In the 2018-19 men’s basketball season, the NCAA started leaning on something called NET rankings when comparing team resumes come tournament time. But what are NET rankings, and how do they work?
The N.E.T., or “NCAA Evaluation Tool” Ranking, is a system used by the NCAA to rank men’s college basketball teams, both during the season and when it comes time to select and seed tournament teams. In 2018, it replaced the RPI, which had been around since 1981 but had become increasingly disfavored over time.
According to the NCAA general description of the system, the NET evaluates a team based on “game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses.”
Okay, fine. We’re going to look at stuff that matters when trying to figure out how good a team is. Good start.
A more detailed explanation identifies five main factors in the NET Ranking: Team Value Index, Net Efficiency, Winning Percentage, Adjusted Win Percentage, and Scoring Margin.
Team Value Index
The Team Value Index component of the NET is a results-oriented algorithm designed to reward teams for beating other good teams. The man remains mysterious behind the curtain, but the NCAA has said that this component includes factors such as who won (duh), the opponent (okay, good), and the location (um, okay.) I’d love to see more detail on what’s happening inside the machine here, but I doubt they’re going to make the process that transparent.
Net Efficiency
The second component is Net Efficiency, which is defined as Offensive Efficiency minus Defensive Efficiency.
Offensive Efficiency is calculated as total points divided by Total Number of Possessions. Total Number of Possessions equals field goal attempts minus offensive rebounds plus turnovers plus .475 of free throw attempts. I’m not sure whether to agree or disagree on the number-of-possessions calculation, but I’ll defer to the nerds here.
Defensive Efficiency is a similar calculation: Opponent’s total points divided by Opponent’s Total Number of Possessions. Opponent’s Total Number of Possessions is opponent’s field goal attempts minus opponent’s offensive rebounds plus opponent’s turnovers plus .475 of opponent’s free throw attempts. Whew, that’s a lot of math with words.
Winning Percentage
Winning Percentage is a simple calculation of wins divided by total games played. Thank you.
Adjusted Win Percentage
Adjusted Win Percentage appears to juice the Winning Percentage based on where wins and losses occurred. Winning on the road is the most valuable (+1.4), while losing at home is the most costly (-1.4). Home wins and road losses count as +.6 and -.6 respectively, presumably based on the notion that you don’t deserve a reward for doing what you’re expected to do. Neutral-site games are logged at face value.
Scoring Margin
Scoring Margin is, as you’d expect, simply the difference between a team’s score and its opponent’s score. However, the point differential is capped at 10 points, and all overtime games are capped at 1 point.
I like that scoring margin is considered, and I like a cap, but I’d like to see some more data to determine whether 10 points is the best threshold for that to kick in. A one-point cap for overtime makes sense.
Pardon the heading; I just wanted to make sure you were still reading. The NET isn’t actually a TOOL, but it is merely a tool, meaning it’s not the final word in NCAA Tournament teams or anything. It’s just one component of the selection process. The at-large teams will still be chosen by the selection committee, and the committee will still use a combination of analytics and human subjectivity to select and seed those teams. They’ll still use the team sheets, and the team sheets will still rely heavily on the quadrant system utilized for the first time last year. The primary difference is that the game results are now sorted into the quadrants based on NET ranking instead of RPI.
I wonder what percentage of pitiful people in the United States have never heard of “filling out a bracket” for the NCAA Tournament. In a country with a population of over 325 million, some 70 million brackets were completed last year, according to ESPN. That number probably includes multiple brackets by a single person, but whatever your level of expertise at nitpicking, that’s a lot of people filling out a lot of brackets. And there’s some significant number in addition to that of people who know about filling out a bracket but have never actually done it. Poor them.
The NCAA Tournament bracket is a big deal, is what I’m trying to say. It’s such a big deal that people start talking about it long, long before the official bracket — complete with the teams and their seedings — is announced on Selection Sunday. There are numerous sites that engage in what is now known as “bracketology,” the process of guessing beforehand what the official bracket is going to look like heading into the tournament. Currently, the bracketmatrix.com tracks 91 such sites, and there are probably more out there lurking beyond even the time and resources of the good folks behind the bracket matrix.
