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The conference powers that be will decided in Destin in late May the future of the series and the Auburn-Georgia game.

Quote from Slive yesterday, "We're looking at eight games with or without permanents, nine games with or without permanents and maybe one off-shoot of that."

Saban is on record favoring an 9 game SEC schedule that would allow our annual series to continue, but as of last season Bama was either the only school favoring the 9 game schedule, or at the least, one of the very few.

What is UT's position on the nine game SEC schedule?

What is your personal opinion? Should the annual series continue? Do you care?

As I've said, I'm a traditionalist and this conference was virtually built on the back of this series. For decades it was THE series in the SEC. I'll say it again, Bryant and Neyland will roll over in the grave if this annual series is done away with. Your opinions please.


BG

I'm in favor of continuing the annual rivalry, but I have a feeling that we'll be outvoted.   It seems that outside of the four programs in question, no one else seems to care.  And whether it's now or in the future, the league will go to a nine game schedule.  The SECN is going to demand it (no one is going to want to watch games like MSU/Prairie View every week), and SOS will probably come into play with the new playoff.

Just don't see how the series can be continued unless everybody plays everybody, which of course isn't an option.  To be equitable (won't use the word fair, because no scheduled is equally fair to every school every year) we need to go to a true rotating schedule for schools in the opposite division.   

I don't mind, do what needs to be done. I'm not big on traditions anyway

I hate this, BDV. This is my favorite series. I'm into the history of this conference and the traditions that made it so special. There is nothing as "traditional" in the SEC as the great Crimson Tide-Volunteer series. While Auburn-Georgia is an older series, it never carried the attention of all SEC fans, and national fans in general, as the Tide-UT game in the formative years of the conference. I love this series so much, and that's why I post here and why I posted as one of the first members of Grid's Volchat (now Scout's UT site)  in the early nineties. He was good to me as the entire board was, and actually welcomed my post. Again, I just hate this!


BG

I'm starting to think I'll come around to this at some point. Right now it's hard to imagine no Bammer game, but honestly with the coaching carousels, expansion, etc. it doesn't feel like the same SEC anymore anyway.

Count me as "No" vote for playing that red team in the future.   :naughty:

Ok, but why?


BG

If some programs don't care about traditional rivalries, then let's put that to the test.  Let's just drop divisional play and rotate all 14 teams equally through each other's schedule.  That would mean that in some years, we'd lose the Iron Bowl.  Or the WLOCP.  Or the Egg Bowl.  I would bet that those schools wouldn't be so keen on THAT idea.

They don't care about anyone else's traditional rivalries, but when THEIR rivalries are threatened, they'll sing a different tune. :frown:

Yeah, I feel like I've been beaten down so much as a fan this past decade that things like this don't really even upset me.  In truth, I think that I've tried to detach myself emotionally to keep from getting hurt.  Dooley made it easier to detach, too.

Besides the fact that I despise everything about the red team, conferences mean absolutely nothing.  They only exist to shovel as much money into the member schools’ coffers as possible.  I’m not against that at all, but to pretend that there’s conference loyalty, and that there is any tradition to them is silly IMO.  The movement of teams from one conference to another shows that conferences don’t mean a thing – it’s all about the money.  Plus, I despise everything about the red team.

Yep, and the those traditional games are what make the conference so special. Those are the match-ups that for me are all must see games every season.


BG

Hope it happens......When USCe , GA and Florida play Bama every year then fine......Until then we are on a different playing field.

It's inevitable, and I absolutely hate it. In my "formative years," coming of age as a Tennessee football fan, I can tell you every play of every Tennessee-Alabama game, because each of them are forever seared into my mind. Because the Alabama game was IT.

1990 - Tennessee lining up for the game-winning FG, having it blocked, and Alabama winning on a FG of their own.
1991 - Tennessee falling behind 24-6 before Andy Kelly engineered a 4th quarter comeback that included two TDs and UT getting the ball back before a late INT sealed it.
1992 - A really stout Alabama D holding UT out of the end zone before a touchdown pass from Shuler to David Horn in the back of the end zone cut it to 17-10, but UT just didn't get another chance.
1993 - Having it in the bag before freakin' David Palmer ruined the day.
1994 - Peyton's unfortunate 4th down incompletion on the goal line after missing a wide open receiver . . . and Brandon Stewart's mom standing and cheering.
1995 - Pure bliss.
1996 - Leonard Little vs. Freddie Kitchens. And Jay Graham's run.

