Tennessee football: Vols 5 luckiest plays in school history

Despite its recent past, Tennessee football has benefitted from great fortune before. Here are the Volunteers’ five luckiest plays in school history.

You are responsible for your own fortune. Tennessee football fans can point to numerous instances in the past in which they were on the wrong side of Lady Luck. But the Vols have had plenty of instances in which the reverse was true.

The fact of the matter is every great program has had games where luck helped to determine the outcome. However, they haven’t had entire seasons where that happened. Success still requires all the other factors.

Still, it’s fun to celebrate, or breath a sigh of relief if you have to, when your team is on the right side of a lucky play. And Tennessee football has certainly enjoyed its fair share of those throughout the school’s history.

In this post, we’re going to have a little fun with those lucky plays. But first, what really makes luck? Well, all five of these plays are total fluke plays that should not have happened. For instance, a regular turnover of any kind doesn’t count as luck, especially if a team forces it.

At the same time, an unforced error by another team, while much more an indicator of luck for the team that benefits, doesn’t get outweighed by luck. After all, the team that committed the unforced error wasn’t unlucky when it did something it could have avoided.

These plays may have involved a great act here or there by a player for the Vols, or they may have involved a crucial mistake by the other team, but they still never should have had the outcome they had. They only occurred because the ball bounced the right way at the right time, or somebody just happened to be in the right position.

And before you question it, yes, the Vols won all these games we’re naming. But they may not have necessarily been lucky to win these games. Let’s take a look at the five luckiest plays in Tennessee football history.