Tennessee football’s new season-ticket sales record isn’t that impressive

On paper, it would seem like momentum is through the roof for Tennessee football entering Josh Heupel’s second season.. According to a recent report from UTSports, the Vols surpassed their goal of 56,000 season-ticket sales, reaching a mark of 58,871. What really stands out, though, is new season-ticket sales.

Rocky Top had a goal of 10,000 new season-ticket sales. They nearly doubled that, with 16,781 new sales. The previous record since they have been tracking was back in 2015, when they had 7,502 new season-ticket sales. Sure, that’s a good sign for UT. It’s all relative, though, and a deeper dive shows it isn’t that impressive.

The main reason for the shattering of that record really comes down to how much room they had to jump. Issues related to the program’s downward slide at the end of Butch Jones’ tenure, COVID, the disaster Jermey Pruitt left the program in and the initially underwhelming hire of Heupel tanked season-ticket sales.

According to numbers provided by Grant Ramey of GoVols247, the Vols actually sold significantly more season tickets in 2015, over 67,000 to be exact. That number increased to 73,116 the next year, but an underachieving season followed by the worst year in school history under Butch Jones began a slide through 2021.

From 2019 to 2021, Tennessee football had a drop of 10,000 total season-ticket sales. Taking all of this into account. Season-ticket sales in 2021 were more than 20,000 below what was sold in 2016, meaning there was only room to grow.

Of course, fear of COVID still impacts season-ticket sales, and to be fair, that’s a bit of a factor entering 2022. Still, it’s much easier to have new season-ticket sales when you have such a drop-off from previous years. Are we sure some of these “new” sales aren’t just people who had season tickets in the past but gave them up?

If you look at the state of the program, there’s a similarity for Tennessee football entering 2022 to what there was entering 2015. In both cases, the Vols were coming off their first winning season under their current head coach at the time and had top 25 aspirations entering the next year.

Now, 2020 also fit that mold, but the issues related to COVID were obviously going to limit season-ticket sales. Lane Kiffin never had second season, and Derek Dooley never had a winning season. As a result, 2015 and 2022 are the only years that could fit such a criteria since Phillip Fulmer was fired.

None of this is to say that Danny White and the program don’t deserve credit for the increase. Even if they are bringing people back, the focus has been about restoring the Vols anyway, and White’s “Rise Glorious” campaign, initially reported by Patrick Brown of GoVols247, sets a goal of 70,000 season tickets again by 2026.

Given all the updates he’s made to Neyland Stadium, the record amount of funding from boosters and the obvious potential of the program itself, there’s no reason to believe that isn’t possible. However, Tennessee football setting this new season-ticket sales record in a vacuum is something that should have happened.