247Sports: Add Auburn to Tennessee football’s slate if SEC goes conference-only

If coronavirus affects scheduling, 247Sports wants the Tennessee football Volunteers and Auburn Tigers rivalry restored.

There’s no doubt that the split in the SEC back in 1992 was bittersweet. It ended two longstanding Tennessee football rivalries against the Auburn Tigers and Ole Miss Rebels but replaced them with the Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs.

This year, however, with COVID-19 affecting everybody’s schedule and the chance to go to conference-only play, calls for the Vols-Auburn rivalry to resume are taking shape. But Elliott of 247Sports supported such a decision on Monday.

In an article about which games should be added to conference-only schedules if that becomes the decision of the NCAA, Tennessee football and Auburn adding each other was among the first mentioned. Here’s what Elliott wrote about the rivalry.

"I think Tennessee playing Auburn, is one of these rivalries that even if you are from the South, you probably do not think of as a rivalry unless you are of a certain age. But if you grew up watching football in the 1970s or 80s, you remember Tennessee-Auburn as an intense rivalry. They played every year from 1956-91."

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College football historians would love a return of this rivalry. These two schools were the two that could compete best with the Alabama Crimson Tide throughout their rivalry from 1956 to 1991 in order to win the SEC title. In fact, UT had six titles during this time to Auburn’s five.

The peak of this three-way rivalry came in 1989, when the Vols beat the Tigers, the Tide beat the Vols and the Tigers beat the Tide, resulting in a three-way share of the SEC title between the two schools. Auburn had as much to do with that as anybody.

There were thrilling battles between Johnny Majors and Pat Dye throughout the 1980s, which were the best years of the rivalry. Even after it ended in 1991, though, there still managed to be classic games between these schools.

Peyton Manning had the best game of his college career in 1997 when he led the Vols to the SEC Championship by coming back to beat Auburn in the title game. Auburn then enjoyed a shocking upset over a top 10 UT team in 2003 with Jason Campbell.

During the Vols’ only two SEC title seasons since the divisional split of 1992, they beat Auburn both times, including their national championship season in 1998. Auburn beat the Vols twice in its first SEC title season since the divisional split in 2004, and they beat the Vols again in 2013, when they won their third SEC title since the split.

Simply put, this is a great rivalry. Tennessee football got the better of the two most recently, upsetting Auburn on the road in 2018. However, that was their first win over the Tigers in six tries dating back to 1999. If the SEC does increase conference games, this is clearly one to bring back.