Alabama Football v. Tennessee Volunteers: What rivalry?

Alabama football will take on the Tennessee Volunteers in their 100th matchup, but recent history makes one question the rivalry’s potency.

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#TennesseeHateWeek is alive and well on Twitter, as fans prepare for the rivalry’s century mark in college football. Yet, let’s ignore the history for a moment and just observe the rivalry for what it currently is: a very one-sided affair.

There’s no question that the history tells everyone to mark the Tennessee game on Alabama fans’ calendars, but the rest of the college football world would question whether the hate and passion for the rivalry is more like the Old South’s Hatfields and the McCoys or William Shakespeare’s Capulets and the Montagues rather than a true rivalry. Both sides hate each other because they have been brought up in this hate, but a rivalry is to imply equal sides.

That has not been true for the last 10 matchups. Alabama has the overall record lead against Tennessee (52-38-7), but it also has won the last decade of games against Tennessee. It has been 10 years since the Volunteers sniffed a win from Alabama. Some of the players were still in elementary school and may not have even known there was a rivalry, at the time.

The head coaches are also going in opposite directions from anything resembling an exciting football rivalry. While Alabama’s head coach Nick Saban is 12-1 in his career, including his days with LSU, against the Volunteers, Tennessee’s coach Butch Jones is 0-4 against the Crimson Tide in his career.

Saban, as polite as he could, had this to say about his coaching colleague:

Meanwhile, this is the most polite thing that the Volunteer fans have had to say about Jones’ work with Tennessee football, to say the least:

The Volunteers are currently 3-3 with an 0-3 record in the Southeastern Conference, putting them well out of the picture for a playoff run for the SEC championship, let alone the national championship. Meanwhile, Alabama remains in first place in both the SEC and the national rankings.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math to figure out which one of these two programs is not living up to a rivalry’s proper expectations.

Fans can hold onto the past, if they still want to do it; however, it took the Boston Red Sox to win the World Series three times, since 2004, for anyone to consider their rivalry with their arch-nemesis the New York Yankees to be back on. The hate was always there, just like it is between fans from Alabama and Tennessee, but both teams had to get good again.

Until Boston came back from an 0-3 deficit to win four straight games and take the playoff series against the Yankees in 2004, nobody else in the baseball world cared. Everyone else just assumed it was the same ol’ story of the Bronx Bombers just taking it to the miserable Bostonians, once again.

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That old-hat mentality is currently going through the minds of anyone outside of the Crimson Tide – Volunteers rivalry. It was 2006 since the Volunteers could compete on the same field as Alabama for a victory. Historically, Alabama also has the edge on the Volunteers. From national championships, conference championships, win-record percentage, or the number of bowl games, Alabama tops Tennessee in 11 out of 12 statistics, according to Winsipedia.com. And, the only one that Alabama is not ahead, the total number of players being drafted to the NFL, they are tied with the Volunteers with 343.

Hate is a choice. One can hate another group of people for many justified and unjustified reasons. However, until Tennessee can mount some kind of consistent offensive and defensive attack worthy of any glory days of old, they are going to need medical volunteers to help peel the Volunteers off of the gridiron after the Crimson Tide beat them down, once again.

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It’s football. Anything can happen. Tennessee could shock the world. Just remember though: it takes two to do the rivalry tango, and the Volunteers have forgotten their dancing shoes for the past 10 years. It’s getting closer to hearing the music again, this Saturday, but Coach Jones still does not look like he has found those shoes, yet.

Instead, all Coach Jones may find are his walking papers, as Tennessee hands them to him on the way out of a job after Saturday’s game.