Tennessee football: Five reasons Vols had an awesome January 2020

The new decade has started off on the right foot for Tennessee football. Here are five reasons the Volunteers had an awesome January to kick off 2020.

Jeremy Pruitt declared that the 2020s would be the decade of the Vols. If the other 119 months go as well as this month did for Tennessee football, he may be onto something. Yes, January was that great for Rocky Top.

While Tennessee basketball had some up and down news dating back to December with Lamonte Turner’s season-ending shoulder surgery but then Santiago Vescovi and Uros Plavsic getting onto the court, the football program has been on winning streak after winning streak. And we’re not just talking about their six-game winning streak to end the regular season.

This month brought a ton of joy to everybody associated with Tennessee football, and excitement is now through the roof. Whether or not that translates to success the rest of the way remains to be seen.

After all, the last time the Vols had a January this great was 2016. Alvin Kamara, Jalen Reeves-Maybin and Cameron Sutton announced their decisions to return, Butch Jones lured Larry Scott and Bob Shoop to Knoxville as tight ends coach and defensive coordinator, UT won the Outback Bowl and secured its first top 25 finish in eight years, and three recruits committed.

It’s worth noting that Peyton Manning was in the midst of a Super Bowl run during that month as well before he would go on to retire. Oh, and one of those commitments was Marquez Callaway. Simply put, things looked great on paper at the time in Knoxville.

Still, it’s worth celebrating the things that happened for the Vols in this month. So here, we’re going to look back on all the good things that happened in their favor. That spans from on the field to personnel moves. It’s all on the table.

We are also going to rank each happening by how exciting it was for everybody in Vol Nation. So let’s go ahead and break it all down. These are the five reasons Tennessee football had an awesome January to kickoff 2020.