TrueOrange
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Appreciate your historical stats. The first year l can remember was 1998. Didn't know we were playing Arkansas yearly for a little while.
It's ok. Yes, from 1992 through the 2002 season, UT and Arkansas played each other yearly in a rotating home-and-home cross-divisional series (along with The Third Saturday in October cross-division matchup).
It seemed like the intention was to still preserve some of the more historical series matchups, while in the TN-Arkansas matchup's case, it was likely done in the attempt of finding/creating natural conference rivalries for new member Arkansas, with the border the two states share (prior to 1992, Arkansas hadn't played LSU since the 1960s; at the time there was no guarantee that it would take off as a rivalry the way it ended up doing).
Though it's also worth noting that the second permanent matchup with Arkansas likely came at the expense of what would have been a continuation of the then Tennessee - Ole Miss rivalry (the two played pretty much played a yearly home-and-home series - with several neutral site games being played in Memphis as well - from the mid-1950s up until the divisions were created after 1991). When Arkansas was paired with Tennessee in this setup, Ole Miss was then paired with Georgia.
The 1992-2002 combinations went:
- Alabama - Tennessee, Vanderbilt (<-- save a 2-year period in the mid-40s, Alabama & Vandy had played each other yearly from either 1926/1929 through 2002)
- Auburn - Georgia, Florida ( <-- Auburn & Florida had been a major SEC rivalry...essentially each team's 2nd biggest rival; the two played each other yearly from about 1927 through 2002, when the conference's scheduling change to the previous set up finally dissolved the rivalry meeting yearly)
- Arkansas - Tennessee, South Carolina
- Florida - LSU, Auburn
- Georgia - Auburn, Mississippi
- Kentucky - Mississippi State, LSU ( <-- save for a 1-year gap, UK & LSU played each other yearly from 1949 through 2002, when the scheduling shift ended it)
- LSU - Florida, Kentucky
- Mississippi - Georgia, Vanderbilt ( <-- save for 3 years, Ole Miss & Vandy have played each other yearly since around 1945)
- Mississippi State - Kentucky, South Carolina
- South Carolina - Arkansas, Mississippi State
- Tennessee - Alabama, Arkansas
- Vanderbilt - Mississippi, Alabama
That setup was voted away after 2002 - most likely a combination of both how long it took the non-permanent teams to actually meet again (6-years) and probably somewhat at the behest of schedule-fairness (especially regarding situations for schools like LSU, Florida, and Auburn in that setup). After that the 5-1-2 scheduling format (the previous one) was put in place.