The 30 Lowest Moments for Tennessee Vols Athletics in the Adidas Era

Nov 29, 2014; Nashville, TN, USA; General view of the Tennessee Volunteers band prior to the game against the Vanderbilt Commodores at Vanderbilt Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

21. Tennessee Vols Football Team Starts the Year No. 5 and Finishes Unranked After Injury Bug Bites

Going into 2002, Tennessee was as high as No. 1 in many preseason polls and never dipped below No. 5. Having finished the year No. 4 the year before and with Steve Spurrier’s departure from Florida and a still-relatively weak SEC West, the conference was finally Tennessee’s to dominate.

With nine games in the state of Tennessee on the schedule that year, it looked as if the Vols were going to be favored in every game they played, including the one game that was supposed to be the key match-up of the year against the top-ranked Miami Hurricanes. Everybody in Knoxville was excited, and Casey Clausen was already drawing comparisons to Peyton Manning.

After blowing a shot at a national title the year before with a much worse moment we will get to later, the fans and players labeled the start of the 2002 season Unfinished Business. They handed out those shirts in the Nashville season-opener against Wyoming. You’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who still has one.

Two things were not taken into account this year. One, the Vols had an entirely new front four on defense, and the front four the year before was led by potentially the greatest defensive tackle combo in college football history in Albert Haynesworth and John Henderson. The other was the loss of Donte Stallworth at wide receiver and the head case that Kelley Washington was.

Couple that with the injury bug biting, in which 19 starters at least missed half the season, and you had a disaster. It started with a rain-soaked home blowout loss to the Florida Gators. Then, after teasing everybody with a six-overtime win over Arkansas and getting back into the mix, Clausen went down, and the Vols lost 18-13 on the road to Georgia.

A championship was out the window. The season became lost after a six-turnover 34-14 home loss to Alabama that ended the seven-game streak over them, and suddenly, Tennessee had lost to Florida, Georgia, and Alabama in the same season.

The only chance to salvage the year was against Miami. That was not going to happen, as the Vols lost 26-3 at home. They finished the year 8-4, and a 30-3 Peach Bowl loss to the Maryland Terrapins in which they had gone home for the holidays turned an SEC Championship-predicted season into Phillip Fulmer’s worst on the job: 8-5 and unranked.

Next: #20: 2009 Lady Vols Basketball First Round Elimination