Tennessee football’s five worst seasons with third-year coach

A decade after Zora G. Clevenger, Tennessee football had new expectations for the program. After all, John R. Bender followed up Clevenger with a conference title in 1916, and then he and the program returned from World War I to go 7-2 in 1920.

M.B. Banks took over for Bender in 1921, and he continued the success early on, going 6-2-1 that year. In 1922, Banks oversaw the Vols’ transition into the Southern Conference, which was the precursor to the SEC. That first season, he went 8-2 and 4-2 in league play.

However, this season, his third season, a slide began to show. UT’s only win over the Vanderbilt Commodores after 1914 was in 1916, but they had lost every other game even as they were beginning a winning streak against the Sewanee Tigers that they would never relinquish.

Anyway, a season-opening loss at the Army Black Knights, who ironically had a young assistant by the name of Gen. Robert Neyland, was followed by a shocking tie with the Maryville Scots. UT then beat the Georgetown Tigers only to lose to the Georgia Bulldogs.

After beating the Mississippi A&M Aggies (now Mississippi State Bulldogs) and Tulane Green Wave, they suffered back to back losses to Vanderbilt and the VMI Keydets. Sure, they closed things out by beating the Ole Miss Rebels and Kentucky Wildcats, but they still finished 5-4-1, and they fell to 3-5 in 1924.

That was the beginning of the slide for Banks, as they did improve to 5-2-1 in 1925, but that year, Neyland had joined the Vols. He replaced Banks in 1926 and took the program to a national level, which everybody knows about now.