We fans are interested because it matters. We want to know the chances of our team going to the Big Dance, and fans of teams that are a lock to get in want to know their likely seeding. Because seeding in the NCAA Tournament matters. A lot.
But how do the bracketologists do it? What goes into anticipating what the bracket is going to look like on Selection Sunday? Is there a process involved or is it all just pure guesswork?
Well, it turns out that it’s part process and part educated guess. At the bottom of this post, there’s a step-by-step guide for cooking up your own bracketology, but first, a little explanation is in order.
The general process of bracketology
At its most basic, bracketology consists of first identifying the teams likely to participate and then seeding those teams among four pre-determined regions or venues.
Selecting the participants is done by allowing some teams to earn their way in by getting hot and winning their conference tournaments and allowing other teams to earn invitations by being consistently good throughout the season even if they were upset in a single game late in their conference tournament.
Seeding is presumably a quest for both fairness and drama, giving some teams advantages they’ve earned by being good but also allowing lower-ranked teams every opportunity to upset a higher-seeded team.
That leaves 36 spots for “at-large” teams, those that are invited by the NCAA Selection Committee according to some agreed-upon ranking system. The committee used to rely on the RPI, but the RPI is now RIP, and now the Committee uses the NET rankings.
This selection process ensures that the field consists of a mixture of teams: (1) those earning it over the course of a season, (2) power conference champions getting an opportunity to redeem an otherwise non-qualifying season by getting hot late and winning their conference tournament, and (3) mid-major teams that might not otherwise get in despite winning their conference tournaments just because they’re not in a power conference.
All the favorites get in, and the field leaves enough room for some Cinderella to become the belle of the ball.
Seeding
Once the 68 teams are chosen, the NCAA Selection Committee
then determines the seeding of the participants. The bracket is divided into
four regions, with each having 16 slots for teams.
First, the committee develops an “S-curve,” which is a ranking of all of the teams participating. Then, the committee seeds according to the S-curve and certain guiding principles.
The general rule of seeding
The top four teams on the S-curve are distributed among the
four regions, each getting a No. 1 seed in its respective region. The regions
themselves are “seeded” as well, meaning that they are organized so that if all
of the No. 1 seeds made the Final Four, the best would play the worst and No. 2
would play No. 3.
After the No. 1 seeds are placed, the next four teams on the
S-curve are distributed among the four regions, each getting a No. 2 seed. The
process continues until all teams are placed into regions and seeded within
them.
Guiding principles that override blind S-curve seeding
The Committee doesn’t assign the teams their seeds blindly according to the S-curve. Several principles can come into play to override that process.
Geography matters. Teams higher on the S-curve will generally get the most favorable region, geographically speaking. They can’t play on their home courts, though, until the Final Four, unless they are the University of Dayton. So, geography can impact your seed.
Unfamiliarity matters. Where and when possible, the Committee will generally attempt to avoid intra-conference matchups and other rematches from the regular season or the prior season’s tournament games, especially early in the Tournament. This generally means that teams from the same conference or that have recently competed against each other shouldn’t meet the first weekend of the tournament if it can be avoided.
The First Four. Four slots are reserved for teams winning the “First Four” games, and the rankings of these play-in teams can also throw a wrench into a purely mechanical seeding generated by the S-curve. The First Four games involve the four lowest-ranked at-large teams and the four lowest-ranked automatic bid teams. The winners of the games between the automatic bid teams are generally slotted in as No. 16 seeds, but the winners of games between the at-large teams are generally slotted in as No. 11 seeds, although they could also be lower.
Don’t get crazy. The Committee will attempt to comply with all of these principles by adjusting a team’s region or seeding, but they generally don’t want to change a team’s S-curve seed by more than one in either direction.
