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.
History of Florida Gators football
During the 1910s, Florida began playing a wider range of opponents from larger universities across the southeastern United States and faced off against several future rivals - such as Georgia, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, and Auburn - for the first time. The program first rose to national prominence in the 1920s, when coach Charlie Bachman's 1928 team led the nation in scoring and were kept from a perfect season and a possible invitation to play in the Rose Bowl by a season-ending one point loss to Tennessee in Knoxville. The success of the 1928 Gators inspired a drive to replace primitive Fleming Field with a modern facility, and Florida Field opened in 1930.