Question for fans who were alive during the 90's run...

#29
#29
Boone&Crockett said:
I think those of us who lived thru the glory years are the most affected by this slide. We still think we can get back to where we were and Im not so sure it will happen. Its hard to watch a TN football game without getting emotionally invested in it but dang, its not worth the effort anymore.
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I don't think it'll happen at this point.
 
#32
#32
I wish they would replay a random 90s game against the team we are playing that week in place of the live game. Everyone in the country would be shocked that we actually used to beat Alabama and Georgia on a regular basis. Georgia was an automatic win. We won more than we lost with Alabama and the ones we did lose in the early 90s were tight ballgames. We could at the very least expect to beat Florida 3 times within a 10 year period. My how times have changed...
 
#33
#33
VolsSportsFan said:
Not trying to defend it too much but that Wyoming game was the Saturday after the announcement that Fulmer was out.
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It was a culmination of his accumulating failures and the blueprint for what you've seen multiple times under his successors. You cannot discount what led to that game, and it was the full picture of what he had become on display. To talk about the coaching disaster games after that and not include that with it is dismissing history.
 
#34
#34
Yeah, Brave, I find myself reflecting back on the glory days, as well.

And not just in football, but women's basketball too. When Pat Summit was coach, it just seemed pre-destination that the Volunteers were always going to be on top of that world.

Well, we fell. We fell in football, and we fell in ladies' basketball. And there is no guarantee we get to return to the top. In either place.

That was the second epiphany, the second great horror: realization that there's no guarantee we get to return. That ah-hah moment came long after the realization that we'd fallen. All through Kiffen and Dooley and Butch and the first two seasons of Pruitt, even when it became evident that this coach or that coach wasn't working out, there was still the sense that things will eventually be righted, that we will eventually come out of the darkness and return to our rightful place.

And so, a second heartbreak, to realize this might be the end of championship Tennessee football. That we might have lost that forever when the program kicked Fulmer out the door.

I don't know. The optimist in me still believes where there's a will, there's a way. We just have to keep working hard to solve it, and as long as we're willing to put smart people in the right positions to make good decisions, and give them all the resources they need to be competitive, eventually we'll find the winning formula.

Just getting harder to keep the optimist in us all alive.
 
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#35
#35
We wanted Fulmer fired because he couldn't win more than 8 games the last few years. What a reversal.

CJP is very close to a Butch clone at this point. I say give him next year to see if he can right the ship. Next year, anything under 8 wins is grounds for firing.
 
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#37
#37
orangemadam said:
We wanted Fulmer fired because he couldn't win more than 8 games the last few years. What a reversal.

CJP is very close to a Butch clone at this point. I say give him next year to see if he can right the ship. Next year, anything under 8 wins is grounds for firing.
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The biggest concern I have right now is the hit that losses like these have on our recruiting. We absolutely had prospects last year that peeled us off of their radar after we lost to GA State and BYU. Im concerned that after losing to GA and KY and the inevitable curb stomp we are facing against AL, its going to happen again this year.
 
#38
#38
For those that want to bash Fulmer all I ask is that you look back at our history of great coaches and we’ve had some REALLY good ones. We were blessed to have all these coaches from Neyland to Dickie to Battle to Majors to Fulmer. I know he didn’t have as good a record as the others but Wyatt won an SEC championship and is in the HOF also. For 80+ years we almost always had an above average head coach. That’s a pretty impressive run of coaches if you ask me and Fulmer had more success at UT than all those guys except for the legendary Neyland.
 
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#40
#40
VolsSportsFan said:
I was much younger and to put it kindly "less mature", so I remember instead of enjoying the ride I constantly was upset because we never beat Florida. I remember in 1997 instead of being happy we finally won the East, I was mad at the end of the Arkansas game because we messed around and didn't destroy them. I was obviously very happy we won it all in 1998, but I also remember being furious that we didn't win it again in 1999 and how wasted that season was. I remember going 8-4 was like the worst thing ever in 2002. And of course 2005; which at the time was like "this has to be the bottom of the barrel, it CANNOT ever get worse than this!"

