Exactly. Florida has made up a ton of ground over the last 30 years but Auburn has a nice history going back to at least the 50s. (At least if you could take away their cultish obsession with Alabama).
no one seems to be aware that colleges played football long before people started to rank them
Not sure are you get your information. Btw, Vandy has a winning record vs Auburn and haven't faired so well with Florida.
Yep. Florida was pretty much a gimme before Spurrier. All the Florida schools were kind of overlooked on the schedule. Not real bad teams, but middle of the road usually.
Charlie Pell and Galen Hall had some good teams in the '80's also but prior to this they were irrelevant in the SEC.
Florida did not win their first SEC title until 1991 (well, they DID win it in 1984 but they got stripped in a 5-4 vote. One of the roots of the UT-Florida rivalry stems in part from UF being ticked that Tennessee voted to strip them of their first-ever title. (I do recall that Alabama, Auburn, and Vandy were three of the four teams that voted to let Florida keep their title that year).
And, Coach Bryant called them a sleeping giant. With the right coach they would be really good. We've seen this since 1990.
Generally speaking, yes. When they were good, they were inconsistent. And even Coach Bryant could never have forseen that massive influx of population (6.8 million in 1970, doubled by 1990, and is now almost 20 million).
