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Where Tennessee baseball’s 2022 season ranks among all-time Vols choke jobs

By Caleb Calhoun

The Tennessee dugout after their loss to Notre Dame in the NCAA baseball Super Regional championship game in Knoxville, Tenn. on Sunday, June 12, 2022.Kns Ut Baseball Notre Dame
The Tennessee dugout after their loss to Notre Dame in the NCAA baseball Super Regional championship game in Knoxville, Tenn. on Sunday, June 12, 2022.Kns Ut Baseball Notre Dame /
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Tennessee head coach Johnny Majors and offensive coordinator Phillip Fulmer watch the Vols warm up before the Memphis State game Saturday, Nov. 14, 1992Majors And Fulmer 1992
Tennessee head coach Johnny Majors and offensive coordinator Phillip Fulmer watch the Vols warm up before the Memphis State game Saturday, Nov. 14, 1992Majors And Fulmer 1992 /

9. 1992 Tennessee football

This doesn’t come down to one postseason upset the way Tennessee baseball’s 2022 season did, but it involves a series of regular season games in one bad month that changed the trajectory of Tennessee football forever. These games were nothing but squandered opportunities.

Despite expectations of a rebuild entering 1992, the Vols roared off to a 5-0 start. Included in that were two huge upsets at the Georgia Bulldogs and at home against the Florida Gators. This got them into the top five and the driver’s seat of the new SEC East at the time.

It was chaotic as well, as Phillip Fulmer was the interim head coach for the first three games, including the UGA and UF wins, while interim head coach Johnny Majors recovered from open heart surgery. They kept winning with Majors back, but then mid-October hit.

The Vols lost three straight games. Two of them were by a point to the two SEC newcomers, the Arkansas Razorbacks and South Carolina Gamecocks, both of whom would finish the regular season with losing records. Those were bad losses, and they make this a choke job. The loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide in between them would’ve been forgivable if not for those two.

Anyway, not only did the losses cost what should’ve been an easy SEC East title, but they cost Majors his job after 16 years. Fulmer took over full-time the next year. UT had a similar scenario in 2016 when they started 5-0 and beat Florida and Georgia before losing three straight, but this ’92 team was better and had worse losses.

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