Neyland Stadium felt empty.

Standing at midfield in front of the largest crowd to ever watch a football game at Tennessee, James Wilhoit felt like he was all alone.

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM

An emotional, tumultuous three-minute stretch that felt more like an eternity after missing a game-tying extra point with less than four minutes left against Florida was about to end with another Wilhoit kick, this time from 50 yards.

"It almost felt like no one was there," Wilhoit remembered. "The crowd was silent."

Before the ball reached the goalpost, Wilhoit was streaking to the sideline and 109,061 delirious fans, hanging on to every play that had led up to this moment, erupted into pandemonium. The kick was good and Wilhoit redeemed, virtually walking off the Gators, 30-28 only minutes after the Vols seemed bound for dreadful defeat.

The rivalry between Tennessee and Florida was forged by conference realignment when the SEC created divisions in 1992. But it quickly became an annual spectacle. The offseason jabs from Steve Spurrier, the new-blood Gators of the 1990s pulling up a seat at the old-blood table where the Vols had sat for decades and a spot in the league's championship game decided three weeks into the season made for must-see TV.

There have been few climaxes in the series that match the one Tennessee produced on Sept. 18, 2004—20 years before the two teams meet for the 54th time on Saturday in Knoxville (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).

"We wanted to do something to be a part of this rivalry," former Tennessee defensive back Jonathan Wade said. "We probably didn’t fully understand it. We were so young. We made mistakes. We made plenty of those. But we wanted to go out there and do something to try and win this game.”

Brandon Johnson got a hand on the ball.

He drifted towards Florida wide receiver Chad Jackson and looked like he was going to make it over in time. Instead, the ball fell into Jackson's arms and he raced into open field with nothing standing between himself and the end zone.

After trading punches for more than three quarters, it felt like Florida had landed the knockout blow on Chris Leak's 81-yard touchdown pass to Jackson to put the Gators ahead 28-21 with less than eight minutes left. At best, Tennessee was stumbling.

Enter Erik Ainge, Tennessee's young freshman quarterback who before he took the field to try and answer Florida, hadn't run a two-minute drill in a live game or even a drop-back pass before that night.

Ainge was still splitting time with fellow freshman Brent Schaeffer, but was having the better game up to that point. Aside from one interception—one of four Tennessee turnovers that night—he had thrown for more than 100 yards and a couple of touchdowns.

“It was a little bit hard (splitting reps). You don’t want to press. You’re young," Ainge said. "Staying in the moment, staying engaged really helped me focus on the game and not all of the other stuff around it. It was a little up and down...Young quarterback, you’ve got to make some big plays, take care of the ball and give yourself a chance late."

It started with a run for no gain. It was followed by a screen pass to Chris Hannon that was little wide and fell incomplete. It was Third and 9 to go with the clock ticking inside of seven minutes, Tennessee’s must-need drive was quickly on the brink.

Ainge rolled out on the next play and passed to Tony Brown, again incomplete but a flag fell the turf. A pass interference call on Florida's Jarvis Herring kept the offense on the field.

Ainge avoided disaster on a botched snap a few plays later, falling on the ball, but it brought up third-and-long again. He went back to Hannon on the screen, this time connecting for a first down and putting the Vols on the cusp of midfield, but on Tennessee's third third down attempt of the drive, another incompletion left it with little choice.

On fourth-and-6 at the Florida 47 yard line with five minutes, 22 seconds remaining, the Vols had to put the game in Ainge's hands. That's when he saw Brown, running over the middle of the field.

"(Brown) wasn’t even supposed to be in the read, but I saw the safety split and I just reacted and threw it to him," Ainge said. "Going back and watching it, it’s kind of crazy and you know that little about ball, to have success like that."

Three plays later, on third down for the fourth time, Ainge hit Jayson Swain for a 13-yard touchdown. The young quarterback had answered and Tennessee was an extra point away from evening the score with three minutes, 25 seconds to go.

“You never feel like you’re out of it. If you’ve got a good football team, you always feel like you’re there," Ainge said. That play to (Jayson) Swain was man-to-man, a good little cluster-beater. Send the guys vertical and send him under real quick and the other guys are in the way. He just went and made a play."

It took a moment to set in.

Tennessee had driven 80 yards in 11 plays and in more than four minutes to pull within one point of Florida. The tie rested on the foot of James Wilhoit, the 5-foot-10, 190-pound kicker from Hendersonville who had not missed an extra point in his career.

Growing up in Tennessee, Wilhoit had a deep appreciation for the Tennessee-Florida rivalry and had dreamed of making his mark in it. He didn't expect it to be as the guy that lost to the Gators.

When his kick carried to the right and never stopped, missing to keep Florida in front, 28-27, Wilhoit wasn't sure how to react. Neyland Stadium fell silent, its energy drained.

"It was something that I had never done," Wilhoit said. "And then you’re kind of looking around and realizing the magnitude of the mistake that you had made...All of the sudden, reality sets in."

In seconds, the memory of Tennessee's epic drive, one seemingly destined to live on in the memories of those that were a part of it and witnessed it, was forgotten. The Vols were trailing and the clock was working against them.

"You kind of look in shock and you’re like, ‘Oh, no. This is not good,'" Wilhoit said. "And with three minutes left, now all of the sudden, we’re down by one point and it looks pretty dire.”

On Tennessee's sideline, the mood shifted.

