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.
2008 Florida Gators football team
Florida entered the game with a three-game winning streak started during Florida head coach Urban Meyer's first season at Florida. Tennessee led the series 19-18 all-time against the Gators dating back to 1916. Coming off of an SEC East title the previous season, Tennessee opened SEC play against the Gators after having lost early to UCLA out of conference on the road. The Gators and Volunteers last met in the Swamp in 2007 where the Gators won 59-20. The previous time the two met at Neyland Stadium, the Gators were able to win by a slim one point and then went on to win the BCS National Championship. The Volunteers would be the first of four regular season teams the Gators faced that were coached by a championship-winning head coach (the other three being Les Miles of LSU, Steve Spurrier of South Carolina, and Bobby Bowden of FSU).