Watching 1997 SEC championship game on SEC network Tenn vs Auburn

Freak Dameyune Craig

Tennessee

First defensive 2 point conversation in SEC CG history.

I hated him after y’all beat us earlier that year at LSU. That was a heartbreaking loss.

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Watched that game from a corner of the top row of the Georgia Dome. Could barely tell what was going on from that height and angle.

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You must have been sitting near me. I mainly remember Karsten Bailey dropping a perfectly thrown touchdown pass that would have won the game.

The Team that Could Not Run, had a pretty salty defense and Dameyune. That was about it. They played their hearts out against a very good and more complete UT team, but came up short.

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Way to go.

You'll have Bammers all ove the place acting like you kicked them in the pussy.

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frick Tennessee

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Case in point. First reply to you.

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Will never happen. Those days they had an equally elite rival in Florida and and up and down Alabama and practically nobody else. LSU Auburn and UGA were all pretty mediocre overall that decade. Most of the rest of the league was awful. Nowadays ut has an elite bama and UGA yearly, along with a strong LSU. Florida and au are up and down and even the mid tier teams like Kentucky and Arkansas can make some noise. Saban and Kirby are a bit different than dubose and donnan lol.

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Because these things never go in cycles right? Teams at the top today never believe they were bad or average and no way they could ever get back to that right?

Bama without Saban will be average in a couple years. And UGA could easily get back to average. Look at their offensive recruiting the last 2 years( all D side guys, few top O guys

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Smokeyone

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jonnyanony

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wow, both of yall completely missed the entire point of my post. Yall somehow took it as "UT used to be great, but now they're not, so they won't ever be again durrrr". When in reality it was pointing out:

-In the 90s UT was legitimately elite on their own. LIke not due to any ohter factors, they were simply a damn good program
-In the SEC East they had an equally elite program in UF and that's it. UGA had ray goff and jim donnan and was largely mediocre. From there it was a tremendous dropoff with a middling Kentucky being next best followed by SC and Vandy being 2 of the worst teams in America that decade, literally.
-In the west their annual foe alabama was up and down. They ahd some strong years (SEC titles with 1 natty) but also some not so strong years. AU was as up and down as AU always is, LSu was pretty mediocre in general, and the MS schools and arkansas were bleh.
-Furthermore they recruited the hell out of Atlanta and made a living getting guys from there.

I'm not saying they'll never come out of the dumpster they're currently in, I'm certain they'll be good again at some point. But they aren't going to have an absolute perfect storm of good fortune like they did in the 90s. The league top to bottom is way too strong, with even the teams in the bottom tier being relatively ok. We're adding 2 more perennially great programs. There are way more strong teams at the top now than then. Recruiting is way too different now than then. They will be good again at some point but they are not going ot go on another 10+ year run of being a top 4 or 5 team nationally year in year out.