This is going to be a long, rambling post, but this subject is one that I've had many discussions on with fellow Bama fans and CFB fans in general, so I'm going to lay out my feelings on this issue once and for all.
Personally, I despise Tennessee much more so than Auburn. LSU is right on their heels and Florida is not far behind. LSU's fans (on the whole) are a deplorable lot, and Florida fans (on the whole) are extremely obnoxious. The friction between the Gators and the Bayou Bengals are obviously much more recent developments given the rise of Florida in the 90s (92, 94, 96, 08, 09 directly affected the national championship picture), the ascendancy of LSU in the 00s (03 indirectly, 07-12 directly affected the national championship picture), stakes of the games played, and in LSU's case, Saban's departure and subsequent return.
That being said, tradition means a lot to me, and although I recognize college football is constantly evolving, and you have to change to keep up with the times to remain on the cutting edge, rivalries are something that I'm much less apt to tinker with. Rivalries are fluid, they wax and wane, sometimes they're discontinued, other times they're newly forged phenomena, but the one thing they have in common is that they stir passions among both sides that create a heightened sense of importance to a game that is otherwise absent from other games. They foster an atmosphere of palpable excitement that you can sense in the air, even when there is nothing or very little on the line except for pride.
Traditionally, when Tennessee is up, Bama is down, and vice versa. The Third Saturday in October (which rarely falls on its rightful date any longer) has decided the SEC Championship more times than any other series in the conference all time. Despite its streakiness, there have been some absolute gems of games that have been played between the two sides, and the drama surrounding those games, when taken as a whole, is unmatched IMO. That's what it comes down to in the end, personal opinion and personal experience. So no answer is right or wrong in that sense.
I come from the old school in regards to this game. There are quotes about other series just as colorful, mentions of animosity that ran/run just as deep, but these quotes and anecdotes represent the vehement dislike I have for Tennessee, and why the Alabama-Tennessee game is the most heated rivalry for me:
In 1901, the game was constantly delayed due to fights between fans that spilled out onto the playing field.
The great Coach Bob Neyland once said, "You never know what a football player is made of until he plays against Alabama."
According to Coach Clem Gryska, "The Auburn game was incidental to Coach Bryant. He called Auburn 'that other school.' Tennessee was the big one."
The great LeRoy Jordan recounted: "Tennessee games were always tremendous. Coach Bryant's theory was if you don't beat Tennessee, you don't have a very good year or you certainly don't have a great year. That third week of October always pointed to the rest of the year for us."
Perhaps most telling comes from former Tennessee player and Alabama assistant Ken Donahue. "The game has always served as a measuring stick for both teams. I played for General Neyland at Tennessee. He talked about how the test would come against Alabama. I worked under Coach Paul 'Bear' Bryant at Alabama. He talked about how we would never know what kind of team we had until we played Tennessee."
Also, remember that from 1959-2012, only 3 times has the game not featured at least one team ranked in the Top 25. 17 of those games featured both teams ranked in the top 25.
Add in Phil Fulmer with his shenanigans, Peyton Manning leading the band at Legion Field, Shaun Alexander's sprained ankle in 1999 (I still believe they twisted it in the pile), along with Lane Kiffin's Headsetgate, and that's enough fuel to keep my fire going for the rest of my life.
I want to end with the Alabama-Auburn game. It has featured its fair share of drama, and the vitriol between the two fan bases is more akin to a feud between South American soccer clubs than it is to a college football rivalry. This unadulterated hatred for the other side is a relatively new phenomenon. I feel like someone has unearthed the buried hatchet in Birmingham and both schools are swinging it voraciously at each other. In my estimation, the competition to outdo one another on the football field turned into a race to the bottom that, while not in whole, most certainly in large part, landed both schools on multiple NCAA probations, and damaged the reputations of the institutions themselves.
The rivalry with Auburn has gotten out of control. The whole year-round hate fest between the two sides that engulfs the state of Alabama disgusts me. I honestly wouldn’t mind if Auburn moved to the East and this game was played on a discontinuous basis. Perhaps some of the ugliness of the series would dissipate. They need us, we don’t need them.
I'm all for RTR and WDE (not as much so), but to live and die by the outcome of that one game is unfounded. We are in the business of winning championships, not state titles. I feel like by giving this game more hype than it already has plays into Auburn's hands. Once Auburn moved the game out of Birmingham and onto their campus, the use of the term Iron Bowl should have been voided (I simply call it the Alabama-Auburn game). The loss of the 50-50 ticket split coincided with a rise in animosity on both sides. For Auburn, I understand their need to measure themselves in comparison to Alabama, for we are the standard. When fans measure Alabama by Auburn's standards, it's like the Yankees comparing themselves to the Orioles, it cheapens what we are as a program and who we are as a fan base. If Auburn wants to chase us, fine, we're the best measuring stick there is for college football programs to gauge their own relevance. If we need a point of reference, all we need to do is look in the mirror, not in the rear view mirror.
