Tennessee football: Remembering four previous times Vols rehired a coach

Tennessee football’s rehire of Robert Neyland in the late 1940s looked questionable at first before it brought major success. But in the 1930s, their rehire of the General was never in doubt, and it brought more major success.

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Neyland took over the Vols in 1926 after one year as an assistant. Immediately, he turned them into a national program. Tennessee never had more than one blemish on its record, be it a tie or a loss, for its first seven years under Neyland, and they went three straight years without losing a game from 1927 to 1929 despite a tie all three seasons.

Two Southern Conference Championships and five seasons overall without a loss in seven years was remarkable, and he built his early period of success around guys like future legends Gene McEver and Bobby Dodd. The Vols were hit with a bit more reality when the SEC was formed in 1933, and they went 7-3 and 8-2 the first two years before Neyland had to leave the first time for service, this one being at the Panama Canal Zone.

Without him, the Vols stumbled to 4-5 in 1935 under W.H. Britton. So when Neyland returned, rehiring him was easy. But after going 6-2-2 with a Top 20 finish in 1936 and then 6-3-1 in 1937, there was legitimate concern that the program could enjoy solid success but would no longer be a championship program with the newly competitive SEC.

Well, just as he would do a decade later, Neyland changed that narrative quickly. Once again bringing in major talent that would become future legends, including Bowden Wyatt, George Cafego and three-time All-American Bob Suffridge, Tennessee football had its most successful run in history.

Neyland’s teams went 11-0, 10-1 and 10-1 from 1938 to 1940, going three straight regular seasons without a loss. They went to their first three bowl games in school history, winning the Orange Bowl and then losing the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowls. However, Cafego didn’t play in the Rose Bowl against the USC Trojans, and it’s worth noting that bowl games were exhibitions at the time.

So in games that mattered they went three straight seasons without a loss. Overall, they enjoyed a 23-game winning streak at one point, a 43-regular season game winning streak, and they became the last team to go undefeated, untied and unscored on for a whole regular season, shutting out everybody in 1939 before that exhibition bowl game.

In fact, they went 19 straight games in which they won and shutout their opponent, and they did it for 21 straight regular season games. All of this resulted in two national championships in three years, three straight Top 4 finishes, three straight SEC Championships.

When you factor in the success John Barnhill had those four years after Neyland left in 1940 and then the success Neyland had in 1946, it’s safe to say that beginning in 1938, he ushered in a period of amazing success even without the 1943 season. As a result, it’s clear that this was the most successful rehire Tennessee football ever made, and it put the Vols on the national map like never before.