Tennessee Football: Vols 1997 SEC Championship Game was Peyton Manning’s Finest Performance

The Tennessee football Vols beat the Auburn Tigers 30-29 in the 1997 SEC Championship game. It was Peyton Manning’s finest performance for the Volunteers.

Related Story: Top 10 Former Vols in the NFL in 2016

On Saturday, the SEC Network spent all day featuring stories on the Tennessee Vols. One of those features was a replay of the 1997 SEC Championship game, where the Vols came back to beat the Auburn Tigers to win their first SEC Title in seven years.

But this title wasn’t just about ending a drought. It was the highlight of a great four-year career for the most legendary quarterback in school history.

Manning and the Vols had failed to reach the title game for the first three years with Florida being their only conference loss and blocking them from the game in 1995 and 1996.

After losing to Florida again in 1997, the Vols finally got some magic down the stretch, as the Gators suffered two SEC losses, and with Manning and Jamal Lewis, Tennessee just kept winning, pulling out close wins down the stretch over the Arkansas Razorbacks and Vanderbilt Commodores.

And in between those games, it took 523 yards and five touchdowns for him to put away the Kentucky Wildcats.

Still, they finally made it to Atlanta, and they were in the national title talk after the Gators, in addition to losing two games, then helped the Vols out further by beating the Florida State Seminoles.

There was legitimate criticism to say they backed into the title game, but in the national picture, it simply didn’t matter.

Everything set up perfectly for Tennessee, and Manning came out guns blazing with a touchdown pass to Peerless Price to set the tone.

Then the team unraveled. Thanks to a series of mistakes, none of which were caused by Manning, the Vols found themselves down to 20-7. A Jeff Hall field goal made it 20-10 at halftime, but even in the second half, every time the Vols could make it close down the stretch, they shot themselves in the foot.

For the game, Tennessee had six turnovers: four fumbles and two interceptions off of dropped passes.

But in his most determined game ever, Manning never quit. He led the Vols on two touchdown drives in the third quarter. But on the second touchdown, the game was cut to 27-23, and the Vols made their seventh crucial mistake of the game: a blocked extra point that the Tigers ran back to make it 29-23.

It seemed like Tennessee was just inventing ways to blow this game. And the narrative that Manning and Phillip Fulmer were chokers in the big games continued to hold true.

However, Manning and the Vols finally took the lead with a 70-yard touchdown pass to Marcus Nash. The defense did the rest, and Tennessee held on 30-29.

Despite every mistake working against him, Manning still managed 370 yards and four touchdowns in what still may be the best SEC Championship game performance ever.

Manning had finally showed the clutch gene, staying consistent when everything was working against him. And the Vols were SEC Champions.

The 42-17 loss to the Nebraska Cornhuskers a month later was a frustrating way to end the season, but in this game, Tennessee was on top of the world. It was the perfect sendoff for the senior quarterback.

And nine years later, he would have an identical game in the pros to shatter the clutch gene misnomer: a record comeback in the AFC Championship against the New England Patriots.

But for college, this game was truly Manning’s most memorable.