Homebrew bracketology
So, if you ever want to do your own bracketology, here’s
how:
Select the teams
Choose 32 teams by predicting the 32 conference tournament champions
Choose 36 others, according to highest NET ranking
Develop the S-curve for the 68 participants (i.e., rank them according to NET rankings)
Seed the teams accordingto the S-curve ranking, adjusting one seed up or down as needed to comply with the following principles
Give higher-rated teams on the S-curve a geographical advantage if possible
Don’t match up conference mates or teams that have played recently in the first round if possible
Assign automatic bid play-in winners 16-seeds
Don’t put at-large play-in winners above the 11-seed line
If you’re a regular here, you know that we often post a Four Factors Gameplan in advance of men’s basketball games. But why?
If you’re not familiar with the “four factors,” it’s essentially an analytical framework that boils the game of basketball down to four key categories:
Shooting
Turnovers
Offensive Rebounding
Getting to the foul line
Of these, shooting matters the most by far and is defined as a formula that results in a number known as effective field goal percentage. The remaining categories are in order of importance, but are only marginally more important than the one below them and are all much less important than shooting. That’s quite a dramatic oversimplification, so if you want the full explanation, check out the Dean Oliver four factors page. Even KenPom uses these four factors.
What’s in a Four Factors Gameplan?
A Four Factors Gameplan starts with a baseline of how each team is currently doing in the regular stats that relate most closely to the four-factors. These are field goal shooting percentage, three-point shooting percentage, turnovers per game, offensive rebounds per game, and free throw attempts per game. We also add in defensive rebounds per game for flavor and defensive shooting percentages when available and when we’ve had enough coffee.
After that, we’ll look at each of the four factors by ranking all of Tennessee’s prior opponents in each category and then adding the next opponent to see which prior opponent they are most like in that category. We add the Vols just to see how they compare to the upcoming opponent.
After that, we’ll compare Tennessee’s offensive four-factors numbers to the opponent’s defensive four-factors numbers in an attempt to determine whether any facet of the game might be more important than usual. From that, we’ll develop a one-paragraph summary of what to watch for and our own gameplan.
Often one or both of the teams will do something completely out of character and none of it will matter, but more often it turns out to be a fairly accurate forecast of how things end up playing out.
Is your favorite men’s college basketball team in contention for a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament? Are you guarding your sanity by telling yourself that it really doesn’t matter if your team gets a 1-seed or a 2-seed? Well, go ahead and fret, friend, because it does matter.
Before we get into why the difference matters, I have to first speak some truth into your life with love: If you’re relying on the AP and Coaches Polls to determine where your team is going to be seeded come Tournament time, you’re doing it wrong. The media and coaches polls matter as much to college basketball as the points in Whose Line is it Anyway. Not only do they have zero impact on the crowning of the national champion, they’re not even considered by the all-important folks sending out the save-the-dates come March.
Nope. The only thing that matters in college basketball is getting into the Big Dance and getting a cushy spot in the bracket. And that’s not determined by the polls, but by the Selection Committee and the NET Rankings.
Do 1-seeds do any better in the Tournament than 2-seeds?
So how important is it for fans to root for a No. 1 seed?
Pretty important, as it turns out. Here’s a look at the seeds of the winners, the runners-up, and other Final Four participants since the Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985:
Year
Winner
Runner-Up
FF Semi
FF Semi
2019
Virginia
1
Texas Tech
3
Michigan St.
