Tennessee/Alabama is finally a rivalry
By Mark Nagi
For 16 years, Nick Saban ruled the world of college football. He built a freight train at Alabama, and at times it felt like it would never run out of gas.
There was nowhere that pain was felt more than Knoxville.
While the Crimson Tide were winning multiple SEC and national championships, Tennessee was going through a period of mediocrity. From Lane Kiffin to Derek Dooley to Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt, the Vols were not only losing to Alabama but losing badly.
Only twice between 2007 and 2021 did the Vols even play the Tide to within one score. The most painful stretch was probably between 2010 and 2012, when Alabama won each game by 31 points. Saban could have won those games by considerably more but called off the dogs as a favor to his former and future employee, Derek Dooley.
But with the hiring of Josh Heupel at Tennessee, and the rise of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) as well as the transfer portal, the fortunes of UT and UA football have changed considerably.
No longer able to simply stockpile 4- and 5-star talent, Saban’s reign was coming to an end. He didn’t want to compete in a sport where Alabama no longer had every advantage. Had he and the Crimson Tide not been gifted a spot in the college football playoff last season, he would have missed the top level of the postseason his final two years.
Every empire eventually crumbles … and new empires rise in their place.
Which brings us to the Third Saturday in October.
This has always been a streaky rivalry, and Alabama’s 15-year dominance of Tennessee finally came to an end in 2022. That 52-49 victory by Heupel and the Vols sent shockwaves across the Southeastern Conference, as well as the national perception of both programs.
In 2023 the Vols led by double digits at the half before falling in Tuscaloosa.
Most recently, Tennessee edged Alabama 24-17, a win that set off another raucous celebration at Neyland Stadium (although this time the goalposts were kept inside Shields-Watkins Field).
That makes it two out of three years in which Tennessee beat Alabama. For a rivalry to actually be a rivalry, one team can’t lose all the time. These programs are on somewhat equal playing fields, and the results prove it.
And I’m not sure Alabama fans are able to emotionally handle the reality that their football program is no longer at the top of the college football mountain.
Two years ago, the complaints were the number of penalties called against the Tide in that Vols win. The fact that the majority of those calls were pre-snap penalties brought on massive crowd noise meant nothing to them.
This year the whining got so bad that Chris Stewart of the Crimson Tide Sports Network accused Tennessee of “piping in crowd noise.”
I haven’t seen a game at Bryant-Denny Stadium in a number of years, but I’m assuming that Stewart simply isn’t used to hearing that level of loud.
I’ve been going to games at Neyland Stadium since 1994, and with very limited exceptions, I’ve never heard the old barn louder than it was for the Alabama game this year.
Granted, I was not at the 1998 Florida game, but the 2015 Oklahoma contest and the 2022 Alabama game are the only ones that I’d put in the same conversation of noise as 2024 Alabama. In terms of a moment of loud, the Will Brooks INT to seal the deal against the Tide was earth-shaking.
Tennessee is finally doing its part in this rivalry, and without Saban manning the opposing sidelines, I highly doubt you’ll ever see a stretch like we saw when he was in charge.
Maybe Jeremy Pruitt was right. Maybe this is the “Decade of the Vols.”and we’ll go from there.
