Look at all those except this and except that, there was a reason for this and a reason for that...dude, stop it. Our schedule last year was a cake walk. Want some exceptions...Stetson Bennett. There is a big one for ya. The SEC East has been garbage since 2005. SOS had to go to Aub and LSU on the road every other year and back that up with UGA. Sprinkle in some Bama and open the season with UT every season. Geesh...its not even close.
Either you’re in your early 20’s or in the beginning stages of dementia(which may explain the Rachel Adams thing). Lsu was complete trash during the 90s. At one point they had a guy named Curley as their coach—I really want you to say that out loud. Where NOLA lives if you mention the name Dinardo, entire families go to war. They sucked. Our having to go there every other year was not much different than having to go to Nashville. The only team they fielded that had a pulse was ‘97, and guess what happened?
The bulldogs were not quite as bad, but tried. They had three decent teams(‘90, 92, 97). When you have three coaches in a 12 year span, and not because any left of their own accord, that should tell you something(see UF 2010-17). That game will always be tricky, and Spurrier had their number, but they weren’t very good.
Aub was what Aub seems to always be. Very hot and cold. Someone mentioned Pat Dye, which is a good point. Solid coach. The problem is he was only there Spurrier’s first three seasons. They were super good in ‘93 & ‘94, and they beat us on both occasions. Only 1997 did they win 10 games again in his entire tenure. They were mostly bad but still carried the Aub name and concern for most Gators.
To be clear, no one, including Meyer, ever saw the vols teams that Spurrier did. I’d put them really close to what Alabama is today. Just a machine in most years. The problem was simply we were even better. Almost Lsu like in that they did have a lot of success but just found themselves in the wrong division. Still an imperfect analogy as they were way better than any Lsu team I’ve seen.
And the fsu that he faced was the Alabama of that era. Again, no one except him ever experienced that. So again, I have not, and will not, say that the schedules are exact equals. But everyone knew the SEC East, and often the whole conference, ran through the third week of September very much like people considered the Ala/Lsu game to be the same in recent years. Once we got over that game, it was usually tough to find another team that really stood in our way(again, outside of name) until fsu. None of this takes anything away from Spurrier at all. It’s just lookout things objectively. It was a harder schedule because of acute situations. He was also able to lose more than half the time to the best team he faced while still winning the SEC, a luxury any current UF coach does not have. Very different all around.