Tennessee football: Five previous years Vols played Florida in Deceber

This is the sixth year the Tennessee football Volunteers play the Gators in December.

There’s lots of good news about Tennessee football facing the Florida Gators in December. If history is any indication, the Vols almost always have a memorable season when such a matchup happens, and this precedes when the two played each other annually and even SEC days.

UT and Florida have played each other in December five other times in history. All five times, the Vols never lost more than two games and never failed to win fewer than nine games. They won two conference titles during those seasons and an SEC East title another one of those seasons.

The most recent season the two faced off just happens to be the most recent season Tennessee football won 11 games and finished in the top five or even the top 10. That would be back in 2001, and like this year, that season also had an altered schedule due to outside events.

More storylines are behind seasons in which UT plays Florida in December. One involves a coach about to leave one school for the other just as the two were facing off, another involves being the final game for either team as members of a conference.

In this post, we’re going to look back on all five years the Vols and Gators played in December. Yes, we’ll look at the games themselves, but this is largely a breakdown of the season overall on Rocky Top. It should gave you an idea of just how great of an omen playing Florida in September is for this program. We’ll go in reverse order of seasons.

Three of these games were the first Saturday in December, just like this Dec. 5 showdown will be. Four of them were the final regular season game, just like the showdown will be this year, as it’s the end of the 10-game SEC-only schedule for both teams. It’s also worth noting that four of them were the final game of the season period, although not the exact same four as the others.

Anyway, let’s go ahead and take a look at this omen that lots of people appear to be overlooking after this newly revised SEC schedule. Here’s a look at what happened for Tennessee football in the previous five seasons the Vols played the Florida Gators.