Tennessee Vols Have to Win Their Bowl Game to Call 2015 Season a Success

At 8-4, any evaluation of the Tennessee Vols football team is incomplete. The Volunteers have to win a bowl game to be able to call this season a success.

After the 2-3 start to the season, the Tennessee Vols were deemed a failure and a disappointment on the year. Given the early-season hype, much of the criticism directed toward Butch Jones and the team was justified.

But a comeback win at home against the Georgia Bulldogs put everything back on track.

And after falling to 3-4 in a loss at Alabama, the best-case finish to the season happened for the Vols: they won out.

An 8-4 finish is the best season for Tennessee since 2007, and it shows they continue to be heading in the right direction. But it does not make this year a success.

That will come with the bowl game.

Regardless of where the Vols go and who they play, they have got to win their bowl game to truly call this year a success.

Say what you want, but there is a huge difference between 9-4 and 8-5. Getting to 9-4 shows a marked improvement over last year…by two games. It also puts the Vols in really good position to finish off in the Top 25.

Since they started the year in the Top 25, doing that would qualify as meeting expectations. They could say they were 9-4 and barely lost all four of their games, two of them likely to College Football Playoff teams.

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Considering the recruiting and the returning starters for next year, that could be enough to put the Vols in the preseason Top 10 going into 2016.

Meanwhile, losing to finish 8-5 will signal a massive level of under-achieving. At that point, the only winning teams Tennessee will have beaten this year would be Bowling Green and Georgia. They need another quality victory to sell what they are doing.

As such, the Vols have unfinished business this year. We cannot evaluate the season yet because we have one more game to go.

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Usually, I am not one for putting too much emphasis on bowl games.

But in terms of momentum, confidence, and a true signal that the Vols are pretty much back, this is going to be one that they need to win.