I never would have thought in the 1990s that we'd be here today. But at the same time I compare it to my Cubs winning it in 2016. Seeing them do it as an older person let me appreciate it more, and instead of being really upset that they didn't win 2 or 3 more I realize how hard it is to actually win it all and how you can't take it for granted.
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This.
 
#41
#41
1989 all the way through. I would always feel bad for other teams sucking. I’d get upset we couldn’t get over the hurdles of the Nebraska’s and Florida’s. But it was much more enjoyable than this **** show we have now.
 
#44
#44
Boone&Crockett said:
Ive lost most of my enthusiasm honestly but who hasnt, we've been thru too much with seeing Fulmer decline, Kiffins betrayal, Dooleys attempt, Butch's folley and now just when i think we have someone who is legit, this happens, its damn depressing to say the least.
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Tbh, I don't even feel emotion when stupid losses inevitably happen. I'm over it at this point. I have plenty of others things I can do with my Satruday's
 
#45
#45
I was a freshman on the hill in the fall of '94, so was there all through the best years. The whole campus was buzzing around the football team and everything led up to Saturdays. I hate to think what it's like for the students these days, maybe they are apathetic. Perhaps the way I felt about basketball during my time, which meant no feeling at all.
 
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#46
#46
I was alive. I met Peyton Manning in 1996. We actually played catch for awhile outside College Square apartments. I remember winning 9 games felt like a down year. But I don’t think about those times anymore. It’s useless. As the years go by it’s becoming clearer that we likely will never return to that level.

I think the only way we will ever reach the level of the 90’s and 2000’s is if there is a major change in the UT administration. When I say major I mean all the way up to the BOT. But honestly what are the chances those changes will ever take place?

I think from here on out, we are likely a 8-9 win program.
 
#48
#48
I remember the 90s well . We were one of the top 3 programs in the conference . Continually making New years day bowl games. Now we're lucky to leave the State of Tennessee.
 
#49
#49
Brave Volunteer said:
Are any of you like me in that you are reflecting back on that decade now and saying "damn I wish would've realized and appreciated just how fragile this all is"?
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I also appreciated the success but didn't realize how fragile it was.
Brave Volunteer said:
A foregone conclusion. I always thought our program was too big to fail. Boy was I naive! I never appreciated what a rare and fragile flower that time period was and how lucky I was to be alive to experience it.
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I started watching football as a kid in the late 80's & by the onset of my teen years in the early 90's, my fandom was full go 100%.
I seem to recall sports broadcasters using the phrase "They don't rebuild they reload", in reverence to a few teams like FSU & Miami in the early 90's.
By the mid 90's I thought we'd 'arrived', and didn't consider it much past the present tense. By 1999 I was parroting "We don't rebuild we reload" with the blessed ignorance of a naive youth. That didn't age well.
ZZ13 said:
Even as we improved a notch during the mid to late 80s, I never expected a run like the 90s and still consider it the exception, not the norm. I kinda see us as a 7-5 to 9-3 type program with an occasional dud season and occasional 10-11 win season. But we are underachieving to even that modest standard, the past 10 years.
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I've since learned about our history and the cyclical nature of the program.

Discarding Johnny Majors first few years rebuilding(sadly we need to accept Pruitt or replacement X needs that), & I think that's an acceptable standard.

Strong and slight caveat to that being context of 7-5 to 9-3 type seasons. Butch's 9-4 teams didn't meet the caveat. From 85 - 2005 we routinely came out & punched top-10 teams in the mouth. We routinely proved we belonged on the field with any team in the nation, pulling off upsets of ranked teams, even during our down years.

Majors came off a losing season and won the SEC. Fulmer came off a losing season and won the East division

Our standards are actually pretty reasonable. 7-5 to 9-3 with a 10/11 win season of championship contention every few years. We'll even forgive a loseing season as long as we believe the coach is in control of the program and has a roster to compete for championships.

We've just got to break this cycle of halfway rebuilds followed by an even bigger regression.
 
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