Through the years, a question about Tennessee football and scheduling has often surfaced in casual conversation: “Why did we not play Tennessee for many years?”

    Not sure that anybody on the scene today would know, but it likely had to do with the fact that in those years, most coaches played their friends. Georgia played LSU because the Tiger coach Bernie Moore was Wally Butts’ coach when Butts played at Mercer where Moore was the coach.

    Georgia began playing Kentucky when Butts was named head coach in Athens. Butts got to know the Wildcat folks when he was at Male High School in Lexington (before returning home to Georgia).

    While I never heard that there was any issue between the Volunteers’ Robert Neyland and Butts, they did have contrasting football philosophies. Neyland was always committed to running the football while Butts preferred to underscore the passing game.

    The record book reflects that Georgia and Tennessee went three decades—from 1937 to 1968—without scheduling a football game. It would have been a tough trip for fans who would have had to traveled on narrow two-lane roads through the North Georgia mountains, but not many fans followed their teams in those years.

    In 1923, Georgia started playing Yale with all the games taking place in New Haven except for the dedicatory game in brand new Sanford Stadium in 1929. UGA has a history traveling to other parts of the country for games including New York (NYU); Boston (Harvard); Philadelphia (Pennsylvania); San Francisco (St. Mary’s), and Los Angeles (USC).

    Mostly, until the advent of jet air travel, it has been a lot of “local” travel with teams such as Clemson, South Carolina, Auburn, Florida (Jacksonville) Vanderbilt, and Kentucky appearing on the schedule.

    The Tennessee rivalry essentially heated up in 1968 when the Volunteers, in the first year of the rule which stopped the clock after a team made a first down, came from behind to tie Georgia, 17-17 after the Bulldogs led most of the game.

    Tennessee had put in artificial turf for this game, which upset Georgia officials with Athletic Director Joel Eaves complaining that it was unfair for the Bulldogs to be “guinea pigs” for the home team’s installation of Tartan turf.

    No discussion of the Volunteers ever takes place with most of those in Southeastern Conference circles without some reference to the legend of Gen. Robert Neyland, who still has the greatest winning percentage of any coach in conference history at.829. Neyland literally hated two-platoon football and loved scheduling every weak sister possible — which likely greatly enhanced that glossy winning percentage.

    Neyland believed in running off tackle — with the single wing offense which he coached his entire career. Coaches referred to the “10 play” everywhere which had the tailback running off tackle behind as much interference as possible. Nothing fancy, just power football, muscle over finesse.

    His maxims are still quoted throughout football and are part of the fabric of Tennessee football today such as: “The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win,” and “Press the kicking game. Here’s where the breaks are made.”

    He pilfered the slogan, “Oskiwowwow,” from Indian lore. If Tennessee intercepted an opponent’s pass, he was to yell, “Oskiwowwow,” which was a signal that the defense was suddenly playing offense. There are many colorful stories about Neyland who wanted to run the ball, play exceptional defense and gain the advantage in the kicking game.

    The General truly hated free substitution and as head of the rules committee kept one-platoon football entrenched as long as he could. Davey Nelson, who popularized the Wing-T offense at Delaware, was the secretary of the rules committee during this time. He told me an interesting story about how the General ran the rules committee.

    Ray Eliot, the head football coach at Illinois, was attending a rules committee meeting in 1955. The President of the AFCA, as a courtesy, was invited to attend the rules committee meeting but did not have a vote.

    After the two-day meeting was about to adjourn, Coach Eliot spoke up. “General Neyland, I come here representing the 5,000 members of the American Football Coaches Association who overwhelming support free substitution. Are you not even going to put it up for discussion?”

    With that Neyland asked if anybody in the room was in favor of discussing the possibility of college football changing its substitution rule? Several hands went up. Then the General asked, “All opposed?” Davey said, “The general picked up my hand and raised with the comment: “I see there is not sufficient interest to talk about chicken (expletive) football. This meeting is adjourned.”