Tennessee football: Ranking all 4 perfect seasons in Vols history

4 Jan 1999: the Tennesse Volunteers celebrate during the Fiesta Bowl Game against the Florida State Seminoles at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Tennessee defeated Florida State 23-16. Mandatory Credit: Jed Jacobsohn /Allsport
4 Jan 1999: the Tennesse Volunteers celebrate during the Fiesta Bowl Game against the Florida State Seminoles at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Tennessee defeated Florida State 23-16. Mandatory Credit: Jed Jacobsohn /Allsport /
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Photo by Vincent Laforet /Allsport
Photo by Vincent Laforet /Allsport /

Tennessee football has had four undefeated and untied on years in school history. Here is how every one of those seasons rank for the Volunteers.

Throughout its history, Tennessee football has enjoyed 11 undefeated seasons. However, seven of those seasons involved at least one tie, including five under Robert Neyland, one just prior to World War I and another one in the 1890s.

If you scrap bowl game losses before those counted in the 1970s, the Vols had 15 undefeated seasons. So there has been plenty of success on Rocky Top over the years on the gridiron spanning over a century.

However, when it comes to perfect seasons, which eliminate all undefeated seasons in which there was a tie, the Vols have only had eight. And once you take out those seasons with a bowl loss, it goes down to four.

Yes, there are four seasons in Tennessee football history in which they won every game and did not allow any school to tie on them. How do they stack up against each other? Well, in this post, we’re going to rank all of them.

Our post we’ll take into account what level of competition they were playing on at the time and just how dominant they were. We’ll also look at the significance each season had within the scope of school history.

All of these things matter when it comes to ranking how great a season was. It helps us keep a level of consistency when differentiating eras. Simply put, this is not merely a comparison of the talent of each team. That would ignore the historical significance. And everybody pretty much knows which team in school history had the most talent.

So let’s go ahead and take a look back at UT at its best. Maybe Jeremy Pruitt will add to this list in the future, but it’s certainly already a list of pride for Rocky Top. Here is our ranking of the four perfect seasons in Tennessee football history.