Tennessee football: Vols losing streak to Auburn longest in series history

Tennessee football has lost six straight games against Auburn. That’s the longest streak in the history of the series between the Volunteers and Tigers.

The series between Tennessee football and the Auburn Tigers began way back in 1900, even before the Vols’ first meeting with the Alabama Crimson Tide. Beginning in 1956, the schools played on an annual basis all the way through 1991.

During that period, the Vols won six SEC Championships, and the Tigers won five plus a national championship. The two schools split the title in 1989. So the game was huge in determining the outcome of the SEC, and it didn’t change even after the rivalry ended.

The Vols won their first SEC Championship game against Auburn in 1997, and the Tigers won their first against the Vols in 2004. So the programs are connected in many ways even as the rivalry ended back in 1991. They share a common enemy in the Alabama Crimson Tide and, to a lesser degree the Georgia Bulldogs.

But until this century, the teams played 46 games, with Auburn winning 22 and Tennessee football winning 21. Three ties were in there as well. Nobody ever had more than a four-game winning streak in the series.

Now, though, as the Vols take the field against the Tigers Saturday, they will be in the midst of a six-game losing streak to the Tigers. And ironically, that came on the heels of their four-game winning streak back in the 1990s, their longest winning streak in the series. A crazy tie in 1990 kept them from having a six-game winning streak from 1989 to 1999.

Auburn, though, has dramatically flipped the tables. After torching the Vols on the ground in 2003 en route to a 28-21 victory that ended up costing senior quarterback Casey Clausen a shot at the SEC Championship, they began a streak that included games with championship aspirations, coaches on the hot seat, and rebuilding programs.

After that 28-21 loss, Tennessee football fell two games behind the Tigers in the all-time historical series, 22-21. Auburn extended the lead the next year by beating the Vols twice, but that was understandable given the fact that the Tigers went 13-0 that year and should’ve won the national championship.

Then came 2008. Phillip Fulmer had helped launch the winning streak over the Tigers in the 1990s. Tommy Tuberville flipped the tables in the 2000s. The game had passed both by in 2008, and in a hideous match-up, the Vols lost 14-12. Both coaches were fired at the end of the year.

The next season, Gene Chizik and Lane Kiffin came to town. The second straight game between the two teams on equal playing field resulted in another win for Auburn because Jonathan Crompton couldn’t get his groove going until the fourth quarter.

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Finally, there was 2013. Gus Malzahn had the Tigers rolling to a national championship appearance, and Butch Jones was an incompetent coaching installing his incompetent system in his first year with a program already in the dumps. The result was a blowout loss.

So Tennessee football’s last win over Auburn came in 1999, the third straight year they played the Tigers and won. That was the game where Deon Grant had a pick-six on the first play of the game and came away with three interceptions on the night en route to a 24-0 win.

In a sense, despite the rivalry ending, Auburn’s turning of the tables is indicative of what’s happened to the Vols this century. It’s proof that they aren’t the same program. But the worst part is of the six losses to Auburn, Tennessee football reasonably had the talent to win three of them.

The two teams were on even playing field in 2008 and 2009. So they should have split. And the Vols were the superior team in 2003 by a wide margin. As a result, all things being equal, this series should be 4-2 since 1999 in favor of Auburn.

But it’s not. It’s 6-0. And on Saturday, even with their morale as low as ever, it will take a major supernatural event for Auburn not to extend this winning streak to seven games. And because of the new SEC format, Tennessee football will have to wait another five years to face these guys. So this game is certainly not as exciting for Rocky Top as it was in the 1990s.