PDF of the rivalries page

SPORTS
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE at
2.
BIGGEST
RIVALRIES
BEGIN IN
ALABAMA
Georgia vs.
Florida football
The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party
is a rare rivalry game that is still played annually at a neutral site. The game has produced
many memorable moments and often carries SEC and national implications. The rivalry intensified last year when Mark Richt
ordered the entire Georgia team to celebrate after its first touchdown against the
Gators.
3.
Alabama vs.
Tennessee football
PRESENTING THE 20 GREATEST
RIVALRIES IN SEC HISTORY
Played on The Third Saturday in October —
or roughly that date — this rivalry goes back
to the 1920s. Bear Bryant started the tradition of passing out victory cigars after a win
over the Vols. The rivalry reached new
heights when Tennessee coach Phillip
Fulmer secretly provided damaging information about Alabama to the NCAA.
4.
By JON SOLOMON
Georgia vs.
Auburn football
The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry has been
played almost every year since 1898, with
only world wars preventing games. The
111-game series has been so close that Auburn leads 53-50-8, but Georgia has scored
70 more points. Even the mascots get
involved: Uga V once lunged at Auburn wide
receiver Robert Baker.
Uga, a mainstay on Georgia sidelines,
even gets into the act, as he did in a
game against Auburn a few years ago.
Sarah Patterson
vs. Suzanne Yoculan
You can’t help but tune in to see what happens next in this gymnastics soap opera. Alabama’s Patterson and Georgia’s Yoculan
have feuded for years as coaches. Patterson
is Shirley Temple. Yoculan is Darth Vader. “I
wear black and play it all up,” Yoculan told
the Athens Banner-Herald this year. “People
think that our rivalry is all staged, but it’s
really not.”
7.
LSU vs.
Ole Miss football
The teams fought for SEC supremacy during
the 1950s and ’60s. Their fans have cursed
each other for much longer. After Billy Cannon’s famous punt return for a touchdown
sparked LSU in 1959, Ole Miss coach John
Vaught later said: “Outside the Louisiana
Purchase in 1803, many Cajuns consider Billy
Cannon’s run the greatest event in state history.”
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9D
15.
Arkansas vs.
Kentucky men’s
basketball
16.
LSU vs.
Mississippi State
baseball
17.
Steve Spurrier
vs. entire SEC
18.
Alabama football
vs. NCAA
enforcement
Expansion also gave the SEC a basketball rivalry between two of the most dominant
teams of the 1990s. Arkansas shook up the
pecking order by defeating Kentucky four
straight times in the regular season from
1992 to 1995. Rick Pitino and Nolan Richardson played fast and furious games, and one
of their teams made the Final Four every
year from 1993 to 1997.
Ole Miss-Mississippi State may be more
heated, but LSU-Mississippi State gets the
nod for significance. Consider who played in
these games: Rafael Palmeiro, Will Clark,
Joey Belle, Todd Walker, Jeff Brantley, Paul
Byrd and Ben McDonald, to name a few. Between 1985 and ’93, LSU or Mississippi State
won the SEC eight of nine times.
He’s the coach fans love to hate. The Birmingham News’ advisory panel voted for
Spurrier on this list as a rival with five different coaches. Spurrier embraced his role as
SEC villain by running up scores and speaking
his mind with cockiness. As Florida won big,
Spurrier lived up to his nickname from irate
fans: “Evil Genius.”
1.
Alabama vs. Auburn football
Is there a more intense rivalry in the country? ESPNU airs an ad that typifies this HatfieldMcCoy feud. An Auburn fan and an Alabama fan pass each other in a nursing home on walkers. The Auburn fan falls. Was he tripped? The Alabama fan keeps going, wearing a sly smile
as the Auburn fan raises a hand for help.
CAST YOUR VOTE
8.
Ron Polk vs.
NCAA
Whenever he can, Mississippi State’s longtime baseball coach berates NCAA leadership for its treatment of college baseball
programs. “The NCAA is the enemy of college baseball,” Polk declared, upset over the
sport’s scholarship limits. It’s a one-sided rivalry — the NCAA usually keeps quiet —
that could be tempered by Polk’s retirement.
6.
j News staff writer
Ray Mears vs.
Kentucky basketball
With Kentucky basketball rolling, Mears
dared to challenge the Wildcats as Tennessee’s coach. Mears let the air out of the ball,
making him the coaching antithesis of Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp, who mastered fastbreak basketball. Mears was most proud
that he went 15-15 against Kentucky, including 8-12 versus Rupp.
5.
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The Birmingham News
9.