2
Auburn
5
2018
Villanova
1
Michigan
3
Kansas
1
Loyola-Chicago
11
2017
North Carolina
1
Gonzaga
1
South Carolina
7
Oregon
3
2016
Villanova
2
North Carolina
1
Oklahoma
2
Syracuse
10
2015
Duke
1
Wisconsin
1
Kentucky
1
Michigan State
7
2014
Connecticut
7
Kentucky
8
Florida
1
Wisconsin
2
2013
Louisville
1
Michigan
4
Syracuse
4
Wichita State
9
2012
Kentucky
1
Kansas
2
Ohio State
2
Louisville
4
2011
Connecticut
3
Butler
8
Kentucky
4
VCU
11
2010
Duke
1
Butler
5
West Virginia
2
Michigan State
5
2009
North Carolina
1
Michigan State
2
Connecticut
1
Villanova
3
2008
Kansas
1
Memphis
1
North Carolina
1
UCLA
1
2007
Florida
1
Ohio State
1
UCLA
2
Georgetown
2
2006
Florida
3
UCLA
1
LSU
4
George Mason
11
2005
North Carolina
1
Illinois
1
Louisville
4
Michigan State
5
2004
Connecticut
2
Georgia Tech
3
Oklahoma State
2
Duke
1
2003
Syracuse
3
Kansas
2
Texas
1
Marquette
3
2002
Maryland
1
Indiana
5
Kansas
1
Oklahoma
2
2001
Duke
1
Arizona
2
Maryland
3
Michigan State
1
2000
Michigan State
1
Florida
5
North Carolina
8
Wisconsin
8
1999
Connecticut
1
Duke
1
Michigan State
1
Ohio State
4
1998
Kentucky
2
Utah
3
North Carolina
1
Stanford
3
1997
Arizona
4
Kentucky
1
North Carolina
1
Minnesota
1
1996
Kentucky
1
Syracuse
4
Massachusetts
1
Mississippi State
5
1995
UCLA
1
Arkansas
2
Oklahoma State
4
North Carolina
2
1994
Arkansas
1
Duke
2
Florida
3
Arizona
2
1993
North Carolina
1
Michigan
1
Kansas
2
Kentucky
1
1992
Duke
1
Michigan
6
Indiana
2
Cincinnati
4
1991
Duke
2
Kansas
3
North Carolina
1
UNLV
1
1990
UNLV
1
Duke
3
Arkansas
4
Georgia Tech
4
1989
Michigan
3
Seton Hall
3
Duke
2
Illinois
1
1988
Kansas
6
Oklahoma
1
Duke
2
Arizona
1
1987
Indiana
1
Syracuse
2
Providence
6
UNLV
1
1986
Louisville
2
Duke
1
Kansas
1
LSU
11
1985
Villanova
8
Georgetown
1
St John's
1
Memphis State
2
And here’s how all of that data breaks down into categories:
Winners
Runners-Up
Final Four Semis
1 seeds
22
63%
13
37%
23
33%
2 seeds
5
14%
7
20%
16
23%
3 seeds
4
11%
7
20%
6
9%
4 seeds
1
3%
2
6%
10
14%
5+ seeds
3
9%
6
17%
15
21%
Total
35
35
70
Whoa. A full 63% of the winners were No. 1 seeds, and there’s a huge drop off for 2-seeds, who won the whole enchilada only 14% of the time. The advantage of seeding for the rest of the Final Four field isn’t quite as pronounced, but it’s there, and it’s significant.
Sure, every once in a while some 11-seed will crash the party with a scrappy nun in tow and scare the pants off everybody, but usually, the final weekend features the No Surprises All-Star team. And more often than not, the team cutting down the net in April is one that was sitting pretty on the top line on Selection Sunday.
The question we asked in our last post was, if the landscape of college’s football’s future changes due to the pandemic, how many new setups would be better than the SEC going its own way and just playing a 13-game round robin every year? That scenario assumes full-on isolationism emerges from all this. But what if instead we see something embracing a little more free trade among the biggest powers that be?
When trying to figure out which athletic departments are best equipped to handle this sort of thing and which programs are most likely to be least affected, the simplest solution is to follow the money. The Wall Street Journal lists the top 115 college football programs by overall value (using 2018 data). This, as much as anything, shows us the difference between the haves and the have nots. And that difference is significantly bigger than Power Five and mid-major:
$500+ million: Tennessee (just outside the next group at $727 million), Florida, Texas A&M, Penn State
The blue bloods of college football net worth. The six traditional SEC powers plus newcomer Texas A&M, the three traditional Big Ten powers, Texas and Oklahoma, and Notre Dame. This group unquestionably wields the most power in college football.
