re: Auburn to the East

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Where would you rank Florida among Auburn's rivals? Where would Florida fans rank Auburn?

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Through most of my life, I would have:

2a UGA
2b UF

I really did not see much of a difference in those games in the 1980's. Dye seemed to put equal emphasis on both and we had pretty equal history between both. If we had not quit playing UF in 2002, UF would be 2nd only to UGA in the team we have played the most in our history and I would bet close to the same number of times bama/ut have played.

Florida was also the first of any of our rivals to start travelling to Jordan Hare to play us. There has always been a lot of mutal respect between the two. AU/UGA have shared a lot of coaches and players, but AU/UF have a long history too and the game has helped AU's recruiting efforts in the state of FL also.

[quote]What Tennessee and Alabama fans seem to be saying here (and elsewhere) is that they'd rather keep their rivalry than expand the conference. If so, I don't disagree. I was happy at 12 teams, and I didn't think we needed to expand. But, for all the endlessly enumerated reasons, we, as a conference, did decide to expand. With that comes inevitable change, even to venerated traditions. It simply comes with the territory. We've made this bed, so it's time to lie in it. If that means giving up traditional rivalry games, then that's just the price we'll have to pay.

Even if they do manage to save that rivalry in a 14-team set-up, does anyone really doubt that we are moving to 16 in the fairly near future? At 16 teams, there is just no way we're going to be able to keep annual rivalries across divisions. Otherwise, we'll practically never be playing nearly half the other teams in our conference.

This is inevitable, notwithstanding some band-aid the Vols and Tide shove down everyone's throat right now. Sooner or later, y'all will simply have to accept it. Either be in the same division, or quit playing each other every year, will be the only realistic choices.[/quote]

That's easy for others to say but that scenario only screws over Tennessee/Alabama. People can argue semantics and say what's the big deal until they're blue in the face but you're asking UT to give up their only meaningful rivalry that just happens to be THE most significant and 2nd longest played historical rival (2nd if you want to argue Auburn/UGA) between the 2 winningest programs in the conference's history. It isn't like you're asking Arkansas and South Carolina fans to quit playing their game with each other and just shut and deal with it. It's the equivalent of BYU joining the Big 12 and other Big 12 members telling Texas and Oklahoma to get over losing the Red River Shootout.

I don't think a 16 team SEC is necessarily a given. At least I hope to heck it isn't. You think their is disagreement about alignment and scheduling right now, the s### will hit the fan when their schedule comes out in a 16 team league.