I was 14 years old in the year 2004, and I hated the Florida Gators. In those years (late 90s – early 2000s) every time the Vols were beaten by Florida, the Gators went on to compete for championships, while we were left to eat the table scraps.
In ’04, we had 2 exciting new quarterbacks, a revamped receiver room, and a talented defense. Florida and Tennessee were both ranked in the Top 15.
We knew how important that game was.
The game was a battle that went back and forth. Tennessee trailed 28-21 with around 4 minutes remaining in the game when QB Erik Ainge threw what should have been the game tying touchdown pass to Jayson Swain. But James Wilhoit, our reliable sophomore kicker who had never missed a PAT, whiffed on the extra point. The cardinal kicker sin.
28-27 Florida.
It was now on the Gators to run the clock, but Tennessee’s defense stood tall and forced a Florida punt with 55 seconds remaining.
Ainge completed 2 passes: 21 yards and 7 yards, to set up a 50 yard field goal attempt.
All Wilhoit had to do was shake off the missed extra point and step up to attempt the highest pressure kick of his entire life.
I can still hear the call from Verne Lundquist on CBS… “HE NAILED IT! Talk. About. Redemption.”
The sound of the crowd, the chaotic celebration, the flood of feelings.
I remember the ’98 win vs Florida and the National Title win, but at 8 years old, I was a little young to appreciate the significance of it. For me, the ’04 win was the single greatest moment of my Tennessee Volunteers fandom and has remained so…
Until last night.
What Just Happened?
As of October 15, 2022, there is a new Number 1 on my list of “Greatest Football Games I’ve Ever Experienced”. The hype around this year’s iteration of The Third Saturday In October not only met expectations, but emphatically surpassed them.
What more could you ask for in a college football game??
College Game Day and Peyton Manning in town? Check.
Two of the nation’s best quarterbacks going toe-to-toe, trading body blows, and scoring touchdowns at will? Check.
A walk-off field goal for the win? Check.
The greatest college football coach of all time getting out coached by an up-and-comer trying to bring a sleeping giant back to life? Check.
A starving program and fan base trying to exorcise 15 years worth of demons? Check.
100,000 screaming people storming the field, lighting up cigars, ripping down the goal posts and throwing them in a river? Check.
Yesterday I experienced the full range of emotions any one human being can fit into a single day. I stressed. I screamed. I laughed. I cried. I watched the game in a room of Alabama fans. I shook uncontrollably. I had a few shots. I called my family. I melted into oblivion. I watched the college football world flip on it’s head. I blasted Rocky Top in the car on the way home. I sat up until 3am trying to process what I just saw. I think I forgot to eat supper. Maybe that’s why I’m hungry right now. I re-watched the game already, just to make sure it was real. It WAS real. This happened. Yesterday was a blur. A moment frozen in time. An event I’ll never forget. 15 years in the making.
Sheesh.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s talk about some actual football feelings. Here are my top observations:
1. Why Is This Win So Significant?
15 Years.
The Tennessee Volunteers football program has been in the wilderness for 15 years and it’s all coincided with Nick Saban transforming Alabama into the Death Star of college football.
I started watching Tennessee football in 1997. Until 2006, which was Tennessee’s last win against Bama until last night, I had come of age watching Tennessee win 8 out of 10 matchups with the Crimson Tide. Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would ever go winless against Alabama for 15 straight years.
Nick Saban arrived just as the Fulmer era was about to come to a screeching halt. Lane Kiffin got one shot at Saban (incidentally, he came the closest to winning in the whole 15 year run). Dooley never had a chance. Butch Jones got one game fairly close and squandered a good 2016 team but in reality, he never had a chance. Pruitt never had a chance.
No program has taken a worse beating at the hands of this Alabama dynasty than Tennessee, and no program has benefitted from the Vols journey through the wilderness than Alabama.
Would Alabama have enjoyed this same run of sustained excellence if Tennessee had been functioning at it’s previous level of the 90s – early 2000s? Not a chance.
Bama’s worst nightmare is a competent, Top 5 Tennessee program to match up with them on an annual basis. When Alabama is great, Tennessee is held at bay – when Tennessee is great, Alabama is held at bay. This is how the rivalry has always worked.