It didn't matter if every other game of the season was overlooked, there was something special about the 3rd Saturday in October. The fall foliage was usually at its peak in East Tennessee, the afternoons were crisp and refreshing, and I listened to John Ward and Bill Anderson call many of those games sprawled out in my grandparents' living room eating apples from the trees out back, or playing football in the front yard trying to mimic the action. I was Chuck Webb or Tony Thompson or Andy Kelly, and the big oak tree at the end of the yard was the goal line. In '91, I was 12 years old and helping my grandmother with her crafts booth at a steam train festival here locally. The Autumn Leaf Special made the trip from Chattanooga to Oneida with 800 passengers aboard. I had my Walkman, listening to the game. Person after person stopped by my grandma's booth to ask me the score. At the time I wondered how they knew I was listening to the game. Years later, I realized that it was pretty obvious...it was the 3rd Saturday in October, and I was a 12-year-old with a pair of headphones on in East Tennessee. What else would I be listening to but the UT/Bama game? I was crushed that day when Kelly threw the INT at the end. He was my hero.

I hate it. I absolutely hate it.

This is 100% on the money.

 Slive will ruin this league chasing a dollar.

Hate to do this,but here I have Auburn it's due. Until conference expansion, they played Georgia and Florida ever year. In fact ended their SEC schedule with Florida, Georgia and Alabama every season. When the conference took away their Florida game, they were not happy and had fought hard to keep it for tradition sake.


BG

Great post, CW! Couldn't agree more. I have those same type of memories and they are all so special.


BG

bg none of us held a candle compared to Celtic

I spent hours, and I mean really hours, talking Bama-UT with Celtic. Well, not so much me talking, but me listening and soaking up every word and story he told. Just loved the guy.


BG

I want the Alabama game every year. But I don't see it continuing for long. Next best thing is to have a true rotating schedule. Only question is how often will the rotation occur?

Keep UT/Bama and UGA/AU. Let the others rotate as they wish, but tradition is key.

That's good stuff right there.

Isn't it! Great post by CW! Vinnie, I wish your dad posted here. I bet he's got all kinds of great stories about this series. 

Also, you would have really liked CelticVol. His dad played for Tennessee, and he has been to the Alabama-Tennessee game since the 1940's in both Knoxville and B'ham/T-town. He was an ex-Marine Colonial and what a classy guy!!! I've read that UT asked him to speak to the team just a few years ago before the game.


BG

A few years ago I made a conscious decision to pay a lot less attention to UT sports due to some new major life obligations (kids and a pretty demanding job).  So I pretty much suck as a fan anyway these days.  But still I feel like the college football I fell in love with so many years ago is leaving me anyway.  I long for the old days.  I was even one of the few people who liked the old bowl arrangements.  That the SEC could decide to strip away our biggest rivalry because it is inconvenient for superconference play that I never saw the need for in the first place just goes right along with almost every other change as colleges chase the entertainment dollars in order to fund the chase of the entertainment dollars.

Cancel the Alabama series?  I taught my long departed dog to bark and growl whenever someone said, "Bama!"  That game was always a big deal even to my dog.  It's one of the few that still at least mean something other than a W or L and a check to see how that impacted the computer rankings.

Bama sucks.  Cancelling Bama sucks more.

Nobody would be cancelling anything.  Every SEC team will still be playing each other, just some not as often as others or as often as they used to play.  Unfortunately that's just the price of expansion and of the popularity of the SEC, and the financial rewards that go along with it.

I don't like it any more than most do, but honestly, since the series was moved from Legion Field to Tuscaloosa every other year it doesn't have the same appeal to me that it once did. 

