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10 times Tennessee Vols athletics raised fans hopes too high

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 12: Lane Kiffin, head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers talks in the press conference after a game against the UCLA Bruins on September 12, 2009 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee. UCLA beat Tennessee 19-15. (Photo by Joe Murphy/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 12: Lane Kiffin, head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers talks in the press conference after a game against the UCLA Bruins on September 12, 2009 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee. UCLA beat Tennessee 19-15. (Photo by Joe Murphy/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images /

There have been lots of teases in Tennessee Vols history. In honor of April Fools’ Day, Here are 10 times the Volunteers raised everybody’s hopes too high.

April Fools’ Day is a time of teasing and playing jokes, sometimes cruel ones on people. Throughout the school’s history, the Tennessee Vols appear to have played numerous cruel jokes on fans by raising their hopes far too high.

Whether it’s due to way too much hype behind a Tennessee football team, expectations for an amazing accomplishment by the Tennessee Lady Vols in the NCAA Tournament or false hype behind a coach in Tennessee basketball, all three major sports have teased fans at some point. And the revelations that they were teases made things brutal.

Recent years have brought much more false hope to Tennessee Vols fans, starting with this century and even more so in the 2010s decade, than any other period in school history. It’s just been a string of bad luck and things on paper turning disastrous.

However, these types of things aren’t a new phenomenon in general. In this post, we’re going to rank the times UT raised everybody’s hopes too high. These are instances in which Vol Nation went from being on Rocky Top to hitting rock bottom in terms of morale and results.

Such disappointment could be anything. It could be a season with high expectations turning into a major disappointment, a coaching hire that had lots of promise not working out, or some unexpected turn that tanked a program. In many cases, Tennessee Vols fans were right to have high hopes about what was happening, but sometimes, they got carried away with false hope.

For this list, however, we are going to leave off tragedies, such as what happened to Pat Summitt. That was something beyond basketball, and it would be inappropriate to trivialize it based on what happened to an athletic program. So with that criteria in play, let’s get started. These are the 10 times the Tennessee Vols raised everybody’s hopes far too high.

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