2. 1939: 10-1 (6-0)
SEC Championship; Rose Bowl; No. 2 AP
Number of 1939 NFL Draft picks: 2
- Walt Wood, B (Chicago Bears: Round 10; Pick 86)
- Bowden Wyatt, E (Round 11; Pick 91)
Technically, they didn’t win a national title. But this may have been the most dominant Tennessee football team of all time, and were it not for a key injury, they would have gone undefeated, untied and unscored upon all year.
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Doing it in the regular season was enough for us to put this class up here. The Vols had just come off their first SEC Championship, national championship and bowl season in 1938, Robert Neyland’s second stint on the job. Crazy enough, the only superstar they lost from that team was Bowden Wyatt, who as we said above, was taken in the draft. However, he went into coaching.
Walt Wood, meanwhile, never made it. So the Vols didn’t lose a lot, and they returned George Cafego, Abe Shires, Ed Molinski, Bob Suffridge, Ed Cifers and Bob Foxx. Oh, they added Ray Graves as well. So this team was loaded.
As a result, they dominated everybody and won their second straight SEC title. By the end of the regular season, they were on a 23-game winning streak and had shut out 15 straight opponents. They didn’t get awarded the national title, though, and all hopes of one of the services that did it after the bowl games of awarding them the title were dashed after the bowl game.
Rocky Top lost the Rose Bowl 14-0 to the USC Trojans. However, Cafego wasn’t able to go. That resulted in them losing, and it’s why this can’t be considered the greatest Tennessee football team of all time.