Tennessee football: Defining Vols history by 10 Disney animation eras

Tennessee football eras largely parallel the Walt Disney animation studio’s eras. Here is a look at the Volunteers’ history if compared to Disney’s history.

With the biggest movie in the Marvel Universe, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ breaking records, the conclusion of the third ‘Star War’ trilogy set to come out this year, and four remakes and two sequels of their legendary animated films, it’s no secret this is a big year for Disney. They are in a very different place than the Tennessee football program. Or are they?

Reports are suggesting that the Walt Disney Company is in for a record year, so we figured it would be fun to compare the eras of Disney and the Vols. If you look at both of them, their histories go way back.

There have been nine official eras of Walt Disney Animation studios, but they appear to be in a 10th right now if you critically analyze everything that’s happening. Tennessee football has had a variety of eras, but you could separate them into 10 legitimate eras as well.

So in this post, we’re going to compare the eras of the Vols to the eras of Disney. Hey, the two are clearly connected. UT’s last two SEC championships and it’s national title were televised on Disney-owned ABC, and fans blame Disney-owned ESPN for Peyton Manning not winning the Heisman Trophy.

It should be noted that there are precursors to both organizations, and before we look at the official eras, we’ll have a page dedicated to those precursors. Then we’ll have the 10 slides for each era.

For Disney, the precursors are companies Walt Disney started before his animation studios. And with the Vols, those years include the beginnings when football was really just a club sport and didn’t mean much.

We have a pretty good read of when to really start counting the eras on Rocky Top. So we’ll sync that up with Disney eras from the beginning, and you’ll notice that they have largely similar trajectories throughout their time.

They may even compare now. How is that the case? Where do we define each era for both? Take a look at all of that here, with our comparisons of Tennessee football and Walt Disney Animation Studios eras.