$250+ million: Wisconsin, Nebraska, Arkansas, South Carolina, Iowa, Washington, Michigan State, Oregon, Ole Miss, USC, UCLA, Arizona State, Clemson, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Kentucky, Minnesota
The next tier includes 19 programs and the first appearance of the ACC and Pac-12. 2018 data would be before the launch of the ACC Network last fall, which may help close some of this gap in the short-term, but less so in the long compared to the SEC’s upcoming deal with ESPN.
This group of 32 programs (a nice, round playoff-ish/NFL number!) worth more than $250 million looks like this
11 of 14 SEC programs
8 of 14 Big Ten programs
4 of 10 Big 12 programs, with wide disparity between Texas/OU and Kansas State/Oklahoma State
5 of 12 Pac 12 programs
3 of 14 ACC programs
Notre Dame
As you can see, the gap between the haves and the have nots is significant in the ACC (in football), and the Big 12, where the difference between Texas and everyone else already threatened to break up the conference once.
That’s 27 more teams, all from Power Five representation. BYU is the next team on the list, 60th overall, at $93 million. At this point it’s easier to talk about the Power Five schools that aren’t valued at more than $100 million:
ACC: Boston College, Wake Forest, Duke
Big Ten: Rutgers
Big 12: West Virginia (surprisingly, the least valuable Power Five team at $61 million)
Pac 12: none
SEC: Vanderbilt ($81 million)
If you’re looking for outside candidates to get in the mix, here’s the list of most valuable mid-majors that aren’t Notre Dame:
BYU $93 million
Boise State $78 million
Central Florida $68 million
South Florida $58 million
If the Power Five and Notre Dame broke away, that’s 65 schools. Would there be any real incentive for the Pac-12 to add BYU and Boise State? If you value television markets, maybe the Big 12 looks to BYU or Central Florida, but there doesn’t seem to be a huge natural fit there. On paper, the Power Five expanding any further seems less likely.
But if power was truly consolidated at the tippy-top?
If mid-major and FCS games no longer existed and the SEC didn’t want to just play a round-robin, they could poach Clemson and Virginia Tech. Or they could apologize to Missouri and Vanderbilt and add Clemson, Virginia Tech, Florida State, and Miami.
So here’s the kind of fantasy booking that becomes percentage points more possible in a pandemic:
SEC East: Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Kentucky, Miami, South Carolina, Virginia Tech
SEC West: Existing SEC West plus Tennessee
New Conference East: Notre Dame plus the seven most valuable Big Ten schools (Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin)
New Conference West: Five most valuable Pac 12 schools (Arizona State, Oregon, UCLA, USC, Washington) plus Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas
(Apologies to Kansas State and Minnesota, who were bumped from this exercise in favor of league balance for Mississippi State and Miami.)
Play your seven division opponents, plus half the teams from the other division. This means even though we’ve moved Tennessee to the SEC West, they’ll still play Florida, Georgia, etc. every other year. A 12th game could feature a pre-assigned foe from the other conference (as in, third place team from the SEC West last year plays the third place team from New Conference West last year).
Is this better than what we have? If you want the most number of compelling Saturdays, yes. Is a model where only the most powerful programs have a seat at the table the very best thing for college football? Probably not: it’s also compelling to see if a mid-major can take down a Power Five school once a year or so, and over time the lesser-thans in this group would become mid-major equivalents.
No one is sure what kind of system we’ll end up with on the other side of all this. I’m grateful to be able to do this exercise in fun, because Tennessee is one of the most valuable programs in the nation. But what’s best for football needs to include what’s best for the version of me that grew up a Kansas State fan, or a Southern Miss fan (#101 in value). And to get to that kind of setup – to get to a future where college football can ultimately become more fruitful and not less – college football needs better leadership, now and into the future.
Two weeks before my son was born in 2017, we were going through a box of old photos at my parents’ house and came across a letter. I shared this story on Twitter at the time, and it was the first thing I thought of today.
I was born in 1981, too early for the joy of Tennessee’s 1985 season. My parents took me to my first game the following year; now as a parent myself I know exactly why they picked the Army game, with all that smooth cupcake texture…except we lost, 25-21. They took me to a few others that year and in 1987, including a trip to the Peach Bowl at the end of the season.
