Alabama vs Tennessee has been a streaky rivalry. In the past, whichever team was on the losing end of a streak, that team naturally loathed the other more. Tennessee has been so uncharacteristically down the past decade, unfortunately we got into losing streaks against BOTH our most vile rivals. The odd thing about Bama though is that they've been a dominant program for so many decades, their fans, arrogant and cocky as they may be, still seem to have at least a historical perspective and respect for the importance of the Tennessee Alabama rivalry. Florida fans, on the other hand, are simply intolerable. Perhaps our irrelevancy post Fulmer era made it worse. But as much as I hate Alabama, losing to Florida feels a thousand times worse. Dirty and gross worse. Like needing to wash in pure bleach kind of worse. With the team we have this year, losing to Florida AGAIN would have been the most unbearable moment in my life of following sports.
To put things in perspective. EVERYONE hates the Alabama program right now except Alabama fans. That's a reflection of their dominance for 8 straight years. That won't change until Saban retires or moves elsewhere. But Florida could be a doormat for 10 years, and I'd never want to even experience an upset loss to their ******* arrogant program and fans.
Realistically, I'd like Tennessee's program to get dominant to the point of exchanging wins and losses with Bama. That means we probably rematch them in quite a number of SECC games, aside from the seasonal rivalry, and likely means we win SEC Championships and a National Title. I can't realistically expect to post a long winning streak against them when they're basically an NFL minor league team. But Florida? We should already have a 3-game winning streak against them and we better not lose again to them for a number of years.