Good to have you back, Rocky Top
Welcome back, Rocky Top. How long have you been away? Fifteen years! Has it really be that long?
In some ways, it seems like only yesterday Tennessee was a Southeastern Conference powerhouse — the program of Johnny Majors and Phillips Fulmer, of Peyton Manning and Reggie White, of major bowls and national titles.
Then again, the glory days must feel like a lifetime ago to the orange-clad faithful.
Embarrassing losses, inept coaches and a decade-and-a-half-long banishment to the island of irrelevance in the the country’s mightiest football conference can do that to a fan base, even one that turns out 100,000-strong on game day.
“When you’re that bad for that long, you wonder if it will ever come back,” said former Tennessee quarterback Erik Ainge, who now hosts a morning sports-talk radio show in Knoxville.
Turns out, all the Volunteers needed was the right guy in charge.
Josh Heupel, Oklahoma’s national championship-winning quarterback from a generation ago, established himself as one of the nation’s top offensive minds during his head coaching debut at Central Florida.
There were certainly doubts that Heupel’s track meet of a scheme could work in the SEC.
But led by dynamic quarterback Hendon Hooker, the Vols hung 52 points on Saban and the mighty Alabama Crimson Tide in a stunning upset. The Vols lead the nation with just under 50 points a game overall.
“It’s important to be great at something,” Ainge said. “You don’t want to be average at everything. We’ve had a lot of coaches who were average at a lot of stuff. But they didn’t have their thing.”
Heupel’s first season at Tennessee produced a modest 7-6 record that included blowout losses to Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Yet averaging 40 points a game was a hint that the Vols were coming.
“We were ready,” Ainge said. “We were like a broken relationship that’s on the rebound. We were looking for all the good stuff and hoping Heupel was the man. He showed us last year that he absolutely could be. He showed us this year that he is.”
On Saturday, just three weeks removed from snapping a 16-year losing streak to Alabama, the cigar-chomping Vols (8-0) aim for a potentially more significant triumph.
In essence, this is the start of the College Football Playoff, matching Tennessee — No. 1 in the CFP standings — against the reigning national champions.
Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs (8-0) are ranked No. 1 by the AP and third by the CFP. It’s a program that knocked Alabama from its pedestal a year ago and has no intention of giving up the top rung on the ladder.
Even if the Vols lose this game, it’s clear they aren’t going back to where they were.
“We knew with our fan base and money and facilities that it could be done,” Ainge said. “But it hadn’t been done for so long, you start to wonder.”
Tennessee finished No. 1 in 1998 and has been trying to get back there ever since. It was a modest decline at first, interrupted by a run to the 2007 SEC championship game in Ainge’s senior year. LSU knocked off Tennessee 21-14 for the league title, with Ainge throwing a pick-six in the final 10 minutes that provided the winning points for the Tigers. LSU went on to capture the national championship. At Tennessee, the wheels fell off.
Fulmer was forced out as coach after one more season, his 16 years at the helm ending with a 5-7 campaign. Then the coaching merry-go-round began spinning.
Lane Kiffin made it through a single season before bolting for Southern Cal. Derek Dooley proved he wasn’t the spitting image of his father Vince, lasting just three overmatched years before his pink slip. Butch Jones survived five seasons, but an embarrassing 0-8 mark in the SEC. If the Vols didn’t think things could get any worse, oh, how wrong they were.
Enter Jeremy Pruitt, whose trainwreck of a tenure bottomed out with a 3-7 mark in 2020, fired for major NCAA violations. A stampede of players jostled for a spot in the transfer portal.
It’s almost beyond belief how everything changed in roughly 21 months, largely because of one man’s hiring.
Tennessee already has toppled five Top 25-ranked teams. Now, the Vols are attempting to pull off a feat that hasn’t been done since 2004 — defeat Florida, Alabama and Georgia in the same season.
“It didn’t hurt my feelings when other teams that were our rivals beat us,” Ainge said. “It hurt my feelings when they stopped caring about the game. Alabama was so used to beating us, it was not fun for them anymore. Florida was so used to beating us, it was not fun for them anymore. That’s gone now.”
Well done, Coach Heupel. Rocky Top is, indeed, back.