As lifelong Tennessee fanatics, me and my family have AGONIZED to be back in the same league as Alabama. I remember so clearly when Fulmer was forced out in 2008 that none of us thought it would take long to find a replacement and get right back to where Tennessee football was supposed to be.
And then it took 15 long, excruciating years. In some years, it got dark enough that we almost stopped caring even after investing so much time and emotions in our Vols.
We finally broke through. We finally have the AD, the coaching staff, and the plan to compete with the best, beat the best, and set our sights on championships. This win wasn’t a fluke. This wasn’t Alabama overlooking a weaker team while looking down the road to Auburn or LSU. This was a toe-to-toe victory between two arm wrestling contenders who hate each other.
This is how the Third Saturday in October is SUPPOSED to be and what it’s SUPPOSED to mean. This is what’s been missing for 15 years of the lives of all college football fans.
Now that the hurdle has been cleared, as long as Josh Heupel is around Knoxville, this ancient rivalry is back and it’s here to stay.
2. These Vols Don’t Crumble
Vol fans, raise your hand if you thought this game was over when Chase McGrath missed the extra point that would have tied the game? Basically everyone? Okay. Raise your hands if you were certain that the game was over after the botched handoff to Jabari Small that resulted in a scoop and score for Bama and gave them a 49-42 lead late in the 4th? Literally everyone? Yeah. Let’s talk about that.
The reason we all felt that way is because of our extensive Battered Vol Syndrome (BVS). You see, over the last 15 years of wandering the wilderness, these were the exact type of self-inflicted mistakes that routinely buried our teams in big games.
Would a Dooley, Butch, or Pruitt coached team have gathered themselves and recovered from those mistakes in a game of that magnitude to still get the win? Absolutely not.
The Heupel version of Tennessee is different. Josh Heupel carries himself with the stoic confidence of a quarterback who’s ready to take the field and lead his team on a game-winning drive. Heck, he WAS exactly that during his playing days at Oklahoma. He has instilled a confidence in his entire team at every position that they belong in the upper echelon of college football.
From Hooker to Hyatt believing that they are the best playmakers on the field – to Jeremy Banks and Byron Young’s relentless motors – to Jeremiah Crawford doing this – Heupel has created a team with supreme poise and confidence that no situation or matchup is too big for them.
Hendon Hooker took the final series with a measly 15 seconds remaining and made two perfect throws to give his team a chance. It was casually legendary. Never in doubt. “A day at the office” is what he would call it later in the post game press conference.
They believe that they belong in Atlanta for the SEC Championship. At this point, I have no reason not to believe them.
3. Hooker and Hyatt
What else can you even say about Hendon Hooker at this point? He made a game winning throw look easy against Pitt. He put the Vols on his back against Florida. He dominated LSU in Death Valley. And last night he went punch-for-punch against the reigning Heisman trophy winner and SEC champion Bryce Young. Everything Young could do, Hooker could counter just as well, to the tune of 21/30 for 385 yards and 5 touchdowns.
He did throw his first pick of the season and he did have a crucial fumble that turned into an Alabama TD late in the game – but did it faze him? Hooker shook off the mistakes, stepped up to the plate with 15 seconds remaining and delivered perfectly. Hooker has to be the Heisman frontrunner at the halfway point of the season.
He’s the new sheriff in town, and he has finally taken the mantle from Erik Ainge as the last quarterback to beat Alabama.
And how about Jalin Hyatt????
6 catches, 207 yards, and 5 touchdowns??? Are you kidding me????
That reminds me of a Randy Moss stat-line from like 1999. Hyatt just ran wild against an Alabama defense in a way that I didn’t believe was possible.
Jalin Hyatt told us all off season that he was recommitting to practicing better, preparing better, and finally getting the best version of himself on the field. I’ll admit, I was a little skeptical, but I’m more than happy to be proven wrong. His potential was always there and it’s so gratifying to see all his hard work come together with a performance like that. It was the best individual wide receiver performance that I have ever seen from a Tennessee Volunteer with only one other coming to mind: previously I would have said Kelly Washington’s day against LSU in the 2001 regular season was the best I had ever seen with 11 catches for 256 yards and a TD. You know who coached that LSU team?
