By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The SEC has some great programs and traditions. It seems like every team in each division is a rival with the exception of the two newest members (Mizzou and Texas A&M).

Some of the great rivalries are Alabama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Mississippi State, Arkansas-LSU and Florida-Tennessee. We can also add anyone that shares a border with Tennessee as one of their rivals.

The best rivalry in the conference has to be Georgia and Florida. There are several factors that make this very unique. Both teams are in talent rich states. They both recruit the best players from states that are top five in the nation in talent.

Both teams are extremely competitive and produce a lot of NFL talent consistently. Some of them have won the Heisman Trophy. Some legendary names that played in this series include Herschel Walker, A.J. Green, Matthew Stafford, Hines Ward, Emmitt Smith, Tim Tebow and Danny Wuerffell.

We cannot say the same for other programs in the conference like Arkansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, Mizzou and Vanderbilt.

This game is also played at a neutral site. The Auburn-Alabama game used to be played in Birmingham at Legion Field. Since 2000, they are played on campus.

Arkansas – Texas A&M game is played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tx.  The contract was signed before A&M joined the conference and it ends in 2024.

The first time both teams met was in 1915 and has been played every season since 1926, except for a war-time interruption in 1943.

The game has been played in Jacksonville since 1933 with just two exceptions. It was formerly called the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” but that name is no longer used officially.

The schools also dispute their first meeting, which UGA counts as a 52-0 win in 1904. UF does not count this because it was one of their predecessor institutions, called Florida Agricultural College based in Lake City.

The modern university was established the next year in 1905 and fielded the first officially recognized football team in 1906.

Since the league was divided into two divisions in 1992, both teams have been competing to win the SEC East. The game is high stakes and that makes it more entertaining.

This year both teams have one loss and are ranked in the Top Ten. The team that wins this game will win the division. As long as they continue to win, they will make the College Football Playoff.

Steve Spurrier was known for taking shots at rival teams and it seems current Gators head coach Dan Mullen is continuing the tradition. He trolled UGA this offseason when he announced the attendance for the spring game was 39,476. Mullen previously admitted he has having fun with the spring game numbers to rile up his rivals.

Georgia has not won a championship in 39 years and has played 476 games during this drought. Now, Mullen claims he doesn’t know where that number came from.

“I had no idea. I don’t even know how they came up with that number, the most random thing ever,” Mullen said. “But everybody started freaking out about it, I guess, until three days later somebody put enough math together to go figure that out. Maybe Georgia fans were really so uptight they haven’t won in 39 years they got all uptight and tried to figure it out. But it was pretty random actually, it was pretty funny.”

I hope this game lives up to the heavyweight matchup we are all expecting.