Tennessee football in similar position to 1990s Georgia teams

The Tennessee football Volunteers are similar to the 1990s Bulldogs.

Remember the 1990s, when the Georgia Bulldogs would be in the top 25 and sometimes the top 10 every year as they were getting set to face Tennessee football? Ray Goff and Jim Donnan teams were undefeated six of the eight times the Vols and Dawgs faced off from 1992 to 1999, and this was supposed to be their breakout game.

Every single time, though, UGA failed to get the win. They were exposed as pretenders, almost always also losing to the Florida Gators later in the year with the one exception of 1997, when their win propelled Rocky Top into the SEC Championship game.

Well, this year, Tennessee football is all of a sudden in a similar position to those Georgia teams. The Vols are 2-0 and in the top 25 but have yet to beat a ranked team or even a team that has won a game. They are also on an eight-game winning streak, tied for the longest in the nation.

However, under Jeremy Pruitt, they are still 0-6 against their three arch-rivals in Georgia, the Florida Gators and the Alabama Crimson Tide. A loss on Saturday will encourage the notion that this team is a pretender and not ready to compete with the top tier of the SEC.

This is where Pruitt gets to prove his point. Is he building something special, or is he just another Donnan or Goff? He has definitely improved Tennessee football in numerous ways, but a win Saturday, or even just a competitive showing, would do wonders to put a stamp on that.

Now, nobody is expecting the Vols to win. That’s the one difference between them and the UGA teams of the 1990s. In 1998, the year the Vols won the national title, Georgia was actually favored as they hosted Phillip Fulmer’s team thanks to a Jamal Lewis season-ending injury the week before. The Dawgs lost 22-3.

When the series first began annually, back in 1992, Fulmer was the interim coach with a new quarterback in Heath Shhuler, and the Vols entered the game 14-point underdogs. They won 34-31, which set in motion a crazy series of events.

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In 1997, when Georgia visited Tennessee football, they were undefeated and hoped this would be the year they could cash in on a reeling UT team that had lost to the Florida Gators three straight years. The aforementioned Lewis, then a freshman, had other ideas and ran for 232 yards, resulting in a 38-13 victory for UT.

Donnan’s team took it to a new level in 1999 when, ranked No. 10 and undefeated, it stomped on the T at midfield ahead of the game. Tee Martin and co. responded by humiliating the Dawgs 37-20 in front of an ESPN audience at night.

Time and time again, Georgia thought it had the team to finally prove it was on the level of the Vols and Florida, and time and time again, it came up short. Only when Mark Richt arrived and Steve Spurrier left did they finally begin to compete.

At this point, though, it’s Tennessee football’s turn to prove itself. The Vols obviously want to avoid being the 1990s Georgia program, but they are further removed from their most recent SEC Championship than UGA had been removed from its most recent title at any time during the 90s.

As a result, there are reasons to doubt this team. However, even with Smart at UGA, the Dawgs have not even gotten halfway to the nine straight that the Vols won in the series, eight of which were from 1992 to 1999. Pruitt seems to have a much better grasp of handling a major SEC program than Donnan or Goff did as well. Saturday will show how much better, though.