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Tennessee football: History shows UMass scare is meaningless for Vols

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 29: A general view of Neyland Stadium during the South Carolina Gamecocks game against the Tennessee Volunteers on October 29, 2011 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 29: A general view of Neyland Stadium during the South Carolina Gamecocks game against the Tennessee Volunteers on October 29, 2011 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images) /
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Tennessee football’s struggles the last two weeks has fans losing all faith in the Volunteers. But history shows that they should not read too much into it.

Related Story: 5 most important Vols to watch for vs. Georgia

In 1999, Tennessee football suffered a heartbreaking 23-21 loss to the Florida Gators in The Swamp. It was their first loss since the Orange Bowl to end the 1997 season, and it was all due to horrible coaching.

The very next week, the Vols hosted a terrible Memphis Tigers team. They trailed for most of the second half and needed a deep pass play to Bobby Graham to set up the game-winning touchdown, winning 17-16.

If this doesn’t sound familiar to you, it should. Look at what just happened to Tennessee. The Vols lost a heartbreaker to the Gators and the very next week struggled to put away the Massachusetts Minutemen at home.

The moral of the story is you should never read too much into an ugly win against a bad team when it’s sandwiched between a heartbreaking loss and a huge conference game coming up.

Now in 1999, morale remained high because Tennessee football fans knew their team was great. That’s not the case this year.

But the Vols didn’t get back on a roll until the next week, when they shut out the Auburn Tigers. A week later, the dominated the Georgia Bulldogs and then owned the Alabama Crimson Tide on the road.

So after a loss to Florida and an ugly scare against Memphis, they were back in the national title hunt three weeks later.

Of course, this year is indeed different to a degree. The Florida team Tennessee lost to is significantly worse than the one in 1999. And we don’t expect the Vols to be in any national title hunt any time soon.

But that season does show that a good team can rebound quickly from two ugly weeks. As a result, when Tennessee hosts the Georgia Bulldogs this weekend, the Vols still have a great chance to pull off the win and turn around their season.

The UMass game should not deter anybody from thinking of that possibility.

By the way, 1999 isn’t the only time this happened. In 2007, the Vols lost in embarrassing fashion to Florida, 59-20. They were 1-2 at the time. The next week, they beat the Arkansas State Red Wolves 48-27, but it was actually an ugly win when you consider how bad that team was and how the Tennessee football defense played.

But two weeks later, they were back in the SEC East race and dominated Georgia. They won the division that year and enjoyed a 10-win season.

Next: Tennessee vs. Georgia Tech: 10 Keys to the game

Simply put, you can’t read too much into Tennessee’s struggles with UMass. Butch Jones and the Vols are much better than that performance. And when they show more focus in more important games, they should still be tough to beat.

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