Steve Spurrier ignited the Florida-Tennessee rivalry, but he can find a silver lining to it falling off the annual SEC schedule.
Spurrier owned and infuriated Tennessee as Florida’s coach, but he now supports the Vols as long as they’re not playing a team he coached.
Florida-Tennessee was one of college football’s defining games in 1990s.
Steve Spurrier lets me in on a secret. Well, it’s not a secret, exactly, but it might surprise Tennessee fans to know the Head Ball Coach pulls for the Volunteers. Mostly, anyway.
That’s right, the Florida coach who tormented Tennessee and Phillip Fulmer throughout the 1990s, who famously said you can’t spell Citrus without U-T, likes seeing the Vols do well.
“I pull for Tennessee a lot, since that’s my home state and everything,” Spurrier told me. “I pull for them — unless they’re playing South Carolina or Florida or Duke. Those are my three schools.”
With Spurrier, it’s smart to check whether he’s kidding. He’s serious about his support?
“Certainly, certainly. I’m from Tennessee,” Spurrier says. Born in Miami Beach, Spurrier grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Spurrier will have more opportunities to support the Vols in upcoming seasons, because the Florida-Tennessee rivalry won’t be played annually in the SEC’s new schedule model that begins next season. (South Carolina-Tennessee also won’t be retained annually.)
Each SEC team has been assigned three annual rivals. The other six opponents on the nine-conference schedule will rotate, so that each team plays those rotational opponents twice in a four-year span.
The upshot: Florida-Tennessee will not be played in 2026 or 2028.
Another sign of the times. Conference expansion and realignment interrupted more than a few rivalries.
“Nowadays,’ Spurrier, 80, said, ‘they don’t care about rivalries that much, I don’t think.’
Not enough to keep this one, anyway.
Florida-Tennessee rivalry ruled in the 1990s
There are bigger rivalries, and the SEC’s annual opponent assignments will retain rivalries like Florida-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee.
But, losing this game stinks, especially for millennials like me who became college football fans in the 1990s, when the Florida-Tennessee rivalry peaked. No September game consistently mattered more during that era than Gators vs. Vols.
Don’t let anyone tell you this rivalry doesn’t matter anymore, either. I’ve covered this game when both teams were bad, and you wouldn’t have known that based on the raucous stadium environment.
Two coaches who were a study of contrasts seeded this rivalry.
In one corner, Phillip Fulmer, the statesman.
In the other, Spurrier, the quipster who usually beat the statesman.
Ice and fire, they were.
Spurrier’s elite ability to stir the pot and jab Tennessee elevated the rivalry to a higher plane, at a time when this game charted a course for the SEC East.
Some rivalries have geography. Others have history. Florida-Tennessee had neither. That hardly mattered. These teams — and their fans — do not like each other. Period. That’s the bedrock of rivalry.
A handful of years back, the RockyTop subreddit polled Tennessee fans on their most hated rival. The tally of more than a 1,300 respondents showed that nearly 64% voted Florida, over Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Vanderbilt.
An unscientific exercise, sure, but I lived in Knoxville for more than six years, and I didn’t need science to detect the disdain Vols fans have for the Gators.
At Florida, the vitriol might not register quite as high for Tennessee. Georgia and Florida State rank as bigger rivals. After Spurrier departed and Fulmer retired, and the Vols set off for more than a decade of despair, Florida-LSU emerged as a bigger game.
That Florida-LSU rivalry is another that won’t continue annually.
“We’re not going to play them anymore? Oh, gosh,” Spurrier said, when I told him Florida-LSU was receding from the annual docket, too.
Despite being in the same conference, the Gators and Vols didn’t play during Spurrier’s career starring at quarterback for Florida, where he won a Heisman Trophy.
Spurrier did play LSU. He went 3-0 against the Tigers, then 11-1 as the Gators coach, a record he can quickly recite.
During Spurrier’s coaching tenure, there’s no doubt which rivalry game, Tennessee or LSU, sparked more emotions.
“Tennessee,” Spurrier said. “Much more.”
Kentucky — yes, Kentucky — interferes with Florida-Tennessee
The SEC’s new schedule model doesn’t leave room for every rivalry. But, rivalries like Alabama-LSU or Florida-Tennessee absolutely could have been kept. The SEC chose not to retain them.
The SEC assigned Alabama, Kentucky and Vanderbilt to Tennessee. Heck of a draw, right?
Alabama-Tennessee, sure. Gotta have the Third Saturday in October.
Tennessee-Vanderbilt, fine. That’s an in-state affair.
But, Kentucky-Tennessee instead of Florida-Tennessee? Yuck.
Florida also had room for the Vols. It received a draw of Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina.
I realize Kentucky must play somebody, but not at the expense of a rivalry that gave us Fulmer versus Spurrier, Manning versus Wuerffel, “Faxgate,” “Pandemonium Reigns!” and “The Catch?”
Spurrier is a preacher’s son. His dad sometimes would receive free tickets to Vols games, and they’d head down to what was then known as Shields-Watkins Field.
Tennessee wasn’t an outlet for Spurrier’s playing career. The Vols were in a rut then, stuck in the single-wing offense.
Spurrier chose Florida and coach Ray Graves, a Knoxville native who played at Tennessee. Spurrier would’ve liked to have played against Tennessee, but he settled for beating Vanderbilt in Nashville his senior season.
As a coach, Spurrier haunted the Vols and ignited a rivalry.
As this series drops off the annual docket, Spurrier can find perhaps the only silver lining — he can support his home-state school a bit more frequently now.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.