Probably 1963. Bowden Wyatt had gone 12-16-3 in the SEC the prior 4 years. He was an alcoholic who was kicked up to AD for 1963. His mentor, Gen Neyland, had died. Jim McDonald was coach for one season. Thank God Robert Woodruff returned to UT as AD and hired an umknown assistant coach from Arkansas... Doug Dickey.Do you recall the Vol football team to ever be any worse predicament than it is currently?
That is exactly the time I thought of, as our worst period in my memory -- I started following Vols about 65 or 66.The late Battle years were my thought, too. Those were like thinking we'd reached the bottom of the hole and realizing it was still a lot deeper. Battle was a good guy, became a very good Bama AD, but he just couldn't coach ... or recruit.
I am an alum from the 70's and I second Pride85's post above. There have been several times the FB program has hit stretches of bad to mediocre FB. This is by no means the worst, yet. I don't think the fire Pruitt crowd is accepting how bad the program Pruitt inherited was. Of course the total collapse of JG was unexpected and has just added to Pruitt's rebuild process. I truly believe better days are ahead.