Is it just me but does anyone else get offended by "the large black population base". A rather racist observation. I'm from Tennessee. Went to college at UT. I happen to be be white.
I don't think he meant it that way. Where there is more than one reasonable interpretation of a comment and one is non-offensive, I presume the non-offensive, it makes life a lot easier.
More to the overall point, it is inarguable that the dynamics of the recruiting bases from which college football teams draw their players changed considerably when the sport was expanded beyond whites only. Integration was a good, good development, however objectively, Tennessee's place in the conference pecking order has changed somewhat since then, a lot of that has to do with demographics . The General did not operate under conditions similar to those in place now.
BEFORE 1972, from 1869-1971, here are the SEC win totals:
Alabama, 480 (10th overall)
Tennessee, 470 (12th overall)
LSU, 428 (23rd overall)
Vanderbilt, 426 (24th overall)
Georgia, 413 (28th overall)
Missouri, 399 (32nd overall)
Ole Miss, 394 (35th overall)
Auburn, 389 (37th overall)
Arkansas, 385 (40th overall)
Kentucky, 382 (42nd overall)
Texas A&M, 379 (45th overall)
Florida, 329 (64th overall)
South Carolina, 316 (69th overall)
Miss State, 307 (73rd overall)
SINCE 1972, which was the first fully integrated season, with all teams being integrated, here are the win totals since that time (from 1972 to 2018):
Alabama, 425 (4th overall)
Georgia, 406 (7th overall)
Florida, 395 (10th overall)
Auburn, 378 (16th overall)
LSU, 369 (17th overall)
Tennessee, 368 (18th overall)
Texas A&M, 362 (19th overall)
Arkansas, 329 (27th overall)
South Carolina, 293 (47th overall)
Missouri, 281 (56th overall)
Ole Miss, 277 (60th overall)
Miss State, 256 (71st overall)
Kentucky, 234 (79th overall)
Vanderbilt, 180 (99th overall)
Look at the ascendance of southern teams in general, and our rivals in particular. UGA moved up 21 spots, as did Auburn, and Florida moved up 54! In the last 6 decades, we have finished in the Top 10 in overall wins once (the 1990's), our other top 10 finishes are in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. The rest of the time we have been in the high teens/twenties. That's baseline for Tennessee in modern times, this decade we are far below our baseline, we are 71st overall in wins, which is historically bad for Tennessee. We got too big for our britches when we fired Fulmer, we were still at our baseline at that time, now we are far below it. Now there are a lot more good teams than there were in yesteryear, first we've got to get back to our baseline, and then wait for a power vacuum (i.e. some of the other teams being down), that's how the 90's happened, that's the road back.