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Tennessee football: Vols 10 most improved years after missing bowl game

By Caleb Calhoun

Andy Kelly #8, Quarterback for the University of Tennessee Volunteers runs the ball during the NCAA Southwest Conference Cotton Bowl Classic championship college football game against the University of Arkansas Razorbacks on 1 January 1990 at the Cotton Bowl Stadium, Dallas, Texas, United States. The Tennessee Volunteers won the game 31 - 27. (Photo by Joe Patronite/Allsport/Getty Images)
Andy Kelly #8, Quarterback for the University of Tennessee Volunteers runs the ball during the NCAA Southwest Conference Cotton Bowl Classic championship college football game against the University of Arkansas Razorbacks on 1 January 1990 at the Cotton Bowl Stadium, Dallas, Texas, United States. The Tennessee Volunteers won the game 31 - 27. (Photo by Joe Patronite/Allsport/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Mike Zarrilli/Getty Images
Photo by Mike Zarrilli/Getty Images /

Tennessee football is coming off a losing season under Jeremy Pruitt. But the Volunteers have a history of dramatic improvements. Here are 10 examples.

Losing seasons have been a staple of this decade under Tennessee football. So a 5-7 record the Vols’ first year under Jeremy Pruitt was not a shock considering the infrastructural issues surrounding the program.

However, with that one season now gone, expectations are back on the rise, albeit slightly. An easier schedule, more recruits in the system and a full offseason with most players healthy are all reasons to believe in a major improvement for Rocky Top.

It only helps that they upgraded with their offensive coordinator in Jim Chaney and brought in Tee Martin. But even before that, the excitement was there. Pruitt entering his second season did that alone for Tennessee football.

Historically, the Vols have a history of turning things around after missing a bowl game. Their first bowl season was 1938 (not counting the 1931 New York Charity Game), in which they beat the Oklahoma Sooners in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1, 1939, to finish 11-0. Since the start of that season, they have had 52 bowl seasons overall and missed out on bowl games 28 times.

But missing bowl games did not always wreck the program, and they often times came back stronger. In this post, we’re going to look at those times. This is a ranking of the most improved seasons the Vols enjoyed the year after missing a bowl game.

Our initial criteria is the biggest improvement in terms of record, but the tiebreaker will be how successful the turnaround season itself was. We’ll obviously only be counting seasons dating back to that first time the Vols made a bowl game.

Some of these turnaround years were just a blip on the radar as part of an overall declining trend. But others were part of a major uptick in the program that ushered in an era of success. We’ll analyze all of those here. These are the top 10 turnaround seasons for Tennessee football following years in which they missed out on a bowl game.

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