It has been a long time since Tennessee football brought home an SEC Championship. Here, we take a look at the unprecedented drought for the Volunteers.
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It all started on Dec. 8, 2001. Tennessee had just come off of beating the No. 2 ranked Florida Gators in The Swamp in what would be Steve Spurrier’s final home game to win the SEC East. They were heading to Atlanta to play the LSU Tigers, who were up and coming under Nick Saban but not very good yet.
The Vols were No. 2 in the BCS and just had to win that game to go to the national title and play the Miami Hurricanes.
But in a moment of huge regret, the Tennessee Vols players and fans took that game for granted. Rather than viewing it as a chance to win a conference championship, they looked at it as nothing more than a roadblock to the national title.
And that made all the difference, as LSU stunned the Vols with a backup quarterback to capture the conference title and rob them of a chance at the national title.
That is the game that Tennessee has never recovered from.
Over the years, much has been made in Knoxville about Tennessee’s 18-year SEC Championship drought. We’ve talked about the Georgia Dome curse, we have mentioned the fall from grace of Phillip Fulmer and the terrible coaching hires since, and we have pointed to bad luck in recruiting.
But if there is a true curse, it is that the Football Gods decided to teach the program a lesson on that fateful day in 2001: never take an SEC Championship for granted.
There are just too many movies we have all seen where the person needs to be thankful for their opportunities but they always complain, and then they learn a lesson at the end to appreciate what they had.
The 2001 SEC Championship game and drought that followed is that movie for Tennessee.
Since then, the Vols have been desperately struggling to get back there and get that elusive title.
Can this be the year they break the curse? Maybe. But fans have said that many times before.
Think back to nearly three years before that.
On Jan. 4, 1999, Vols fans were on top of the world. They had just captured the national championship, were reigning back-to-back SEC champions, and had a ton of talent coming back that would allow them to compete for another SEC and national title.
At only age 48, Phillip Fulmer’s coaching career was looking amazing into the future.
Of course, they didn’t do it in 1999, but there was no real shame in coming close when they had to face an elite Florida team on the road and only lost by two. There wasn’t any shame the next year when they were rebuilding with a young team.
There was only shame in 2001, when one of the most talented teams in school history flat out choked in the SEC Championship game because they took it for granted.
Now, over 15 years later, nobody in Knoxville could have predicted what would have happened. Nobody in their right mind would have guessed after the 1999 Fiesta Bowl win that Fulmer would not win another SEC title and then be forced out 10 years later.
Nobody could’ve guessed that Tennessee would have a period of four straight losing seasons and seven straight seasons finishing outside of the Top 25.
And nobody would have ever predicted that the Vols would go 14 straight years without a Top 10 finish.
Tennessee fans went from wanting a national title to wanting a conference title to at one point just wanting a winning record.
But amongst all of that, the SEC Championship drought remains the biggest curse hanging over the program. Ever since the conference was formed in 1933, this is the longest Tennessee football has gone without the title in school history.
Make no mistake, the biggest frustration behind the program is that elusive title. Even back in the mid-2000s, when Tennessee was still a Top 15 team and competing in big games, Vols fans felt they were on a downward slide because of the SEC Championship drought.
Going 10 years without that title is what forced Fulmer out beyond anything in 2008. Tennessee fans can deal with an out-of-character losing season. They can deal with a national title drought. But SEC title droughts of that magnitude are unacceptable.
A lot has happened in the world since the Vols won the SEC title. At the time, the economy was in such good shape that President Bill Clinton was being impeached because people thought a sex scandal was the worst thing in the world.
Barack Obama was an unknown state representative in Illinois teaching Constitutional Law. George W. Bush was a wildly popular governor of Texas.
The Internet wave was just getting started, with most people still turning to Sports Center to get their news on sports games and to CNN for all of their headline news.
In the entertainment industry, nobody had yet even heard of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Eminem, Nelly, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Kanye West, and lots of other people. Heck, Usher and Beyonce were just getting started.
George Lucas had not yet disappointed Star Wars fans with his prequels.
The sports world was even crazier.
The Tennessee Titans were the Tennessee Oilers. Michael Jordan had just retired, and Tim Duncan, Shaq, and Kobe were all ringless. LeBron James was a 14-year old.
WCW was still competing with WWF for professional wrestling supremacy.
Peyton Manning was in the midst of a dismal rookie year with the Indianapolis Colts showing no promise of a Hall-of-Fame future.
Tom Brady was having to beg to hold onto his starting job at Michigan.
Pat Summitt and the Lady Vols were a three-time defending national champions.
And Nick Saban was a coach on the hot seat at Michigan State.
In fact, the biggest stars in 1998 were Michael Jordan with his retirement, and then Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in the summer that saved baseball. What a damper the steroid scandal put on that!
But we don’t have to just go into detail with the sports world. The Tennessee world also had some interesting things to it.
One of the biggest differences between then and now in Big Orange Country was the Jumbotron. The typical V-O-L-S letters on the south end of the stadium was replaced with a giant scoreboard in 1999, which was replaced again in 2009. There’s reason to believe that replacing those letters is a curse to the football program because of that.
There’s also the Georgia Dome curse.
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But the true curse is what is always humanity’s ultimate downfall. In 2001, Vol Nation thought of playing for an SEC title as an afterthought. They took something for granted and are paying for it many years later.