Nick Saban.
4. Tip Your Hat To Bryce Young
I believe that Hendon Hooker is the Heisman favorite at this moment in the season and rightfully so. But let’s not get this twisted, Bryce Young is the best player in college football right now. Tennessee could have actually ran away with this win last night, but Bryce Young simply wouldn’t allow it. All night, he put the Tide on his back and carried them to big play after big play.
The Vols pass rush was in his grill most of the game. Young took big hits and was consistently flushed out of the pocket. It didn’t really matter. Nothing Tennessee threw at him could slow him down, rattle him, or throw him off in any way.
My brother and I compared his performance to the feeling we had when the Boston Celtics play the Milwaukee Bucks in the playoffs last NBA season. Bryce Young felt like Giannis Antetokounmpo. It didn’t matter what game plan you had or what you through at him, he felt inevitable. As with Giannis, as long as Bryce had the ball in his hands, it felt like he was going to make the right decision no matter what.
Bryce was 35/52 for 455 yards, 2 touchdowns, zero picks, and despite constant pressure, only sacked once. That’s a MASTERFUL game – perhaps the best of his career.
Vol fans, when you go back to pick at your Alabama friends for the things that they did wrong in this game, remember that Bryce Young did almost everything right. When you play the blame game, point to Nick Saban for allowing Bill O’Brien to call 3 straight bone-headed pass plays that gifted Hendon Hooker 15 glorious seconds.
Speaking of which…
5. This Time, Saban Made The Blunder
I mean, what on earth happened on that final drive?
My heart sank when Bryce Young completed the pass across that red line on CBS that marked the field goal range target. It sank because with less than a minute remaining, I knew that Alabama was about to run 3 handoffs, force our timeouts to be called, run some clock, and take a walk off field goal attempt leaving us with nothing or at minimum, an impossible situation.
Instead, Saban did something that I don’t recommend to anyone.
He relied on Bill O’Brien.
Instead of running clock, gaining a few extra yards to get a closer field goal, and forcing Tennessee’s hand, O’Brien called back-to-back-to-back inexplicable passing plays that stopped the clock 3 straight times. Tennessee defended them perfectly, forced a 50 yard field goal that sailed wide right, and saved 15 whole seconds for Heupel and Hooker.
The rest is history.
We’re Officilly Back. This Time, It’s Real
For all fans of college football, it’s time to reckon with the fact that the Tennessee Volunteers are truly back and it’s actually real. Tennessee has set themselves up for a playoff run. We are 6-0 and as I write this, the new AP Poll has Tennessee at #3. The last time Tennessee was #3? That would be the 2005 pre-season – a year that spiraled out of control and was the very first wobble that would lead to Fulmer’s exit 3 years later, and the beginning of 15 years of dysfunction and disaster.
Josh Huepel and Hendon Hooker needed only 15 seconds to right all of those wrongs. In a weirdly perfect parallel to the 2004 Florida game, Hooker stepped up to the line, took command of the offense and threw two completions to set up the the field goal, just like Erik Ainge. Chase McGrath had to shake off a missed extra point and deliver the game-winning kick with the Volunteer world on his shoulders, just like James Wilhoit. In a moment, everything came full circle.
Tennessee fans deserved this win and this moment. They deserved to announce their return to college football prominence by slaying the Alabama dragon with the entire sports world watching.
The sites, sounds, and pictures that came out of the celebration aftermath was a real time sports exorcism. A slew of former players, including Peyton himself, were in the thick of the crowd, lighting up cigars and taking pictures. This win was just as much for them as for us.
The fans storming the field, ripping apart the goal posts and parading the parts downtown before throwing them in the Tennessee River was a scene reminiscent of the afterparty of the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones more so than a college football celebration. But that’s what this fanbase needed after so many years in the dark.
Enjoy this, Vol fans. Enjoy this and buckle up. Now that the demons have been slayed in Florida and Alabama, the real work begins.
From here on out, the sights are set on championships.
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