Revenge and Revitalization: How an Upset Brought New Life to an Old Rivalry
“Chase McGrath for the win for the Volunteers. From 40. On the way, a knuckleball. He got it!”
That was the call on CBS from Brad Nessler as a Tennessee field goal snuck through the uprights and sent Neyland Stadium into a frenzy the likes of which few in the sport have ever witnessed. The shocking final score: Tennessee Volunteers 52, Alabama Crimson Tide 49.
It was more than just a home win, though. It marked Tennessee's first win in the series since 2006, rejuvenating a rivalry that still stands as one of the most important for untold numbers of fans across the Southeastern Conference landscape. Knoxville, Tenn., lost its collective mind. Goalposts infamously sank into the river. Orange-clad fans traversed the streets with such vigor that many thought they would celebrate until they physically couldn’t anymore. And then they would start again.
“Everything that Tennessee has accomplished under Josh Heupel, that’s the singular biggest moment, the best moment, the most important moment,” ESPN’s Paul Finebaum said. “It will live in infamy.”
For Alabama, this weekend’s edition of the Third Saturday in October is somewhat unprecedented territory, or at least unfamiliar. The series has always gone in streaks, but head coach Nick Saban was patrolling an NFL sideline the last time the Volunteers beat the Crimson Tide. Tennessee had tried everything over the years between 2006 and 2022, including hiring more than one former Saban assistant coach.
A noteworthy occurrence was in 2014, when the unranked Vols faced top-five Crimson Tide and attempted to rouse the fanbase by trotting out an all-orange uniform ensemble for the occasion. Alabama won, 34-20.
The Volunteers were an arm’s reach away (literally) from knocking off a Crimson Tide team that would eventually win a national title in 2009. In another lifetime, Daniel Lincoln, not Chase McGrath, is the kicker whose name is attached to the first Volunteer team that beat Saban. Instead, Alabama survived against Lane Kiffin, 12-10.
Then came 2015, when Joshua Dobbs and Jalen Hurd nearly knocked a team with the Heisman Trophy winner in its backfield out of the playoff hunt. Alabama held on, 19-14. Tennessee’s much-hyped 2016 team had nothing to offer for a young Jalen Hurts and a defense that's one of the fiercest in recent college football memory: 49-10, Alabama.
“It [the rivalry] changed over time because it became so one-sided. Alabama’s biggest games were primarily with LSU, and obviously Auburn,” Finebaum said. “And Tennessee because of the division, the Georgia and, most notably, the Florida game became more important … Last year changed all that.”
Long before he became a columnist and reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald in 1980, Finebaum, a Tennessee graduate, would camp out for tickets to the Alabama game, then the biggest weekend of the year in Knoxville.
“I didn’t do that for the Vanderbilt game, or the Mississippi State game, but you did it for this game,” he said.
Generationally, last season’s result was an awakening for many on the younger side in the college football world. Many current students at both schools were at or around kindergarten age in 2006. Former Crimson Tide fullback Baron Huber has a more unique perspective than almost anyone involved in the rivalry because he was from Powell, Tenn., but played on that 2006 Alabama team. Huber and his teammates wanted one back against their archrival the next year, and got it, but didn't anticipate the floodgates that triumph would open. Thinking on a 15-game streak caused him to reflect on how his own life had changed over the course of that decade and a half.
“I’ve gone in that situation [with] losing to Tennessee the year before, and then [we played] them the next year. The stakes are higher because you have the revenge factor, on top of the rivalry game,” he said. “In a game like this, where the outcome can determine the future of your season and its success, it starts having a compound interest feel of importance. You try not to look in the rearview mirror, but that is there. It’s not something you can just brush away and pretend it doesn’t exist. The revenge piece is important.”
He added that last season’s team may well believe the key to revenge in 2023 is not beating themselves.
“As a team, it’s certainly not insurmountable to believe that we should’ve won the game, and that we really beat ourselves," he said. "And I think that’s the focus.”
In highlighting the revenge aspect of Saturday's showdown at Bryant-Denny Stadium, former Alabama athletic director and Tennessee head coach Bill Battle had a specific example. Immediately prior to Tennessee’s game-winning drive last October, Crimson Tide kicker Will Reichard missed a 50-yard field goal. It wasn’t exactly close, and gave way for Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker to conjure a final string of heroics to set up McGrath.
“I was thinking about that. We’ve got the best field goal kicker, probably in the country, in Will Reichard. And he stayed an extra year, which we’re so glad, and he hasn’t missed a field goal yet [in 2023]. I’m knocking on wood as we speak,” Battle said. “With the game on the line, and a chance at the end to kick a field goal on a makeable yardage for him, he missed. And then Tennessee came back down, and their kicker made it. I would think that we had them beat last year, and that was on their turf.”
Battle add said home-field advantage is worth something in the rivalry as well. It's almost always been that way.
