The Prologue
To understand what happened in Knoxville in 1998, you have to remember both what we'd gained and what we'd lost.
The modern era of Tennessee Football, as I like to call it, started in 1989. The genesis of the Vols' current status as an elite program can be found in Pasadena, California, on a late September night, when a team that had gone 5-6 in 1988 went out to No. 6 UCLA and came back with a 24-6 win.
The Vols would go on to capture a share of the SEC Championship in 1989 before winning it outright in 1990, and the run was on.
Five years and a new head coach and defensive coordinator later, a sophomore named Peyton Manning came under center for his first full season as the starting quarterback.
For the next three years, the Vols were great—11-1 and ranked No. 2 in the coaches' poll in 1995, 10-2 in 1996, and an 11-1 SEC Champion in 1997 with an outside shot at the National Championship before getting blasted by Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.
That run of three years made Manning a legend and helped the Vols reach new heights...
...but the heights weren't quite as high as we wanted to go.
Outside of 1996 and a fluke loss to Memphis, all you see are ones in the regular season loss column up there. And each of those three seasons, the one was the same—the Florida Gators.
What Steve Spurrier and the Gators did in the mid-'90s is impressive beyond description—four straight SEC Championships, winning it all in 1996, and putting their stamp of ownership on the toughest conference in college football.
Florida's greatness, combined with Tennessee's inability to beat them, really made the nation at large overlook how good Tennessee was during that same time period.
Under Phillip Fulmer and Peyton Manning, the Vols scratched a 10-year Alabama itch in 1995, the first of seven straight wins over the Crimson Tide—a streak that no other school can claim and one that changed the entire landscape of the Vols' most bitter rivalry.
But under the new divisional format, the Vols' most important rivalry had become Florida, and just when the Alabama series got better, the Florida series got worse.
The Vols beat 'Bama, kept unloading on the rest of the SEC, beat Eddie George and No. 4 Ohio State in the Citrus Bowl following the 1995 season, then blew out co-Big 10 Champion Northwestern in the same bowl the following season. Peyton Manning racked up legendary numbers to stake his claim as one of the best SEC quarterbacks of all time.
Tennessee was beating everybody...except Florida.
The most impressive statistic in this era that I know of is this: between an October 1994 loss to Alabama, and a November 1999 loss at Arkansas, the Vols went 1-4 against Florida.
They went 37-0 against the rest of the SEC.
That's stunning. Dominance on an incredible, unheard-of level.
...except it wasn't. Because Florida was still one step ahead.
The Vols were outscored by the Gators in 1993 and incredibly overwhelmed on paper and in result in 1994. But when sophomore Peyton Manning went to The Swamp in 1995, the Vols felt like they were right there with Florida.
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