Remembering Tennessee football’s only other matchup with Purdue ever: 1979 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl

It looks like it’s becoming somewhat of a tradition for Tennessee football when they face the Purdue Boilermakers to only face them when it’s a coach’s first bowl game as head coach of the Vols. Josh Heupel will be coaching his first bowl game at UT in the Music City Bowl Thursday.

Over three decades before Heupel, though, Johnny Majors also coached his first bowl game at UT against Purdue. Unlike Heupel, Majors didn’t do it in his first year, though. He couldn’t reach a bowl until his third year.

The Vols were cursed as a ranked team that season. They came in at 7-4 with a 3-3 SEC record, a 7-0 record while unranked and an 0-4 record while ranked. Seriously. It was a wildly inconsistent team, one that beat the Notre Dame Fighting Irish a week after losing at home to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

Their season earned them a trip to the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl, which no longer exists, against Purdue. That year, Purdue had gone 9-2 under third-year head coach Jim Young and 7-1 in the Big Ten. They were ranked No. 12 nationally heading into the matchup, which took place on New Year’s Eve in 1979 at the Houston Astrodome in Texas.

There was no way the Gods would let this wildly inconsistent Tennessee football team, which could not win as a top 25 team, have a chance at finishing the season in the top 25. In a thriller, the Vols lost a heartbreaker.

Purdue quarterback Mark Herrmann built a 21-0 lead by the third quarter. However, playing in his final game as the Vols’ quarterback, Jimmy Streater would not go quietly. His memorable career nearly had an epic exclamation point to it.

Streater helped bring UT back. He first threw an eight-yard touchdown pass to Glenn Ford. Then, in the fourth, he led the Vols to the 15-yard line. On a 4th and 12, Phil Ingram took a reverse from Streater and was nearly sacked, but he avoided the tackle and threw a beautiful touchdown pass to James Berry, the father of Eric Berry.

After splitting their two-point conversion attempts on those drives, Tennessee football got the ball back again, and Streater then took them down the field again. Hubert Simpson scored on a one-yard run and then ran in for his second straight two-point conversion, giving UT a 22-21 lead with less than four minutes to go.

At the time, it seemed like the Vols had pulled off a miraculous comeback. However, Hermann then led Purdue down the field for another score, and with 90 seconds to go, they were back up 27-22. Streater made one last chance at a comeback, taking the Vols down to the 30, but he was stopped on 4th and 12.

Thanks to that stop, Purdue won. The story of the game was Hermann and them forcing five turnovers. Streater and co. put up a fight, but they just spent way too long to get going. As a result, they suffered another heartbreaking loss on the year.

Aftermath

With the victory, Purdue secured what remains its only 10-win season in history. They finished No. 10 in both polls. The next year, they went 9-3 for their third straight top 25 finish, but Young resigned after a 5-6 season in 1981.

The Vols, meanwhile, finished 7-5. Signs were there that they were rebuilding under Majors, but in 1980, they went 5-6, the third time in four years they failed to have a winning season. Majors got it going after that, though, as Tennessee football made seven straight bowl games and won the SEC in 1985. From 1981 to 2004, they only missed a bowl once.