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Tennessee football: Vols top 10 upset wins in school history

By Caleb Calhoun

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Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images
Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images /

2. 1985: Tennessee beats Auburn 38-20

More than 25 years after Tennessee football’s upset over the No. 1 ranked LSU Tigers, they had another No. 1 team coming to town. At the time, nobody knew that this Tennessee Vols team would be the one to revitalize the program the way we had known at the end of the season leading up to their Sugar Bowl upset over the Miami Hurricanes.

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    • Remember, the Vols had not won an SEC Title since 1969, hadn’t finished in the Top 10 since 1971 and hadn’t finished in the Top 25 since 1974. After a rough first four years from 1977-1980, Johnny Majors was barely staying afloat in Knoxville with four solid to above average years from 1981 to 1984, but nothing special. He was nowhere close to his glory days in Pittsburgh. The silver lining was Tony Robinson led a crew that went 7-4-1 in 1984 and showed promise for the next year. With tepid optimism, they started the year unranked.

    But amidst all this, Tennessee football was entering this game off a bye. In their opener at home, they blew a 26-10 lead late to the No. 10 UCLA Bruins, who scored two touchdowns and two two-point conversions to end the game in a tie. Nobody knew what that meant at the time. But what it meant was that Tennessee was about to explode.

    And Auburn was the game where they did just that. Still unranked, the Vols hosted a program at its peak with eventual Heisman Trophy winner Bo Jackson leading the charge. It didn’t matter. Thanks to inconsistency at the quarterback spot for Auburn the Vols dominated.

    They won the game 38-20 and snapped a three-game losing streak to the Tigers. This was a huge game for the program. It got them back into the rankings for the first time since 1979. And it set in motion an SEC Championship season. Everybody remembers the Sugar Bowl, and for good reason. But this game started it all for Tennessee football.

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