For as much as Alabama is going to be motivated by revenge, with its fans eager for payback, Tennessee wants just as badly to stave that thirst for vengeance off. Narratives of 2022 being a fluke or lucky win won’t find sanctuary in the visiting locker room this Saturday. Moreover, the last thing Heupel and his squad want to do is provide an avenue for the Crimson Tide to start another 15-game winning streak.
“As has often been said, it has been a rivalry of streaks,” Battle said. “If I was a Tennessee player or coach, I’d say, ‘We ended their streak last year and it’s our time. We’re gonna get our streak going again, just like we’ve had before Coach Saban came, and this is as good a time as any.’”
Battle, a former player at Alabama under Paul “Bear” Bryant, was very young for a head coach when he took over Tennessee in 1970. Still, he and the Volunteers shut out Alabama that very same year on home turf, 24-0.
“We intercepted eight passes that day,” Battle said. “That was a great day for Tennessee, and for me. Unfortunately, I made Coach Bryant mad, I guess, because I never beat him again. He went the next year to the wishbone, shocked the world by beating Southern Cal out in Los Angeles in the opening game.”
The 1971 score was 32-15, and the Volunteers wouldn't win another game in the series until 1982, Bryant’s final season.
A Tennessee program depicting then-head coach Bill Battle with his players. On Battle's right is Tim Priest, who had three of the eight interceptions forced by the Volunteers against Alabama.
Courtesy of Bill Battle
“People like Bill made this game really special,” Finebaum said. "There’s always been a little bit of an intermingling of the two sides.”
The new life the Volunteers injected into the rivalry has also reinvigorated discussions about potential future outcomes, should the game be altered by the rapidly changing footprint that includes the impending addition of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC. If the league has each team keep three permanent opponents on its schedule, the rivalry is probably safe. If it goes to each school having one annual set team, there may be no way to continue the series on an annual basis.
“I can’t imagine them not playing this game,” Finebaum said. “I still think if you sit down every year and try to determine what are the most important games in the SEC, this is still one of them. … I don’t know how they’re gonna do it, and I don’t think they know how they’re going to do it, but I’m willing to believe this game is on that list.”
Huber is of the mind that a storied rivalry with deep roots in the sport should not be abandoned just because new schools without prior SEC history are being added. He, for one, is completely and unapologetically adamant that the Third Saturday in October stays on the yearly slate.
“In rivalry games, there’s no denying that it has a different feel,” Huber said. “The clarity is different. The intensity is different. The understanding of the outcome of the game and the stakes that are at hand is different… In a rivalry game, it’s hard to mask the importance of it, and you can feel it.”
Some discussions at this juncture at the rivalry have also been those of reflection. However, an untold number of people have memories of some form of Alabama vs. Tennessee, and they go far beyond the tradition of the iconic victory cigars, which began under Bryant.
“I was one of the few that have been in the locker rooms of Tennessee against Alabama and Alabama against Tennessee,” said Battle. “I can tell you that the feeling of [those] I was around [was] an ultimate respect for the other team. Even in the 15-game winning streak Coach Saban and his staff had great respect for Tennessee and what the rivalry meant to Alabama fans, and the same feeling was there from Tennessee. This is a rivalry not of hate. I hate that some rivalries have gone to that end, but the Alabama-Tennessee, for the most part, is more respect.”
“I think the game is always important because, you go back 50 years, Tennessee fans would travel to Birmingham. Tennessee and Alabama were a friendly rivalry,” Finebaum said. “Then Alabama fans would go up and spend a weekend in Gatlinburg or something, and everybody would be friends with everybody else.”
Anthony Sisco
As to the game itself, Battle sees ways for Alabama to win. In his view, it comes down to capitalizing on opportunities, such as creating turnovers and taking advantage of them. Another key will obviously be protecting the passer and rushing the opposing signal caller.
Finebaum sees a confident Crimson Tide defense. Hooker had five touchdowns against Alabama last season in what some had tabbed as a potential Heisman moment. That did not come to pass, and Tennessee hasn't been able to replicate his numbers with Joe Milton in 2023.
“I think the defense right now is so confident that they’re probably not hung up on that,” he said. “I think the defense has acquainted itself so well this year that I don’t think they’re thinking about last year very much.”
Huber believes an Alabama win hinges on the Crimson Tide players not putting themselves in situations that cause game-losing errors.
Whether the game on Saturday ends in a Tennessee repeat or Alabama’s 16th victorious outcome in 17 tries, the rivalry is at a more intriguing point than it has been in recent years. That’s given rise to a variety of nuances and talking points, some old, some new. Only time will tell , though, what actually happens when the 11 clad in their timeless crimson line up across from the visiting 11, with their orange accenting the road uniforms, in the 2:30 p.m. time slot that Finebaum referred to as “coveted.”
