From Pat Summitt to Condredge Holloway: Tennessee Vols’ Tradition of Breaking Down Barriers
With historical figures like Pat Summitt and Condredge Holloway, the Tennessee Vols have shown they have a history of breaking down barriers in sports.
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If you witnessed any of Tennessee’s takeover of the SEC Network on Saturday afternoon, there were lots of exciting things to see. The 1997 memorable SEC Championship as Peyton Manning’s finest performance stands out, as does the Outback Bowl from this past year, which was played twice.
But there were also two documentaries that were played twice: The Color Orange and Nine for Nine: Pat XO.
What you would have gathered from both is one thing: Tennessee Volunteers athletics has an SEC tradition of helping to shatter barriers.
The Color Orange focuses on Condredge Holloway and the impact he had as the first black quarterback in the SEC. He delayed the Vols slide into irrelevancy that Bill Battle was guilty of orchestrating due to his amazing athletic abilities.
Holloway was two plays away from a national championship in 1972, where the Vols went 10-2.
His greatness gives him a strong case to be the second best quarterback in Tennessee football history, behind only Manning.
Although he never won a title, he is a legend in Vols history, having become a fan favorite as a black quarterback in the 1970s, which was incredibly remarkable. And he set the stage to make it okay for other SEC schools to start black quarterbacks afterward.
Two years after Holloway’s first year as a starter with the Vols, Tennessee made a coaching hire that would change the entire landscape of college athletics.
And this is what Nine for IX: Pat XO deals with. The documentary features former players and friends talk about the late Pat Summitt, who took over the Tennessee Women’s Basketball program in the wake of Title IX in the 1974-1975 season.
It was the beginning of a 38-year career in which she would score 1,098 wins, eight national championships, 16 SEC regular season and tournament titles, and of course, single-handedly elevate women’s basketball to a national sport.
What these two documentaries in one day show is this: During the early 1970s, the Tennessee Vols made two moves that forever shattered barriers in the SEC and college sports in general.
Tennessee has always been one of the more progressive schools in the SEC. Before either of these figures, they had Jackie Walker, a superstar linebacker who was the leader of the Vols in the early 1970s and was an openly gay black captain.
Before Walker, they had Lester McClain, the second player ever to put on an SEC uniform and the guy who started Tennessee’s tradition of Wide Receiver U.
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This means that four huge barrier-shattering figures in Tennessee history all began with the program within a seven-year period. That’s something for the university to be proud of.