 

I'm for 9 conference games. 
Three reasons
1) given a 14 team league it allows teams to play each other more often, perhaps going to the rotating hom and home that occurred prior to expansion.
2) should keep us playing bamer every year.  Though it is more often played on the 4th Saturday now the 3rd Saturday in October means something special to me and a lot of other fans, of both schools.
3) One less Sisters of the Poor game each year!

Agree with the entire post, but unfortunately I think unless something unforeseen happens very soon this annual series is over. Just read Saban said there was a coaches meeting this morning, and while he still favors nine games he is in the minority and doesn't think 9 games will happen. Let's tailgate again in about 2020 :frown:


BG

Speaking as one of the elders on the board, I hate to see the series end, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. If you have the divisions, having Bama as the permanent opponent from the other division puts UT at a distinct disadvantage. Without divisions and with a rotating schedule, you might could keep a few permanent rivalries.

I've been calling for an end to the divisions for about 20 years. Line 'em up, rotate the schedules and let the two top teams play in the SECCG.

But if you end the UT/Bama permanent game, you have to eliminate them all including AU/UGA, UGA/UF and, get this, Bama/AU.

One other note, some people, especially younger fans will say that UT/UGA and UT/UF are two of those traditional rivalries. Not so. Before the divisions, UT didn't play those two very much at all. Hard to believe.

Yep.  When I was growing up, our schedule came down to bammer and Auburn, and then everyone else.  In fact, UT/AU was THE early season must-see game in the SEC for a while.  That was a fun rivalry, and I miss it.

It was a great series. Besides being the first game I attended, I usually went to the game as a kid when it was played in Birmingham as did many Tide fans.


BG

3rd Saturday in Oct and the 4th Saturady in Sep.  when I was in HS we went to Gadsden for the Mid South Marching Festival and we always played Aurburn the 4th Sat in Sep

What made that game so great was its unpredictability.  It's a cliche, but that was truly a rivalry where you could throw the recordbook out the window.  It didn't matter if one team was winless and the other #1 in America, that game was usually a coinflip.

Yep, tons of stories.  So many it's hard for me to recall them all.  Sometimes he'll drop a new one, other times he tells me a story he's already told me several times.  I think he knows it too, he just wants to tell it again.  And that's good cause I want to hear it again.   :dance: :thumbup:

Nah, those rivalries were more or less created by the divisions split.

I do remember some classic AU-UT games in the late 80s and early 90s though.  It was a heck of a rivalry.

I am for 9 games as well. The main reason is that with an 8 game conference schedule with a 6-1-1 format and 14 teams means you play the same 7 teams every single year. You also only play the other 6 teams in conference TWICE every TWELVE YEARS. So it takes 12 years to see UT-LSU, UT-AU, Georgia-Alabama, Florida-Alabama to play at each others home stadium? Not for me. Expanding the conference and not the conference games is watering down the product in my opinion.

This is pretty much what I think.  The flip side is that playing 9 SEC games is brutal.

I wonder how other conferences do it...there may eventaully be an NCAA standard for that, as there is requiring 12 teams for a championship game.

If the annual series is DOA within the SEC, one alternative is for each school to schedule the other as an out of conference game; it would not count in the SEC standings, but would still retain national ramifications and preserve the series. We had a limited series with Ole Miss prior to divisional alignment that was done for similar reasons.

One drawback would possibly be not getting the cooperation from the conference for a late October game date, but if they vote out the annual series possibly Slive can twist some arms, or throw a bone or two, in order to entice some cooperation with the remaining schools on schedule date leniency. As for Alabama, Saban has said if the conference did approve the nine game SEC schedule, Bama would still play at last one big out of conference game each season, so my above scenario with scheduling one another wouldn't affect Alabama in having that big game out of conference, nor should it Tennessee.

The issue comes down to some schools not wanting such a strong schedule for potential bowl reasons. Teams such as Kentucky don't want their 6-6 season with a bowl bid turning into a 5-7 year with no reward. However, the upper tier teams would still have a decent chance of getting two teams in the playoff due to increased strength of schedule. Regardless, if TV viewership is lacking for the SEC Network package of games, the conference will probably be forced into the nine game season.  



BG