And then the following year, my dad and I both decided I would give up a floundering AYSO career on Saturdays and go to all the games.
If you’ve had small children in the last, I don’t know, ten years? There’s that question in the back of your mind: “Will we be good enough in time for my son or daughter to fall in love with them?”
In 1988, the week after a particularly difficult loss to Alabama made it six straight to open the season, my grandparents sent Johnny Majors a card. I recall it having something to do with Keep On The Sunny Side and their seven-year-old grandson.
I’m sure they expected nothing in return, especially that week. Instead, they got this:
Tennessee, as I know you’ll recall, did alright from there. And not too bad for the next 13 years either.
Coach Majors only got the next four of them. He won back-to-back SEC titles in 1989 and 1990, and gave us one of the greatest wins in program history in South Bend in 1991.
I was 11 in 1992; too young to fully understand everything that happened with Majors and Fulmer. Having written on the Vols for the last 15 years, most of which have been the kind when you do wonder if your children will care, there’s a part of me that looks back at all that and says, wait, we moved on from Majors after all the good of 89-91 because he lost to Arkansas by one, national champion Alabama by seven, and South Carolina by one?
And we did. And it worked, though that’s not at all the right word really. We love Phillip, we love Johnny, etc.
But now, nearly 30 years removed from all that, both Majors and Fulmer are examples of how none of us are ever fully defined by our highest or lowest moments.
My generation was sensationally blessed to grow up with those teams from 1989-2001. But I started going when the Vols started 0-6. It wasn’t the winning; it never is, not really. You live long enough, your teams will win and lose.
Johnny Majors played on Tennessee teams that went 4-6 in 1954 and 10-1, SEC Champions in 1956. There are some around here old enough to argue he’s the only one to get a worse deal from the Downtown Athletic Club than Peyton Manning. He won a national championship at Pittsburgh in 1976, left for the alma mater, and went 4-7 his first year at Tennessee. His first eight teams finished the season unranked. Five of his last seven finished in the Top 15. Like Fulmer, he gave his all for Tennessee, and we asked him to leave. Like Fulmer, he never really left, even if he wanted to.
The longer I’m alive and the longer I sit at these keyboards, the more I’m grateful for the stuff beyond the box score that makes Tennessee what it is. For me, it was a letter and a t-shirt when we were 0-6 in 1988.
Johnny Majors is as Tennessee as anyone, ever. And he sure helped a lot of us fall in love with the Vols too.
If 2014 South Carolina is the decade’s most rewatchable game, 2011 Cincinnati remains one of its most rewatchable offensive performances. Tyler Bray went for 400+ yards, Da’Rick Rogers and Justin Hunter each had 10 catches for 100+ yards, and all three were playing just the second game of their sophomore seasons. It’s worth repeating: other than everything from the first half of 2016, no performance of the 2010’s made you feel like we were closer to being back than walking out of that Cincinnati game.
It made Justin Hunter’s ACL tear on the opening drive at Florida that much harder. Then Bray broke his thumb at the end of an eight-point loss to Georgia. Then the Vols faced #1 LSU, #2 Alabama, #9 South Carolina, and #8 Arkansas four of the next five weeks.
That part went about how you’d think; in hindsight it’s interesting to note the difference between Derek Dooley’s injury-plagued second team getting blown out by Top 10 teams and Butch’s last/Pruitt’s first teams getting blown out by Missouri and Vanderbilt. But in the moment in 2011, it felt like rock bottom from a competitiveness standpoint.
The building frustration led to Thumbwatch 2011; there was a great clip I can’t find anymore where Dooley, clearly tired of being asked about Bray’s health multiple times a week, just exclaimed, “He’s got a broken thumb!” When I get asked the same question too many times, that quote still plays in my head.
But Bray got the green light to return against Vanderbilt. This was James Franklin’s first season in Nashville, and after getting blown out by #12 South Carolina and #2 Alabama, Vandy only lost to Georgia by five, Arkansas by three, and Florida by five. Bowl eligibility was on the table for both teams.
