Tennessee football can look to 1949 for rebound against Tennessee Tech
When Tennessee football hosts the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles on Saturday, the Vols will be trying to rebound from a loss to the Pittsburgh Panthers last week. Josh Heupel’s first team is desperately still trying to have a successful season, and Pitt was a major setback.
However, there’s precedent for the Vols being able to get back on track in a meaningless game against TTU. Over 70 years ago, Robert Neyland appeared to have lost it. He won an SEC Championship in the first year of his third stint, when he returned from World War II in 1946, but then the Vols suffered back to back .500 seasons.
That’s when 1949 came around. Tennessee football started the year 2-1-1, losing go the Duke Blue Devils and tying a mediocre Alabama Crimson Tide team. With their only wins over the Mississippi State then-Maroons and the Chattanooga Mocs, it looked like they’d suffer another disappointing year.
Coming off that tie to Alabama, they hosted the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles. The two schools faced off every year from 1947 to 1951. UT won the game 36-6. It seemed meaningless at the time, but it was just the turnaround they needed.
The next week, the Vols upset the No. 13 ranked North Carolina Tar Heels on the road. A week before, UNC had lost to the LSU Tigers and was reeling a bit, but Rocky Top dominated, winning 35-6. They lost one game the rest of the year, to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, and they beat Bear Bryant’s No. 11 ranked Kentucky Wildcats on the road 6-0 later that season.
With a crop of young players who would be the building blocks for his third dynasty, Neyland proved he was back, leading UT to a 7-2-1 record and top 20 finish. He then went on to win back to back national titles in 1950 and 1951 with a 20-game winning streak mixed in there.
Okay, so these Vols aren’t going to lose only two games, and they certainly aren’t a year away from a national title. However, this is a season they could look to in order to have some motivation when they face TTU this week.
After all, just like the 1949 team, Tennessee football has an elite team on the road to face the very next week, the Florida Gators in this case. Also, just like UNC in 1949, it’s highly likely that Florida will be coming into that game off a loss, as they face Bama this week.
These similarities don’t seem like much, but they provide a blueprint for Heupel’s team. At that time in 1949, the Vols were struggling as a program and in danger of slipping into irrelevancy. Right now, they have already slipped into irrelevancy.
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Taking all this into account, Tennessee football has reason to be excited about facing TTU this year. Sure, winning won’t do anything for them when it comes to national perception, but it could be what gets them going on the right track. They’ve used the Golden Eagles to turn around the state of their program in the past.