Florida–Tennessee football rivalry
Florida and Tennessee have played on the third Saturday of September almost every year since 1992, giving the rivalry its nickname. Notable exceptions were in 2001, when the game was postponed until December 1 due to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and in 2014, when the addition of two new members to the SEC temporarily scrambled the dates of many traditional conference rivalries and moved the Florida–Tennessee game to October. The rivalry has sometimes served as the conference opener and is often the first significant test of the season for one or both of the teams.
History of Tennessee Volunteers football
After the 1932 season, Tennessee joined the newly formed Southeastern Conference, setting the stage for decades of new and now storied rivalries with such teams like Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt. In 1933, Wallace Wade's Duke Blue Devils upset Neyland's Vols 10–2, the first loss for the Vols in over two and half seasons. It caused Neyland to say of Fred Crawford, the first first-team All-American from the state of North Carolina: "He gave the finest exhibition of tackle play I have ever seen." After the 1934 season, Neyland was called into military service in Panama.
Tennessee struggled to a losing record during Neyland's time in Panama. He returned to find a rebuilding project in 1936. In 1936 and 1937, the Vols won six games each season. However, in 1938, Neyland's Vols began one of the more impressive streaks in NCAA football history. Led by the likes of Tennessee's only three time All-American Bob Suffridge, the 1938 Tennessee Volunteers football team won the school's first National Championship and earned a trip to the Orange Bowl, the team's first major bowl, where they pounded fellow unbeaten Oklahoma by a score of 17–0. They outscored their opponents 283–16. The 1939 regular season was even more impressive. The 1939 team was the last NCAA team ever to hold their opponents scoreless for an entire regular season. Surprisingly, the Vols did not earn a national title that year despite being ranked #1 for most of the season, but did earn a trip to the famed Rose Bowl. The Vols were without the services of tailback George Cafego, who would finish fourth in the Heisman voting and be the top pick in the NFL draft, due to a knee injury. Cafego's backup was also injured. For a single-wing squad heavily dependent upon the tailback position, it proved to be too much for the Vols to overcome. In front of a crowd of over 90,000, Tennessee fell by a score of 14–0 to Southern California. That loss ended UT's streak of 17 straight shutout games and 71 consecutive shutout quarters, NCAA records to this day.