Given how the last two decades have gone for LSU and Tennessee, it’s strange to consider the fact that their statuses in the SEC were once reversed.

While LSU has been one of the most successful teams in the conference since 2000, Tennessee declined into a laughingstock painted gold. 

LSU’s rise coincided perfectly with Tennessee’s fall, and there’s even a specific game that represents the start of those trends. But to better explain the rise, we must first start lower.  

Between the years of 1989 and 1999, LSU failed to outpace Tennessee in wins a single time, even as the Volunteers dramatically transitioned from longtime Head Coach Johnny Majors to then-offensive coordinator Phillip Fulmer in 1992.  

The Tigers and Volunteers faced off three times within that span, all going the way of Tennessee. The last of which occurred in Fulmer’s first official season as head coach, where Tennessee blew LSU out 42-20 in 1993. They would not face off again for seven years.  

Throughout that time period, LSU fans had little to be excited about when it came to their football program. Apart from 1996 and 1997, when the Tiger faithful experienced a glimmer of hope with a strong defense and Kevin Faulk-led offense leading the team in brief period of prominence, they were not on the Volunteers’ level in the 1990s.  

While LSU’s coaching changes didn’t amount to much, Fulmer guided a solid Tennessee football program to its arguable peak, winning 10 or more games in four straight seasons and concluding that span with a national championship in 1998. Heading into their next matchup, the Volunteers earned 15 more combined victories from their previous two seasons than LSU (22-7). 

Tennessee maintained Fulmer, providing him with a contract extension that made him one of the few coaches making over a $1 million per year. Soon after, LSU joined the exclusive number of schools offering seven-figure salaries, signing then-Michigan State Head Coach Nick Saban to a deal worth 1.2 million a year through 2005.  

Though people were skeptical of the hire and how much money was involved in it, LSU fans were hopeful that this change could finally be the one that piloted them back to relevancy. According to one article published by the Chicago Tribune in 2000, the Tiger faithful’s passion for football hadn’t dwindled despite their lack of success, with the article claiming there were two types of people in southern Louisiana: those with ‘Geaux Tigers’ bumper stickers on their trucks and those with them on their motorcycles. 

It wasn’t clear how Saban would do at LSU and whether he would adjust to the culture of Louisiana, but one thing was clear: Saban was capable of rebuilding a struggling program. 

When he arrived in East Lansing to coach the Spartans, they were having a hard time even making bowl games, much less competing with the powerhouses of the conference. He may have had similar problems in his first four seasons with the program, but his teams made bowls in three of those.  

In the four seasons leading up to Saban’s hiring, the program went 1-11 against Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State and Notre Dame. In the next five with Saban, they went 9-7 in those matchups.  

It all came together in 1999, as his final season featured victories against all four of those teams, concluding his Spartan career with a 9-2 record and cracking the top-five twice. The Spartans defeated Florida in the Citrus Bowl to secure its first double-digit win total since 1965, but Saban had departed for LSU prior to the bowl game. 

If anyone could get the Tigers out of the hole they were in, it was Saban. Unfortunately, that 2000 team immediately provided those who were not optimistic about the hire with fuel for their arguments, as LSU’s first two losses of the Saban era were a three-score loss to Auburn and loss to UAB that featured six Tiger turnovers.  

LSU entered Week Five with a 2-2 record and No. 11 Tennessee and No. 3 Florida in back-to-back games. Of their remaining eight games, five had beaten them last season. All signs pointed to two straight blowout losses to Florida and a third-straight losing season for LSU.  

So, any pessimistic fans that tuned into the game late and joked with their friends about how badly LSU was probably losing likely did a triple-take when they first saw the score. But their eyes weren’t deceiving them, as late in the second quarter, the Tigers held a 24-6 lead over the No. 11 team in the country.  

That early success came through the arm of Rohan Davey, the hands of Josh Reed and legs of LaBrandon Toefield, with Davey throwing two first-half touchdown passes to Reed and Toefield breaking off a 74-yard run to extend LSU’s lead to two scores early in the second. 

Even with Tennessee rallying in the fourth quarter to send the game to overtime, LSU had shown off its potential under Saban, and the Tigers were about to display another common trait in Saban’s teams over the last few decades: their ability to create momentum out of nothing.  

This was most recently evident in Alabama’s tight wins over Texas in 2022 and Auburn in 2021. Despite surrendering every ounce of momentum gained through the first two quarters, in the next two, they recaptured it all on the first play of overtime with a 25-yard connection from Davey to tight end Robert Royal. And after forcing a turnover on downs in the following Tennessee possession, Saban secured his first ranked win.  

Both programs didn’t know it at the time, but this kicked off the trends that created the LSU and Tennessee teams we know today.  

Each team finished the 2000 season 8-4, but the Tigers closed out the season ranked higher than the Volunteers, the first time that had occurred since 1988. Tennessee would defeat LSU in their next meeting early in the 2001 season, but it would lose where it mattered most, as Saban crushed Fulmer’s dreams of a second chance at the national championship in that season’s SEC title game.  

Two seasons later, LSU would outpace Tennessee in wins for the first time since 1986, along with earning its first national title since 1958. Even after Tennessee defeated the Tigers in 2005 in their first season under Les Miles, they responded with victories over the Volunteers in back-to-back seasons, including one in Fulmer’s last appearance in the SEC championship game in 2007. 

Tennessee wouldn’t truly fall off until Fulmer’s retirement in 2008, but at the same time, the program was never the same. Since its loss to LSU in 2000, it has finished in the top-10 just once in 2001, which came after a five-season streak of doing so from 1994-1999.When Fulmer left it got much worse, as 2007 was the last season the Volunteers sported a double-digit win total and they’ve had seven losing seasons since.  

That brings us to the present day, where we currently stand at a critical point in each program’s history. Can second-year Head Coach Josh Heupel lead Tennessee to its first victory over the Tigers since 2005? Can Brian Kelly earn his first ranked win with LSU against the Volunteers, just like Saban did in 2000? Will this game have a similar impact on each team’s trajectory moving forward?  

We’ll have answers to the first two on Saturday, and a better idea of what each coach is capable of regarding the third.