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Tennessee football: Vols 5 worst seasons with second-year head coach

By Caleb Calhoun

FAYETTEVILLE, AR - NOVEMBER 12: Head Coach Derek Dooley of the Tennessee Volunteers signals to the sidelines during a game against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Donald W. Reynolds Stadium Stadium on November 12, 2011 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Razorbacks defeated the Volunteers 49 to 7. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
FAYETTEVILLE, AR - NOVEMBER 12: Head Coach Derek Dooley of the Tennessee Volunteers signals to the sidelines during a game against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Donald W. Reynolds Stadium Stadium on November 12, 2011 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Razorbacks defeated the Volunteers 49 to 7. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images) /
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Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images
Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images /

4. Hubert Fisher

Year: 1903

Record: 4-5 (1-4 SIAA)

Before Zora G. Clevenger took Tennessee football to another level, the Vols were a sputtering program. And it all started under Hubert Fisher. They had no head coach throughout the 1890s, but upon joining the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1896, they began to take off. After all, they went 4-0 that year.

From 1894 to 1902, the Vols did not have a losing season. Fisher took over for Gilbert Kelly as UT’s third head coach in 1902 and had a very impressive 6-2 record, including a 4-2 conference record to finish fifth in the SIAA.

However, in 1903, things went south. Fisher went 4-5. Despite a 2-0 start, a 40-0 loss to the Vanderbilt Commodores and 24-0 loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks wrecked the season. So reality set in.After a 10-0 win over Nashville, they lost back to back games to the Georgia Bulldogs and Sewanee.

Despite beating the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, they lost their last game to the Alabama Crimson Tide, again 24-0 to finish 4-5 and 1-4 in the league. This would be the first of four straight losing seasons for Rocky Top. Fisher would leave after this season and coach the University of Nashville for a year, where he went 1-7-1.

After that, the Princeton graduated moved to West Tennessee and became a Democratic politician for the Memphis area, serving for 14 years in Congress from 1917 to 1931. As part of the E.H. Crump political machine, he had more success there than in football. But we was in Congress during the start of the Great Depression, so some failure existed there as well.

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