The Florida–Tennessee football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the Florida Gators football team of the University of Florida and Tennessee Volunteers football team of the University of Tennessee, who first met on the football field in 1916. The Gators and Vols have competed in the same athletic conference since Florida joined the now-defunct Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1910, and the schools were founding members of the Southeastern Conference in 1932. Despite this long conference association, a true rivalry did not develop until the early 1990s due to the infrequency of earlier meetings; in the first seventy-six years (1916–91) of the series, the two teams met just twenty-one times.
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) expanded to twelve universities and split into two divisions in 1992, and Florida and Tennessee were placed in the SEC's East Division and began to meet annually on a home-and-home basis. The matchups were often early in the season, giving rise to the Third Saturday in September nickname. The rivalry quickly blossomed in intensity and importance over the 1990s and early 2000s as both programs regularly fielded national championship contending teams under coaches Phil Fulmer of Tennessee and Steve Spurrier of Florida. The rivalry will be played every other season beginning in 2025 due to further SEC expansion and the league's move to a nine-game conference schedule.
Tennessee dominated the rivalry's early years, winning the first ten meetings and holding a 13–2 lead in the series after beating the Gators in 1971. Florida has held the advantage since then, especially since the schools became SEC East rivals in 1992. After Tennessee's 31–11 victory in 2025, the Gators lead the all-time series 32–23.
Schedule Florida and Tennessee's football teams first met in 1916, when both schools were members of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association. They each joined the Southern Conference in the 1920s, and were founding members of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in 1932. Despite these common affiliations, a true rivalry did not develop between the programs for a long time because they played so sparingly.
For many years, the SEC allowed schools to arrange their own conference schedules, which sometimes resulted in unusual or imbalanced conference slates that varied according to traditional opponents and each athletic department's travel budget. The University of Tennessee is located in Knoxville and the University of Florida is in Gainesville, which are approximately apart. Between the cost and time required to travel by train and the SEC's lax scheduling oversight, the two schools met on the gridiron only thirteen times between 1916 and 1969. Seven of these games were played in Knoxville, two in Gainesville, and four in other locations across Florida.
The SEC became a 10-member league in the late-1960s, and a new scheduling system had the Gators and Vols play seven times over the next 21 seasons. The SEC became a 12-member league in 1992 and split into two divisions. Both Florida and Tennessee were placed in the SEC's Eastern Division, and the rivals met every year from 1990 until 2025.
The SEC expanded to 16 members in 2024, and after two seasons of transition, members schools decided to move to a nine-game conference slate in 2026, disrupting several annual rivalries. Under the new scheduling formula, Florida and Tennessee will play every other year beginning in 2027, making 2026 the first college football season without a scheduled clash between the Gators and the Volunteers in 36 years.
Third Saturday in September Florida and Tennessee played on the third Saturday of September almost every year from 1992 until the SEC expanded again in 2024, giving the rivalry its nickname. In many of those seasons, it was the first significant challenge of the season for one or both teams, with the winner gaining a key advantage in the race for a berth in the SEC Championship Game. Notable exceptions to the usual scheduling came in 2001, when the game was postponed until December 1 due to the September 11 attacks, and in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the start of the season and shifted the Florida–Tennessee game to December 5.
Other sports As long-time members of the same conference, Tennessee and Florida have long competed in many other sports besides football. Men's basketball in particular became a heated rivalry for a time in the mid- to late-2000s, when coach Bruce Pearl's Volunteer squads challenged coach Billy Donovan's national championship-winning Gator teams for supremacy in the SEC's Eastern Division. However, the basketball rivalry cooled after Pearl was fired in 2011 and Donovan left Florida for the NBA in 2015. In general, it has been the schools' football rivalry which has consistently received more attention from fans and media over the years.
Series history Early history
Tennessee dominated the early series, winning their first 10 meetings with Florida over a span of 37 years (1916–53). The highlight of this period was a 1928 season-ending matchup between undefeated squads in Knoxville that the Volunteers won 13–12. Florida finally beat Tennessee in 1954, winning 14–0 in Knoxville, but Tennessee won the return visit to Gainesville the following year, which was the first time that the teams played at Florida Field.
Florida and Tennessee would not meet again for fourteen years, the longest gap in the series. They next faced off in the 1969 Gator Bowl. In that highly unusual post-season matchup between conference foes, Florida won 14–13, then hired away the Tennessee's head coach, former Gator quarterback Doug Dickey.
At the conclusion of the 1960s, Tennessee owned an 11–2 all-time record against Florida.
