Wish this was still the case but until we can get back their we are a warm up game. Bama will have their second string in at the start of the second quarterIts not equal to the Iron Bowl for "bragging rights" because we don't live in that garbage state and intermingle on a daily basis with those toothless morons and their chromosomally- challenged little brother. Our rivalry was about who's the top dog in the SEC. Like Bear Bryant said "you don't know what kind of team you have until you play Tennessee".
They say your mind naturally "sees backwards" about one and a half times your age minus 4 years.* Think of it as your brain giving the past a mulligan; and the mulligan gets bigger as you get older.
So if you're 20 years old, you think "modern times" are the past (20-4) + (20/2) = 16 + 10 = 26 years. Your backwards time horizon is the early 1990s. Anything that happened before then is meh, ancient history with little applicability today.
But if you're 60 years old, what you remember as the "relevant period" is the past (60-4) + (60/2) = 46 + 30 = 76 years. Your rear horizon reaches to WW2, the mid-1940s. Even if you weren't born until the late 1950s.
This is why your personal definition of "modern times" seems to stretch further back as you get older. It slowly reaches deeper in time as you age. A well-documented psychological effect.
So ... an 80 year old might think of Vandy as our top rival over the long term. Meanwhile, a 50 year old is going to think of Bama first. A 25 year old is going to think of Florida. And a 14 year old...well, he's with the 80-year-old: stuck mostly on Vandy.
Funny how that works.
*This is apparently only true of people of moderate intelligence and above; the rear horizon can be closer for others.
your bias..........they have beat us in the dirt for a decade.....a rivalry should be defined as 2 teams than can beat each other on any given day due to the passion of the rivalry itself. we have not shown that, therefore this game is no longer a rivalrySo there's an article talking about the history of the Bama-UT rivalry, and it actually contains this quote: "The rivalry may not have quite the same bragging rights as the Iron Bowl game with Auburn. It's still big, though."
I realize we're down at the moment, and have been on the losing end of said rivalry for twelve straight. That in no way changes the factual reality that this is one of the oldest and fiercest rivalries in all of college football.
The article was written by an AP writer, which begs the question, where are they finding these guys? Did he just graduate from college? Pretty amazingly shoddy to be that uninformed and working for supposedly a legit news service.
your bias..........they have beat us in the dirt for a decade.....a rivalry should be defined as 2 teams than can beat each other on any given day due to the passion of the rivalry itself. we have not shown that, therefore this game is no longer a rivalry
Great analogy and spot on, IMO.I would compare it to how Tennessee fans feel about Florida and Alabama. Us older guys consider Bama our biggest rival and the younger folks would say the Gators. So that said, older Crimson Tide fans would say the Vols are their biggest rival while younger fans would say Auburn.
It was considered a major rivalry when I started in 1981. We ended an 11 year losing streak in 1982 and started a little run of our own. Just because we have lost for a bit does not rule out rivals. This has been a rivalry of streaks and became one due to the connection between General Neyland and Bear Bryant.your bias..........they have beat us in the dirt for a decade.....a rivalry should be defined as 2 teams than can beat each other on any given day due to the passion of the rivalry itself. we have not shown that, therefore this game is no longer a rivalry
So there's an article talking about the history of the Bama-UT rivalry, and it actually contains this quote: "The rivalry may not have quite the same bragging rights as the Iron Bowl game with Auburn. It's still big, though."
I realize we're down at the moment, and have been on the losing end of said rivalry for twelve straight. That in no way changes the factual reality that this is one of the oldest and fiercest rivalries in all of college football.
The article was written by an AP writer, which begs the question, where are they finding these guys? Did he just graduate from college? Pretty amazingly shoddy to be that uninformed and working for supposedly a legit news service.
This is just marketing for their prime time spot. Don't look into it anymore than that.So there's an article talking about the history of the Bama-UT rivalry, and it actually contains this quote: "The rivalry may not have quite the same bragging rights as the Iron Bowl game with Auburn. It's still big, though."
I realize we're down at the moment, and have been on the losing end of said rivalry for twelve straight. That in no way changes the factual reality that this is one of the oldest and fiercest rivalries in all of college football.
The article was written by an AP writer, which begs the question, where are they finding these guys? Did he just graduate from college? Pretty amazingly shoddy to be that uninformed and working for supposedly a legit news service.
Are you twelve years old? Your definition has every bit as much validity as defining a Hall-of-Fame athlete only by the game he played this week. By your definition Bama-UT wasn't a rivalry all those years Fulmer was beating them like a drum; the last I checked, people didn't try to claim that Bama wasn't a historic, top-tier football program just because they were down for ten years.your bias..........they have beat us in the dirt for a decade.....a rivalry should be defined as 2 teams than can beat each other on any given day due to the passion of the rivalry itself. we have not shown that, therefore this game is no longer a rivalry
It amazes me, not in a good way, how many fans we have now that have no knowledge of sports and don't let that stop them from postulating as though they knew more than people who have actually followed sports for many years. It's really not possible to more thoroughly misuse and butcher a word than what you're doing with the word, "rivalry." You do realize that a rivalry is something that by definition forms and exists over an extended period of time? It's not a fluid concept that is redefined on a yearly basis.They nailed it. We are not and have not been competitive with Bama for a long time. A Rivalry is between two "competitive" teams that play for bragging rights. I don't think Bama brags about beating the Vols.... Do you?
Our only Rivals today are Vandy and maybe Kentucky. I almost included the Gators but I have family in FL and they no longer brag when visiting, which tells me that beating the Vols is simply a fore gone conclusion now days.
Pretty basic, and common sense to anyone who has followed football for more than six months.A quarrel about revenues caused Bama and Auburn nor to play each other for 3 decades. It took an act of the Alabama State Legislature to force them to renew the series. If you count decades of bad blood, you may call it a rivalry. Other than the WWII hiatus, Tennessee has played Bama every year for a century+. That's a rivalry.
It actual isn’t that big of a rivalry anymore, and not just because we call y’all Twelvessee. The fact is it was you guys that de-emphasized the rivalry when you started obsessing over Florida. UT-Alabama was a true rivalry, Florida is no such thing, they are just someone you need to beat to win the east. You could call it a mini rivalry I guess, but not a true rivalry. We need to beat LSU, generally, every year to win the west, but we keep it in perspective. They are one of our rivals, just not quite a rivalry.So there's an article talking about the history of the Bama-UT rivalry, and it actually contains this quote: "The rivalry may not have quite the same bragging rights as the Iron Bowl game with Auburn. It's still big, though."
I realize we're down at the moment, and have been on the losing end of said rivalry for twelve straight. That in no way changes the factual reality that this is one of the oldest and fiercest rivalries in all of college football.
The article was written by an AP writer, which begs the question, where are they finding these guys? Did he just graduate from college? Pretty amazingly shoddy to be that uninformed and working for supposedly a legit news service.