Bryant and Butts
vs. Saturday
Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post published a story
in 1963 accusing Alabama’s Bear Bryant and
Georgia’s Wally Butts of fixing a football
game. Bryant and Butts sued for libel. The
passion surrounding a trial with two Southern football heroes was compared to the
Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. A judge ruled
the magazine rushed to judgment.
10.
Steve Spurrier
vs.
Phillip Fulmer
Spurrier loves verbally dueling with his Tennessee counterpart. “You can’t spell Citrus
without UT,” Spurrier enjoyed saying, referring to Tennessee’s appearances in the Citrus Bowl while Spurrier racked up SEC titles
and a national championship. While at Florida, Spurrier won the SEC East in seven of 10
years against Fulmer.
11.
Ole Miss vs.
Mississippi State
football
The name of the series — the Egg Bowl —
stems from a 1926 riot between their
fans after an Ole Miss upset in
Starkville. Rebels fans attempted
to tear down the goal posts. Injuries occurred as fans from
Mississippi A&M (now Mississippi State) defended with
wooden chairs. The Egg Bowl
trophy was created as a compromise the following year.
Which rivalry is your pick for SEC’s
greatest? Vote at blog.al.com/bn/SEC75
12.
Bear Bryant
vs. Bobby Dodd
Georgia Tech left the SEC in 1964, but there
are still Alabama and Tech fans who despise
the other. Their games used to be brutal.
Dodd and Bryant began a long feud after
Georgia Tech’s Chick Graning sustained a
broken jaw from a hit by Alabama’s Darwin
Holt in 1961. The coaches stopped talking for
years and the series was later discontinued.
13.
Dale Brown
vs. Kentucky
men’s basketball
LSU’s colorful coach said Kentucky took the
beauty out of basketball with its physical
style. In 1978, Dale Brown called the Wildcats
a dirty team away from the ball and criticized the behavior of Kentucky fans. Sixteen years later, LSU lost a 31-point lead to
Kentucky in the greatest comeback in NCAA
basketball history.
14.
Look at how many lawsuits and trials have
spun out of the Albert Means/Kenny Smith
case, which landed Alabama on probation.
To this day, many Tide fans remain bitter at
the severity of the NCAA penalties. One Alabama man who ran for the U.S. Senate this
year listed his name on the ballot as Mark
“No NCAA” Townsend.
Florida
vs. Tennessee
football
SEC expansion created this rivalry in the
1990s. The Gators are 12-6 since these programs began meeting every year in the same
division. The SEC removed some officials
from working contests in Knoxville or Gainesville due to controversial calls they made
in a Florida-Tennessee game.
Steve Spurrier
created rivalries
with just about
everyone while
coaching at Florida.
Phillip Fulmer was called Judas Brutus
by former UT coach Johnny Majors.
19.
Johnny Majors
vs. Phillip Fulmer
Did Fulmer backstab Majors to become Tennessee’s football coach? Fulmer was a top
assistant and won three games when Majors
underwent heart surgery in 1992. Majors was
then fired and replaced by Fulmer. “I don’t
pull against those players up there,” Majors
said in 2005. “But I don’t have any regard for
Judas Brutus, who’s coaching up there.”
20.
Babe McCarthy
vs. Mississippi
politicians
McCarthy, Mississippi State’s basketball
coach, was forced to reject invitations to
the NCAA Tournament in 1959, ’61 and ’62.
The governor and state legislature had an
unwritten rule forbidding state universities
from playing in integrated tournaments.
McCarthy had enough and snuck his team
out of the state for the 1963 tournament.
HOW WE PICKED
THIS LIST
The Birmingham News asked 13 knowledgeable individuals to pick and rank their own lists. From those, The
News calculated a composite list. The News made
changes where the views of its sports staff differed
greatly from the composite list. The panelists: Joe Biddle, sports columnist at The Tennessean; Frank Broyles,
former Arkansas athletics director and football coach;
Eugene Byrd, former Florida track and field athlete and
former Florida/SEC administrator; Claude Felton,
Georgia sports information director; Joe Dean Jr., Birmingham-Southern College athletics director and former Mississippi State basketball player and SEC assistant coach; Bud Ford and Haywood Harris, Tennessee
assistant athletics directors for media relations (joint
vote); Derek Horne, Ole Miss associate athletics director; David Housel, former Auburn athletics director;
Kent Lowe, LSU assistant media relations director;
C.M. Newton, former Kentucky athletics director
and basketball coach at Alabama and Vanderbilt;
Wimp Sanderson, former Alabama basketball
coach; and Bob Spear, sports columnist at The
(Columbia, S.C.) State.