Tennessee football: 10 most underappreciated Vols in school history

Tennessee football has seen lots of contributors who didn’t get the respect they deserved. Here are the 10 most underappreciated Volunteers ever.

With six claimed national championships and a ton of NFL talent, Tennessee football has a deep history of players to glorify for its success. Everybody knows of guys like Peyton Manning, Doug Atkins, Reggie White, Al Wilson and Eric Berry.

But there are numerous Vols who have also contributed heavily to the success of the program, and for whatever reason, they are never mentioned in the same breath as those guys. Some of them were just as impactful on the program as the guys we just named. Still, nobody mentions them in the same category.

This is probably a case for many programs, and it is definitely one for Tennessee football. When you have so much talent, it’s hard to name everybody. However, it’s only fair to give people the respect they earned while wearing the orange.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at those Vols who deserve more respect than they’re getting. These players played a major role in elevating the program to where it’s at but for reasons that are sometimes clear and sometimes unclear can’t get the same mentions as the top-notch guys who graced Rocky Top.

Not all of these former Vols are among the absolute greatest ever. But they are still on this list relative to the credit they get for their work. That made this a tricky list to put together because we had to base a lot of this on perception.

Some of these guys just got a bit too much unfair criticism during their play in Knoxville. Others actually are among the elites in school history and, while beloved, don’t get the same mention as other guys.

Simply put, these players deserve more love from Rocky Top. So let’s go ahead and break down who we are talking about specifically. These are the Top 10 most underappreciated Tennessee football players in the history of the program.