Tennessee football: 4 best Vols coaches with losing seasons their first year

Tennessee football has had a range of coaches. Here are the four most successful Volunteers head coach who had losing seasons their first year.

After changing up his staff a bit and with National Signing Day less than two weeks away, fans still have a healthy level of excitement surrounding the Tennessee football program under Jeremy Pruitt. But we’ve got to address the elephant in the room a bit.

Pruitt did have a losing season his first year, going 5-7. That’s something Vols fans can reasonably be concerned about, especially considering the fact that the last SEC Championship coach to have a losing record his first season with that team was Tommy Tuberville with the Auburn Tigers.

Now, to be fair, it’s pretty clear Pruitt inherited a bigger mess than most coaches did as well. But is there historical precedent for successful Tennessee football coaches who had losing seasons their first year? Well, it depends on what you define as success.

In this post, we’re going to look at the four most successful coaches the school ever had who suffered losing records their first year. Now, not all four of these coaches would be considered a true success on Rocky Top. They just had more success than anybody else.

If you worry about the future of Pruitt after seeing this list, know that only six coaches have won a conference championship in the school’s history anyway. So lots of the Vols’ success is concentrated on a couple of coaches.

The good news, as you’ll see, is that historical precedent does exist for Pruitt to be successful on Rocky Top. It just may not exist for him to have the success everybody wants him to have, but again, it’s always hard to tell after a first year.

So let’s go ahead and look at how he stands against previous coaches in a similar situation. These are the four most successful Tennessee football head coaches who were under .500 their first season on Rocky Top.