Florida–Tennessee football rivalry
The Florida–Tennessee football rivalry, sometimes referred to as the "Third Saturday in September", is an American college football rivalry between the Florida Gators football team of the University of Florida and Tennessee Volunteers football team of the University of Tennessee, who first met on the football field in 1916. The Gators and Vols have competed in the same athletic conference since Florida joined the now-defunct Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1910, and the schools were founding members of the Southeastern Conference in 1932. Despite this long conference association, a true rivalry did not develop until the early 1990s due to the infrequency of earlier meetings; in the first seventy-six years (1916–91) of the series, the two teams met just twenty-one times. The Southeastern Conference (SEC) expanded to twelve universities and split into two divisions in 1992. Florida and Tennessee were placed in the SEC's East Division and have met on a home-and-home basis every season since. Their rivalry quickly blossomed in intensity and importance in the 1990s and early 2000s as both programs regularly fielded national championship contending teams under coaches Phil Fulmer of Tennessee and Steve Spurrier at Florida.
Clemson–Georgia football rivalry
More than just geography dictated from the beginning that the two teams would be rivals, though the spirit of animosity between them certainly was stoked by the fact that scarcely 70 miles separate the Athens and Clemson campuses. The history of the series stretches back to the earliest days of both football programs, which sprang from a common fountainhead: Walter Riggs, who founded Clemson football, learned the sport as a student at Auburn, where he played for George Petrie who learned the sport as a student at Johns Hopkins, where Petrie acquired his passion for the game with classmate Charles Herty, who founded Georgia football. That shared heritage and close proximity have combined to produce many family ties connecting the neighboring programs. Tavarres King and Jay Romeare two of several Georgia players whose fathers played for Clemson, whereas former Tiger quarterbacks Cullen Harper and Jon Richt were the sons of Bulldogs lineman Jeff Harper and Bulldogs head coach Mark Richt, respectively. In one instance, a president of what was then Clemson College (Patrick Hues Mell, 1902-1910) was the son of former chancellor of the University of Georgia (Patrick H. Mell, 1878-1888). To complicate matters still further, football players Jimmy Orr (who transferred from Clemson to UGA) and Wynn Kopp (who transferred from the Georgia to Clemson) each attended both institutions.