You are what your record says you are. Tough times on the Hill from '08 to '20. Warning signs were there a couple of years before that. Some would say you can go all the way back to '01 to see it coming. But in 2008, the downward trend turned into a death spiral for UT Football.
The decline of Fulmer; the one-night (season) stand with Kiffin; Dooley and all his Doolishness; four years to figure out that Butch Jones best days were on the small end of the trumpet; and finally...just to put an exclamation point on how far UT Football had fallen, we got Fulmer as the AD, and Jeremy Pruitt as the HC. Like some, I bought the hype of the opening press conference, and the "Come Together" video. Hindsight being 20/20, I can see it now. It was a desperate attempt by the UT Admin to return to its' heyday with Fulmer as the AD, and an Alabama assistant coach in charge of the football team.
Saban is probably still laughing at that one. As he should be.
And then, out of Central Florida...literally the U of Central Florida...comes a new AD. Behind a new Admin. And this guy, go figure, blows out every pane in the Sunsphere by hiring his old football HC. At UT...THE University of Tennessee. Mind you, before Ohio State grabbed the trademark on "THE". And promised us he had hired a winner.
Gotta say, I didn't see that one coming. Nor was I all that impressed with our new HC. Yeah, he had a winning record at UCF, but he followed a HC (anybody heard of Scott Frost?) who had gone 13-0 before taking his dream job at Nebraska. I remember those among us who wanted Frost...at any cost. Hiring Josh Heupel seemed like settling for the uglier of two sisters for the Prom. So here we go again...
Except we didn't. Josh Heupel and his staff, facing serious NCAA sanctions, and with a roster thinner than an Ethiopian on crack, came within half a dozen plays and a dozen Mississippi flops of winning 9 games in his first season. He scared the crap out of every DC he faced, and beat most of them. If the defense hadn't been thin, undermanned, and gassed in the 2nd half of almost every game, the Vols would have won 9 games.
Flip the page. It's 2022. Now, with a solid year of recruiting, development, and conditioning behind them, the 2022 Vols have the opportunity to do better. The schedule is tough. We face both Alabama and UGA. Pitt, Florida, LSU, and UK promise to be tough tests. We're not there yet. But every other team on our schedule besides UGA and Bama is within our reach. Yes, we will need the breaks to break our way, and no, it's not likely that they all will. But if this team reaches its' potential, then this is a 9-3 team. Two years removed from a 3-7 season. And a 20-27 record in the 4 years before CJH arrived on the Hill. He's 8-6 since he got here, and I for one think he is just getting started.
I think AD Danny White is all-in for UT, and I think he hit a home run in hiring Josh Heupel. Time will tell. But for those of us who have been Vol fans for a long time...who remember the Majors days...the Fulmer days...the '98 Natty...the '01 almost...and the slow decline since then...there is finally light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. We've come a long ways in one year, and we have a long ways yet to go. But UT Football is finally ascending. Thank God.
Better days are coming, but let's enjoy the good ones that are not all that far ahead. UT Football is back.
Go Vols.
