All for Tennessee
Fansided

Tennessee football: Vols 10 greatest comeback wins in school history

By Caleb Calhoun

Aaron Hayden #24, Running Back for the University of Tennessee Volunteers runs the ball during the NCAA Southeastern Conference college football game against the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish on 9 November 1991 at the Notre Dame Stadium in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. The Tennessee Volunteers won the game 35 - 34. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Allsport/Getty Images)
Aaron Hayden #24, Running Back for the University of Tennessee Volunteers runs the ball during the NCAA Southeastern Conference college football game against the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish on 9 November 1991 at the Notre Dame Stadium in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. The Tennessee Volunteers won the game 35 - 34. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Allsport/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 12
Next
Photo by Tom Hauck /Allsport
Photo by Tom Hauck /Allsport /

Tennessee football has erased huge deficits in the past to win games. Here are the Volunteers’ 10 best come from behind victories.

In recent history, Tennessee football has not been phased by three-score deficits. The Vols have staged numerous comebacks, sometimes turning them into blowout victories, to give fans cause for celebration or at least cause for relief.

Obviously, the history of the Vols would not make comebacks that common before Doug Dickey arrived. After all, Robert Neyland had established a program solely built on defense and running. They were not meant to come back in games.

But winning shootouts became a bit more common with Dickey’s arrival, and by the time Johnny Majors made his way to Knoxville and established the vertical passing attack, Tennessee football slowly began to orchestrate epic comeback wins. Games like that became a regular in the 1990s and have been that way since.

So which ones have been the most exciting? In this post, that’s what we’re going to break down. Our criteria for UT’s biggest comebacks don’t just include how big the margin was, although that is weighted the heaviest.

It also includes the margin relative to how much time was left in the game. For instance, a 14-point fourth quarter comeback is going to be more impressive than a 17-point second half comeback. Everything just depends on the situation.

As you’ll see with these games, many comebacks just avoided devastating upsets. Others were upsets in favor of Rocky Top. Then there were those games that were heavily significant to both schools going in, were expected to be a dogfight, and turned into a thrilling comeback.

Also, it’s worth noting that these comeback wins may not have always occurred in memorable seasons for Vols fans. Sometimes, they were just thrilling in the moment and had no long-term significant impact. In fact, there’s a chance the impact could have been negative given how mentally draining some of these games are.

Either way, they were still incredibly memorable in the moment. So let’s take a fun look back at some of Tennessee football’s most unlikely victories. These are the Vols’ 10 greatest comeback wins in school history.

Home/Vols Football