1970s and 1980s
Tennessee won their first two clashes against Dickey's Gators, and Florida won the next two, including a 1976 victory in Gainesville that was their first home win against the Vols in four tries. Dickey resigned as Florida's coach after the 1978 season, ending a largely disappointing tenure at Florida and eventually returning to Knoxville in 1985 to become Tennessee's athletic director.
Florida ran their win streak over Tennessee to four games (over nine seasons) with wins in Knoxville and Gainesville in 1984 and 1985 as they topped the SEC standings in both years. However, Florida would not be officially recognized for those championships, as the program was put on NCAA probation during the 1984 season due to violations committed under former coach Charley Pell. Though SEC's executive committee had initially ruled that Florida could keep their first ever conference championship, the university presidents later overturned the decision and vacated the title. Florida President Marshall Criser and the university community were incensed by this reversal, and many blamed the University of Tennessee for leading the movement to strip UF's first conference championship.
On the field, Florida held a 4–2 advantage during the 1970s and 80s.
1990s Tennessee and Florida rotated back onto each other's schedule in 1990, which was coincidentally the same year that former Florida quarterback Steve Spurrier returned to Gainesville as the Gators' new head coach. Spurrier had spent most of his youth in Tennessee, and his return to the state was marred by a 45–3 Vols rout in 1990, the largest margin of victory in series history. Florida won the return game in Gainesville in 1991 on their way to their first official conference championship.
SEC East rivals One result of the SEC's 1992 expansion and split into divisions was the beginning of an annual match-up between Florida and Tennessee at a time when both programs rose to national prominence. As a result, Florida and Tennessee have met on a home-and-home basis every year since 1990.
Under head coaches Steve Spurrier and Phillip Fulmer, the Gators and Volunteers were annual contenders for conference and national championships, with both teams usually fielding wide-open offenses led by top quarterbacks such as Danny Wuerffel and Peyton Manning, among many other highly decorated players on both sides of the ball.
Their first match-up as permanent opponents in 1992 helped to sow the seeds of rivalry, as the underdog Vols beat the defending SEC champion Gators in Neyland Stadium. Fulmer had been serving as UT's interim head coach while Johnny Majors recovered from heart problems, but his team's upset of the Gators helped to secure him the permanent position and brought about a decade of games in which the rivalry was one of the key match-ups of every college football season. The Gators turned the tables and upset the Volunteers in 1993, with true freshman Wuerffel outplaying Heisman Trophy candidate Heath Shuler in a 41–34 win that was Fulmer's first loss as Tennessee's head coach.
The rivalry held national championship implications over each of the following seasons, with both teams entering the contests ranked in the top 10 every year. Though they were not always the favorite, Florida won five straight against Tennessee from 1993 to 1997, winning four SEC titles and a consensus national championship in 1996. The 1994, 1995, and 1996 contests featured match-ups between starting quarterbacks Danny Wuerffel and Peyton Manning, who never beat Florida during his celebrated college career. But though Florida beat Tennessee in 1997, upset losses to LSU and Georgia propelled Tennessee to their own SEC championship in Manning's senior year. Tennessee broke Florida's winning streak in 1998 with a 20–17 overtime win and went on to win their second straight SEC championship and a national championship. In 1999, Florida upset the Vols in Gainesville to close out the decade.
During the 1990s, Florida and Tennessee combined to win eight conference and two national championships, and either the Gators or the Volunteers represented the SEC East in each of the first ten SEC Championship games. Both teams were ranked in the top 10 for eight out of their ten contests during the decade, and neither team ever entered their rivalry game ranked lower than No. 15. Florida held a 7–3 record against Tennessee from 1990 to 1999.
2000s
Florida began the next decade with a 27–23 victory in Knoxville in front of a national record crowd of 108,768 fans. During the following season, the September 11 attacks postponed all NCAA Division-I football games that were scheduled to be played on the following Saturday. The Florida and Tennessee match-up was rescheduled for December, and the Vols upset the Gators in Gainesville, winning on Florida Field for the first time since 1971. Steve Spurrier left Florida for the NFL after the 2001 season, but two trends in the rivalry continued in 2002: both teams were ranked in the top 10, and new Florida coach Ron Zook led the Gators to another win in Knoxville. However, both teams stumbled later in the season, and for the first time ever, neither would represent the SEC's Eastern Conference in the SEC Championship Game. The 2002 contest would be the last time to date in which both schools would enter their annual clash ranked in the top 10.
For the first time since the division rivalry began 11 years earlier, the 2003 match-up featured UF and UT teams that were each ranked out of the top 10 (UT No. 12, UF No. 17), and the game was relegated to a noon kickoff on CBS. Tennessee pulled away in the second half to win 24–10 for their second victory in Gainesville. The Vols were victorious against Florida again in 2004 for their 2nd straight win against Florida and their third victory in four meetings.