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Ranking Tennessee football’s six seasons that began on Sept. 26

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - OCTOBER 05: A Tennessee Volunteers megaphone sits on the sideline during the game against the Georgia Bulldogs at Neyland Stadium on October 05, 2019 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Silas Walker/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - OCTOBER 05: A Tennessee Volunteers megaphone sits on the sideline during the game against the Georgia Bulldogs at Neyland Stadium on October 05, 2019 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Silas Walker/Getty Images) /
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Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images
Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images /

These are the Tennessee football Volunteers years that began on this unique date in September.

From 1913 to 1962, Tennessee football had a tradition of starting its season on the last Saturday in September. There were a couple of exceptions, including the 1950 national title team that started on Sept. 23 and the 1940 team that started on Sept. 20, but those were rare.

Before that time, the Vols started games the first Saturday in October, with the exception of 1905, the first time they ever did play a game in September. However, from 1963 on, they began a process of slowly moving up their start dates, and now they traditionally begin their season Labor Day weekend.

This year, though, Tennessee football will be returning to a tradition that carried it through its formative years, the tradition of starting on the last Saturday of September, due to the SEC’s new scheduling plan to deal with coronavirus. Such a start was normal throughout the Robert Neyland and Bowden Wyatt years, as the Vols became a national program.

In fact, 10 of their 17 conference championships as a program came during this period, including six of their 13 SEC championships. As a result, there may be some excitement behind this one-time return to a tradition for Vol fans.

The season will start on Saturday, Sept. 26 and be a 10-game SEC schedule. At this moment, that start could be against the Florida Gators. Only six times have the Vols ever started the season on Sept. 26. In this post, we’re going to rank those seasons by how successful they were.

Five different head coaches led UT through these six seasons, and there were championships involved along with memorable finishes. Some of these seasons were the early foundation for what the program would become.

Does this mean anything when it comes to what will happen in 2020? Obviously, it doesn’t, but no program grew like the Vols did during this period of starting seasons at the end of September. So let’s see how they worked out on the particular day they are set to start this year. Here is our ranking of Tennessee football’s six seasons that began on Sept. 26 in school history.

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