Last season’s 43-14 Georgia victory over Tennessee in Knoxville pushed the Bulldogs into the all-time series lead. These two nearby foes, separated by a four-hour drive depending on the route and about 24 minutes in the air, did not begin playing annually until the first round of Southeastern Conference expansion when the league split into divisions in 1992.
Up until that point, the Bulldogs and Volunteers had been rather infrequent foes, and neither considered the other a great rival by any stretch. When the Bulldogs were tied by Tennessee 17-17 in Knoxville in 1968 – a bitter pill for Georgia, as the Volunteers scored a touchdown with no time on the clock on what was a dropped pass ruled a catch, and the subsequent two-point conversion, all with shaky time-keeping in the first year the clock was stopped after first downs – it marked the first meeting between the two since 1937.