The defense, getting ready to go back on the field, needed a stop and was confident they could get one. They were also confident in Wilhoit, who they had seen hit 50-plus yard field goals regularly in practices. They just needed to get him there, anyway that they could.

“Find a way. If you allow pressure to creep in, that turns into other things. It’s how you view it at the moment," Wade said. "If you allow, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s no time. Why didn’t he make it?’ That will add stress if you allow those thoughts vs. understanding the moment, realizing there is enough time for us to go do our job. I think more of us were along those lines. We weren’t sad, we weren’t down.”

"We had that mentality," Ainge said. "We’re going to get the ball back and we’re going to get into field goal range."

Randy Sanders walked over to James Wilhoit on the sideline.

The Tennessee offensive coordinator, charged with calling the plays of what would be the Vols' final drive, wanted to know where they needed to get the ball to give Wilhoit a chance.

"I said, ‘Just get me across midfield and I’ll win it,'" Wilhoit said. "It wasn’t me calling my shot, it was more me out of desperation. Like, I’ve got to get back out here. I’ve got to make up for this.”

On the field, Florida had run the clock down to inside of a minute after running the ball on third down. Tennessee's defense had made the stop, but it couldn't stop the clock. Then the flag came in.

After the play, in front of the Vols' sideline, Jonathan Wade slapped Dallas Baker's facemask in front of an official. The Gators' wide receiver slapped Wade back a little harder. Baker was flagged for 15 yards and the clock stopped at 55 seconds.

Wade missed much of the previous season with an injury. He wasn’t there when Tennessee ended Miami’s record home win streak or the Vols’ five-overtime win over Alabama. He wanted to have his own moment in a big game. He wanted to make a stop and he got it with a gamble that paid off.

"That's how we played. We constantly shoved," Wade said. "I was in the mind-frame of, ‘We’re going to need something extra.’ This was thought out, to draw (Baker) into getting a penalty. I know it’s risky and I may get benched for it, but I knew how to let it linger and he did something…We needed to find a way to get the ball back. We needed something to happen.”

Instead of punting from around its own 35, Florida instead had to punt from inside the 20, setting Tennessee up with good field position on what would be its final drive.

The offense came back on to the field with 43 seconds left and from the 39, the Vols didn't need many plays to get to within the range Wilhoit said he could hit from. The coaching staff was going to let Ainge try and get them there.

"It was just all about football," Ainge said. "There was no extra, ‘Hey, you need to calm down.’ It was just, ‘Hey, here’s what they’re doing, here’s what they’ve been doing. We’re just going to stay with what we’ve been doing and read it out.'"

Ainge darted a ball on the first play to a diving Chris Hannon, but he was unable to come up with it. Ainge went back to him on the next play, spinning out of a would-be sack and connecting at the Florida 40.

Tennessee was in range.

Wilhoit trotted on to the field while Ainge weaved his way through a crowded sideline to find a place to watch. He settled on a perch on the back of the bench.

"You couldn’t even get on the field," Ainge said. "Everyone was past the coaches line, everyone was on the field."

If Wilhoit felt the weight of the moment, he won't say that he did even now. He didn't look like he did either. For just a second, the sound of his foot striking the ball echoed through the stadium. It was drowned out almost immediately. Wilhoit knew it was good long before it landed. Everyone else did, too.

"The place erupted," Ainge said.

“The moment it came off of my foot, I knew I had hit it perfectly. I could tell once it was about 20 yards down the field, it was going to go in," Wilhoit said. I was running around like a little kid celebrating...That’s how I felt."

James Wilhoit could hardly breath.

two or three minutes had passed after the game had ended before the adrenaline started to wear off, and he was struggling to catch his breath in the scrum on the field.

"I couldn't breath," Wilhoit said. "The moment had just overwhelmed me to the point that I had trouble breathing."

Wade remembered watching it unfold. There was one moment that is singed into his memory. It was when 6-0, 195 pound Tennessee running back Derrick Tinsley ran up to chest bump Wilhoit after the kick.

Wilhoit knocked Tinsley to the ground. Then he went and booted an 80-yard kickoff with six seconds left, making the 15-yard excessive celebration penalty the Vols received after the field goal worthless.

Once Florida's futile attempt to make something happen by lateraling the ball around was stopped, the celebration continued into the night.

"That moment right there, with (Derrick) Tinsley falling down and James Wilhoit running with excitement, lasted until like 3:30 a.m.," Wade said. "This was our first moment. They blocked the Strip. It was pandemonium.”

The celebration eventually ended, but the memory hasn't.

For years after, there isn't many places Wilhoit went where his kick wasn't brought up. He hasn't forgotten it either.

"It’s up there with getting married to my wife and the birth of our two kids. It’s right there," Wilhoit said. "And for a period of time, it was No. 1...living in this state, it used to be once a week someone would ask me about it. It’s not the same as it was the before, but it’s still something where people hear my last name and they’re like, ‘You’re that guy that beat Florida.’ It’s been a really special thing.”

Wilhoit also thinks about what could have been.

He was reminded of that once he got back to the locker room and started going through his phone. It was backed up with voicemails, but there were two from the same person that he still thinks about.

“As I got through three or four of (voicemails), one of them was this guy saying, ‘I hate you. I can’t believe you cost us the game. How could you have done that?,'" Wilhoit said. "Then I keep going through more of the voicemails and later on as I’m hearing them, it’s the same guy and he says, ‘Disregard that last message. Go Vols.’”

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