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Tennessee football’s five best seasons when losing to Kentucky

By Caleb Calhoun

NASHVILLE, TN - NOVEMBER 24: Mascots Davey Crockett and Smokey of the Tennessee Volunteers pose for a photo prior to a 38-13 loss to Vanderbilt at Vanderbilt Stadium on November 24, 2018 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Frederick Breedon/Getty Images)
NASHVILLE, TN - NOVEMBER 24: Mascots Davey Crockett and Smokey of the Tennessee Volunteers pose for a photo prior to a 38-13 loss to Vanderbilt at Vanderbilt Stadium on November 24, 2018 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Frederick Breedon/Getty Images) /
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Tennessee head coach Johnny Majors, left, keeps an eye on the field against LSU. Winless Tennessee fall 34-9 to ninth-ranked LSU before 92,849 fans at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville Sept. 17, 1988.88then09 045
Tennessee head coach Johnny Majors, left, keeps an eye on the field against LSU. Winless Tennessee fall 34-9 to ninth-ranked LSU before 92,849 fans at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville Sept. 17, 1988.88then09 045 /

These are the Tennessee football Volunteers’ best years despite losing to the Wildcats?

History does not bode well for Tennessee football after its 34-7 loss to the Kentucky Wildcats. In the previous 115 season they met, Kentucky only won 26 times. However, the Vols only finished the season with a winning record eight of those times.

Simply put, losing to Kentucky is tied to having a bad season. When Derek Dooley lost to Kentucky in 2011, it set in motion a series of events that cost him his job. First, the Vols missed a bowl. Then Dave Hart publicly put Dooley and his staff on watch, forcing many of them to leave.

Dooley had to find guys nobody else wanted to replace them, most notably replacing defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox with Sal Sunseri. All of this drama wrecked the 2012 recruiting class, and with Sunseri at the helm, a horrendous defense offset a record-setting year on offense. Had Wilcox stayed, Tennessee football would have won nine games. Without him, they went 5-7.

This is what losing to Kentucky does to Rocky Top. It becomes extremely hard to recover from. However, there are some seasons in history that were somewhat salvaged despite a bad loss. Usually, the season was already a decent one, as this game came at the end of the year.

In this post, we’re going to rank the seasons in which UT lost to Kentucky that still turned out to have some form of success. There aren’t too many, as this game is usually associated with the worst years in school history, including 2017. However, these years will give Jeremy Pruitt and his program some hope, although few involved as embarrassing of a loss as Saturday did.

Three winning seasons that didn’t make this list are 1953 when they went 6-4-1, 1959 when they went 5-4-1 and 1976 when they went 6-5. What were the other winning seasons? Let’s break them down here. These are Tennessee football’s top five years despite losing to Kentucky.

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