At some point during 2008, the Tennessee football team became mediocre. And not just that season, a 5-7 finish that resulted in national championship-winning head coach Phillip Fulmer being fired, but every year since then has left Volunteers fans with a bad taste in their mouths.
Following Fulmer was the notorious Lane Kiffin, who started off with promise and a flourishing recruiting class, but finished 7-6 in his lone season before bolting for USC, leaving only a trail of recruiting violations behind him.
Arguably even worse than Kiffin followed Derek Dooley, who had just finished going 4-8 at Louisiana Tech before getting the job. In three seasons he failed to win more than six games, and his legacy falls in line with Mike Shula as failure SEC head coaches that only got hired because of their fathers’ successes.
First-year head coach Butch Jones has already done something this year in beating South Carolina that no Tennessee coach had done in a while: winning a big game. The question still out there is whether Jones will be able to get Tennessee back on track from what have been a tragic last few years.
For a while it seemed like Tennessee might have been cursed. A once storied program that ranks ninth all time in wins and has the third largest stadium in the country in Neyland Stadium, it seemed as soon as the Volunteers abandoned its own Knoxville son in Fulmer (a former Tennessee player and assistant coach for 12 years) everything went downhill. The team has had a string of near upsets and tragic losses to culminate in what has become one of the more tragic formerly-prestigious programs in football.
In 2008 – the year Fulmer was fired – No. 18 Tennessee lost its first game of the season to UCLA after missing a 34-yard field goal in overtime. They went on to lose 14-12 to No. 15 Auburn, failing a two-point conversion and fell, 13-7, to a Wyoming team that finished 4-8.
In 2009, Tennessee lost to UCLA, 19-15, after throwing three interceptions, and most famously lost 12-10 to No. 2 Alabama after Terrence Cody blocked two fourth-quarter Tennessee field goals.
In 2010, the Volunteers infamously lost to LSU, 16-14, after having 13 men on the field on the last defensive play of the game, giving LSU a chance to score with no time left, and lost, 30-27, against North Carolina after Tyler Bray threw an interception in double overtime.
Two seasons ago, the 2011 season might have featured the most embarrassing loss of all as Tennessee fell, 10-7, to Kentucky, which ended a string of 26 straight wins over the Wildcats.
Even in 2012, when Tennessee’s high-powered offense was able to keep them in most games, it failed to win a single big game, losing to No. 5 Georgia, No. 19 Mississippi State and No. 13 South Carolina all by seven points or fewer.
From the looks of it, Jones has done a good job since arriving in Knoxville. After getting massacred by Oregon, Tennessee was very competitive in its two losses to Florida and Georgia and is considered by many to be Alabama’s toughest test since September. Jones also currently has the No. 4 recruiting class in the country, an impressive feat for a coach who lived in the Midwest for most of his career.
There is an old saying among Alabama fans that they hate Auburn because they have to, and they hate Tennessee because they want to. That hasn’t been the case of late with Tennessee’s mediocrity, but it seems like Jones might be able to put the program back on track, and maybe even give fans a glimpse Saturday of what used to be one of the greatest rivalries in the SEC.
