors liked him, I did too in a way but hated his immaturity and comments of other coaches. Young players were interesting in him as a coach, could’ve recruited well too. But he chose to go to SC and failed miserably there. The guy knows offense I give him that.
I think it’s simply just difficult to really find a good coach. Even with UF’s money and pedigree, they still whiffed hard with Muschamp and McElwain. Look at FSU having the same issue with a number of head coach fails. Of course it’s not just the head coach, but the staff they bring and the kind of recruiting that’s available in the area. But the major factor is lucking out with a head coach hire that brings it all together.
I hope UT eventually finds a good head coach and the rivalry comes back. The 2000’s rivalry was fun and exciting when both teams were in the top 10 facing each other.
It is…even with a program like Tenn with the fanbase, huge stadium, facilities some of the best in the country. I can’t really get my head around it.
Another thing to mention is the fact that Florida’s orange looks great and Tennessee’s orange looks like a kidney stone
Florida’s orange is much worse than Tennessee’s
One of the strangest games to me was the loss by Florida in 2016. Up 21-3 at the half, the Gators played the 2nd half as if they were not aware the forward pass was part of football. They made Josh Dobbs look like Trevor Lawrence.
Coach Mac must have taken the under
That was the thing that was most annoying about Muschamp and McElwain. They tended to play conservative and not trust their players to execute. More often than not we saw the team play it safe and vanilla with a minor lead in those years.
That one still puzzles me…Tennessee dominated that game, most everyone will tell you that. But that’s how Butch Jones got the name Botch Jones, still couldn’t believe what I was seeing…no way a strong minded coach loses that game.
Tennessee orange is the same as that powdered drink from the 70s, Tang. In the sunlight your orange Fades to almost nothing. Florida oranges classic and much prefer by all those surveyed at the color Institute of America
All orange is bad
I prefer to think of it as an accent for the blue. I really don’t care for the orange jerseys and really really don’t care for the all orange. Fortunately, Mullen prefers the classic blue jerseys.
I always sort of thought the same thing that orange is an accent for UF’s blue, which is the main color.
You have no lines in this play, Jawja.
LOL fair enough. With Florida and Tennessee fans arguing about orange I just couldn’t miss the opportunity.
Florida is orange, Vols are puke orange, very simple
There really is inly 1 reason the past 20 years it all comes down to the same orange pumkin Phil Fulmer as Coach and as AD.
That was an interesting read and recap of recent history. Well done Neil.
That 2012 game was great….Gameday…Vols had the lead at half and you could have heard a pen drop leaving that dump…was great
Tebow’s first trip to Knoxville with Chris Leak playing QB is one that still gets me riled. Not taking anything away from Florida, but 20-10 going into the 4th quarter…had mostly outplayed them I thought and nobody gave them a chance coming off a close win against Air Force. But Florida gets two outlandish personal foul calls that pretty much give them the game. It’s OK to lose a close hard fought game…but that one just made me livid.