No. The difference between Tennessee and Alabama historically is that Alabama has had two great coaches since Wallace Wade...Bear Bryant and Nick Saban. Tennessee hasn't had a great coach since Neyland. Majors and Fulmer were very good and Dickey was on track for greatness, but derailed that track to go to Florida.
A huge swath of our fanbase wants to claim that Tennessee is at a recruiting disadvantage due to lack of instate talent. That's hogwash for a few reasons:
1) Tennessee, while not Georgia, California, or Texas, produces a decent amount of talent. As a state, it's still in the top 10-12 in NFL talent production and the midstate specifically has started producing talent in bunches. It's not like Alabama, Clemson, and Oklahoma, are sitting in the middle of talent-rich states and those are arguably the top 3 programs in America over the last 5 years. Further, all three of those schools have an instate power 5 rival to contend with, which Tennessee does not have (no, Vanderbilt is not a contender for 4* and 5* talent). But those programs are situated NEAR a lot of talent. Which brings me to my next point...
2) Kids don't care about state borders. "Instate" is less important than "proximate." Tennessee is situated near TONS of proximate talent in Georgia, Middle Tennessee, the Carolinas, Virginia, and even can dip into Florida regularly.
3) Tennessee has produced more NFL draft picks than any school in SEC history. So obviously, getting talent has not been an issue. The reason Tennessee is not the winningest school in SEC history, despite having the most NFL talent since the inception of the NFL, is coaching. It's pretty simple...if you have the most talent, but you're not winning the most, your problem isn't your ability to acquire talent...it's your ability to convert talent into wins.
Tennessee, simply put, has the organic advantages to acquire elite talent and win championships. It simply has to hire the right coach.