LSU/Tennessee is a casualty of conference realignment

There are 4 days till college football season, and today we talk about a matchup that has been a casualty of conference realignment.

LSU/Tennessee is not a traditional rivalry. But it is a matchup of two of the Southeastern Conference’s most storied football programs, and let’s be honest, it’s the SEC. Every game is a rivalry. Before conference realignment in 2012, the SEC expanded to 12 teams in 1992 and they’ve played an eight-game conference schedule ever since. With that eight-game conference schedule, teams would play five games against their division, then three games against the opposite division.

Starting in 2000, teams would still play three teams from the opposite division, with one of the games locked every year and the other two rotating between the other five teams in the division. So from 2000-2011, the LSU/Tennessee matchup happened six times in the regular season and twice in the SEC Championship game. Coincidentally enough, that’s also the time that LSU took control of this series. And that leads us to no. 4 on the Southbound and Down College Football Countdown.

LSU Tigers have won 4 consecutive games against the Tennessee Volunteers

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Tennessee leads the all-time series 20-9-3, but LSU has gotten the best of them in recent years. Since 2000, the Tigers have gone 6-2 against the Vols, including two SEC title game wins and four consecutive victories, but the two teams haven’t played since 2011.

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This season marks the first time since the conference expanded to 14 teams that these two teams have played. But it is not the only conference matchup that has been a casualty of conference realignment.

The locked rivalries in the SEC are Alabama/Tennessee, Auburn/Georgia, Florida/LSU, Arkansas/Missouri, South Carolina/Texas A&M, Kentucky/Mississippi State, and Ole Miss/Vanderbilt. So basically any inter conference matchup that’s not one of these games is rarely played.

Auburn and Florida played every year from 1945-2002, and they’ve only played three times since. And the Gators and Tigers haven’t played once since conference realignment. Alabama and Georgia are two of the SEC’s most storied traditions and they’ve played 65 times in their programs’ history. But because of conference realignment, the Crimson Tide and Bulldogs have only played once in the regular season since 2008, which is probably a good thing for Georgia.

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So we’re getting a treat in late November when the Tigers travel to Knoxville to take on the Volunteers. Hopefully it’s a great game, because it’ll probably be another decade till we see these teams play again.