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Tennessee football’s last Labor Day game ruined a year, eventually resulted in Fulmer’s firing

By Caleb Calhoun

PASADENA, CA - SEPTEMBER 01: Head coach Phillip Fulmer of the University of Tennessee Volunteers waits with his team to take the field before the game with the UCLA Bruins on September 1, 2008 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. UCLA won 27-24 in the first overtime. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
PASADENA, CA - SEPTEMBER 01: Head coach Phillip Fulmer of the University of Tennessee Volunteers waits with his team to take the field before the game with the UCLA Bruins on September 1, 2008 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. UCLA won 27-24 in the first overtime. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images) /
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 The last time Tennessee football played on Labor Day was 2008. That game ruined the Vols’ season and eventually resulted in Phillip Fulmer’s firing.

Related Story: Top 10 losses Fulmer wishes he had back

Butch Jones enters the 2017 season in his fifth year as Tennessee football head coach. And while we wouldn’t say he’s on the hot seat, there’s definitely more scrutiny on him than there has been in years past.

Meanwhile, his team opens the year on Labor Day against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in Atlanta. If the last time the Vols played on Labor Day is an indication of anything, it’s bad news for Jones.

It happened in 2008. Phillip Fulmer’s Vols opened the season at the UCLA Bruins on Labor Day. They had a new offensive coordinator in Dave Clawson, and a new quarterback in Jonathan Crompton, and multiple new position coaches.

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Sound familiar? Tennessee football is going into this game with a new offensive coordinator, multiple new position coaches and a new starting quarterback, either Quinten Dormady or Jarrett Guarantano, as well.

We should mentioned that both times, the Vols were coming off a season led by a Top 10 quarterback in school history.

Both times, the Labor Day game was scheduled to be played in their opponent’s hometown, although this year’s is not technically a road game.

So what happened in 2008? Tennessee lost to UCLA in Rick Neuheisel’s first game as the school’s head coach. It was an overtime heartbreaker.

And that set the stage for arguably the most disastrous season in school history.

The Vols could not get any consistency in Clawson’s new offense, which usually took a year or two to figure out. As a result, they stumbled to 5-7.

After starting 3-6, Mike Hamilton fired Fulmer. The distraction from the firing resulted in the school’s most embarrassing loss this century, to the Wyoming Cowboys, that Saturday. And they finished 5-7.

However, all of this may have been avoided had the Vols won their first game against UCLA. They controlled the first half of that game, but a series of mistakes cost them.

They would not have beaten the Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs, Alabama Crimson Tide or South Carolina Gamecocks that year. So it still would have been a very disappointing season.

But they would have likely had enough heart and momentum to beat the Auburn Tigers, whom they lost to 14-12, three weeks later. And winning those two games would have meat that they would be 5-4 after the South Carolina game.

Hamilton certainly would not have fired Fulmer then, so the Vols would have won out to finish 8-4. That still wasn’t up to standards at the time.

But it certainly would not have been the disaster that it was. The 5-7 season followed by Hamilton’s terrible hire of Lane Kiffin, who decimated the program further by bolting after one year. And Hamilton followed that up with a terrible hire of Derek Dooley.

We know how the program sunk to its worst state in history due to all of these things. But it all started because of that fateful 2008 Labor Day game against UCLA.

Next: Game-by-game predictions for Vols 2017 season

Now, with Jones under a bit of pressure, Tennessee football is back playing a Labor Day game. It was a Labor Day game that started the downward spiral of the program at the turn of the decade. Will this one cause another downward spiral? Or will it do the opposite?

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