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Tennessee Vols: Five previous events that cancelled or postponed athletics

By Caleb Calhoun

01 Dec 2001: Rex Grossman #8 of Florida throws the ball during the Florida-Tennessee game at Florida Field at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. Tennessee won 34-32. DIGITAL IMAGE Mandatory Credit: Andy Lyons/ALLSPORT
01 Dec 2001: Rex Grossman #8 of Florida throws the ball during the Florida-Tennessee game at Florida Field at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. Tennessee won 34-32. DIGITAL IMAGE Mandatory Credit: Andy Lyons/ALLSPORT /
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The coronavirus cancelled the Tennessee Vols’ SEC Tournament plans. Here are five times other than COVID-19 things like that happened to the Volunteers.

It takes a drastic event to outright cancel college sports events. The Tennessee Vols football program reached its peak through the worst parts of the Great Depression and even played a game the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Outbreaks in general have never been part of cancelling a UT event. So when the news broke Thursday that the coronavirus would cancel the SEC Tournament and all NCAA winter and spring postseason events, it was a big deal.

Even if the Tennessee Vols men’s basketball program was not going to make the NCAA Tournament this year, they weren’t eliminated from it. A solid SEC Tournament run would have changed that. Meanwhile, women’s basketball could also make it, and baseball, softball and so many other sports are on a roll right now.

All of those sports have come to a grinding halt, and even football recruiting has been stalled due to COVID-19. So what’s the precedent for this? As we’ve mentioned, it doesn’t usually happen. Games and events are rarely postponed or cancelled.

In this post, we’re going to break down the few times that has happened. These are incidents that resulted in the postponement or cancellation of a game or a season on Rocky Top. We’ll count them down in the order of which they happened, starting with the most recent.

Some of these incidents are major standout moments in American history. Others were very tragic events. What’s clear, though, is the magnitude of the historical event doesn’t always correlate with the drastic measures the NCAA takes in terms of cancelling or postponing games and seasons.

We will show examples of those things here. If something was delayed, we’ll look back on what actually happened once the game began. These are the five times a drastic event outside of the sports world resulted in the cancellation or postponement of a Tennessee Vols game or season.

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