Watch: Tennessee football restores iconic V-O-L-S letters at Neyland Stadium

A huge mistake has been rectified. Tennessee football hasn’t won an SEC Championship since removing the V-O-L-S letters from Neyland Stadium at the start of the 1999 season. A new set of V-O-L-S letters went up that year and were jumbled together on top of a new jumbotron.

Renovations to that jumbotron in 2009 removed even those letters, though, and Rocky Top entered its worst decade since the first decade of the 20th century. Well, it seems like Danny White has done what he can to rectify that.

Although the original V-O-L-S letters that first went up in 1966 can’t be restored, the ones that went up in 1999 have been restored. And they have gone up in the fashion that the original letters were up in. Tennessee football released a video of that restoration Tuesday on Twitter.

This restoration is part of an ongoing series of renovations to Neyland Stadium that should bring it more up to date. As we posted last week, the stadium reducing capacity once again is a mistake given the fact that it’s another, and an even bigger, part of the curse, but this partially undoes what has happened.

It made no sense for the Vols to remove the original letters in 1999. That was an iconic part of the stadium, and they had just come on the heels of a national championship. Many changes were made to Neyland in the 1990s in a short span.

Turf was removed from the stadium in 1994, the north end zone expanded in 1996, and the midfield logo changed from the UT symbol to just the Power T in 1998. All of those were new changes to excite the fan base. Removing the V-O-L-S letters did the opposite.

As a result, Tennessee football has righted a wrong. White, ever the visionary, is clearly showing he understands balancing old traditions by introducing new flare into the mix. This did a bit of both things, and it’s a good sign of what the program will be doing going forward.