National Championship; SEC Championship; No. 2 AP; W Orange Bowl
Probably the greatest season in Tennessee football history, this was part of the Golden Age of the Vols. Robert Neyland returned for his second stint in 1936 and finished in the top 20, the first year the AP Poll existed. The next year, though, he just missed it.
Entering 1938, the Vols were led by Bowden Wyatt, whose teams as a head coach have been named on this list already, and George Cafefgo. It’s safe to say they flat-out dominated everybody. UT started off beating the Sewanee Tigers 26-3 and the Clemson Tigers 20-7. After that, only one team would score on them all year, the LSU Tigers, who they beat 14-6.
Every non-Tiger team was shutout by the Vols. They went 10-0 in the regular season, the highlights being that win over Clemson and a win over Alabama. In the process, they captured their first SEC Championship in school history, and despite being No. 2 in the AP Poll, enough services declared them No. 1, over the TCU Horned Frogs, they they could claim a national title.
In addition to all of that, the Vols received their first invite ever to a bowl game, the Orange Bowl, and they face the No. 4 ranked Oklahoma Sooners, who were also 10-0. UT dominated 17-0 in what was the final game of the 1938 college football season to finish 11-0.
This was just the third perfect season in Tennessee football history, and 1998 remains the only other one. The 1938 team, though, began a streak of three straight perfect regular seasons for the Vols and was part of a 23-game winning streak dating back to 1937 along with a 15-game streak going into 1939 of shutting out opponents.