It’s been a year of ending droughts for Tennessee football. The Vols beat the Florida Gators for the first time since 2016, the Alabama Crimson Tide for the first time since 2006 and both for the first time since 2004. They won 10 games for the first time since 2007 and 10 regular season games for the first time since 2003.
Friday’s 31-14 win over the Clemson Tigers in the Orange Bowl only served to further end droughts. UT actually hadn’t beaten Clemson since 1976. Now, to be fair, they have only played once since then, in the Peach Bowl to end that 2003 season.
However, Clemson won that game 27-14, and they have met 19 times in history. Considering the fact that both wear orange and Clemson built its program under Dabo Swinney by taking players from Tennessee, and there is a connection there.
That’s the least of the droughts, though. Tennessee football also won its first Orange Bowl since the end of the 1938 season, the Vols’ first bowl game, first SEC Championship, first national championship and first 11-win season. They beat the Oklahoma Sooners 17-0 in that one to finish the year 11-0.
Since then, they lost 8-0 to the Rice Owls to end the 1946 season, they lost 26-24 to OU to end the 1967 season, and they lost 42-17 to the Nebraska Cornhuskers to end the 1997 season, Peyton Manning’s final game. In 1967, they earned a retroactive split national title, and in 1997, that was the designated title game.
Simply put, Miami hasn’t been a great place for the Vols outside of that 1938 season and a huge win over the Hurricanes in a 2003 upset. Speaking of 2003, the loss to Clemson to end that season cost them 11 wins and a top 10 finish.
Well, by winning the game Friday night, Tennessee football will achieve both of those things for the first time since 2001, when they went 11-2 and finished No. 4 in both polls. A top five finish still could be on the table, but at least they’ll be back to finishing in the top 10.
At the time of that 2001 season, a top 10 finish was a regular occurrence for the Vols. They finished there seven of nine years from 1993 to 2001. An unranked season in 2002, though, began a downward slide that they never seemed to recover from.
Of course, that 2001 season is somewhat infamous for the Vols losing the SEC Championship game to a far inferior LSU Tigers team. That cost them a shot at the national title and propelled the emergence of Nick Saban. It’s a game that truly changed history.
This year did have a loss to an inferior opponent, as UT fell to the South Carolina Gamecocks, and that cost them a shot in the College Football Playoff. However, it’s not on the heels of great success. It’s on the heels of years of failure, and fans still appreciate how the year went.
Going forward under Josh Heupel and Tennessee football have three droughts left to end: beating the Georgia Bulldogs (not done since 2016), winning the SEC East (not done since 2007) and winning the SEC and national championship (not done since 1998). All seem possible.