2011 Vanderbilt is one of those games that wouldn’t matter much if Tennessee was “back”, but was really good in its moment, then lost so much of its meaning because of what we’re actually here to talk about today. The Vols went up 7-0 early, Vandy missed a field goal, then Bray threw an interception on the very next play. But he connected with Rogers on a beautiful third down touchdown pass to put Tennessee back in front 14-7.
We’re going along nicely from there, still up 14-7 with 3rd-and-goal with five minutes left in the third quarter. But Bray was pick-sixed, changing the complexion of the entire game. Vanderbilt took the lead three minutes into the fourth quarter. Tennessee made an epic 13-play drive to tie it again, capped by a fourth-and-goal touchdown from Bray to Rogers on a one-handed grab. And Prentiss Wagner ended Vanderbilt’s threat in regulation with an interception at the 35 yard line.
So now, the Vols are 5-6. More importantly, you can still believe the things you wanted to believe after the Cincinnati game: with a healthy Bray and Justin Hunter set to return next fall, this team could be all the things you wanted them to be. Maybe we’d even get a shot at redemption in the Music City Bowl as a nice consolation prize. Things were looking up: injuries took it from us in 2011, but we could really be back in 2012.
#6: All we have to do is beat Kentucky
Tennessee had beaten Kentucky 26 years in a row, at the time the longest-active streak in the nation among annual rivals, and the longest in the history of the SEC (since broken by Florida vs Kentucky at 31 years until 2018). Unlike Vanderbilt, which played in zero bowl games during Tennessee’s 22-year win streak from 1983-2004, Kentucky made the postseason eight times during those 26 years of losing to Tennessee, including the last five seasons in a row.
But they would not be going bowling in 2011. A 2-0 start and a close loss to Louisville were followed by blowouts. Florida won by 38, LSU by 28, South Carolina by 51. In November they did beat Houston Nutt’s final Ole Miss squad, then lost to Vanderbilt by 30. The week before playing the Vols they were feisty in Athens, losing to Georgia 19-10.
That loss knocked them to 4-7 and broke the bowl streak. Rich Brooks revitalized the Cats, who hadn’t made a bowl game since a two-year run with Tim Couch in 1998 and 1999. But Brooks led them to four straight seven-or-eight win seasons from 2006-09, including the memorable 2007 group who beat #9 Louisville and #1 LSU before falling to the Vols in four overtimes.
The rise under Brooks (and subsequent 6-6 campaign in Joker Phillips’ first year) made the Tennessee series closer, but didn’t change the outcomes. In those 26 years, only eight Tennessee-Kentucky games were decided by a single possession, and three of those came in 2006, 2007, and 2009. The Vols made memorable comebacks against Kentucky in 1995 and 2001. In between, including all the games against Tim Couch, the Vols won 56-10, 59-31, 59-21, 56-21, and 59-20. It’s like we were trying to make them so similar.
Sometimes I find that we talk about the current state of the Florida series the way Kentucky talks about us: either “surprise” blowouts, or an unbelievable sequence of events we can sum up in just a few words. Alex Brown. Gaffney. Clausen in the rain. 4th-and-14. The hail mary.
For us, they are particularly cruel and unusual mistakes. For Florida, it’s simply “finding a way to win.” For Kentucky against the Vols in the 2010’s, there’s a 21-0 lead with Jared Lorenzen, still tied for the third-biggest comeback in Tennessee history. A nine-point lead in Knoxville with 12 minutes to play in 2004, swiftly undone by (checks notes) Rick Clausen. There are any number of moments in the 2007 game, from the one yard line on the last play of regulation to just making a 34-yard field goal in double overtime. No Tennessee win has been of greater consequence in the last 13 years.
Even after the events of 2011 and 2017, when the Vols were somehow +4 in turnovers and completed a hail mary on the last play of the game but still lost, I’d imagine this mindset still creeps in for Kentucky fans. The 2017 game was almost a relief for us, the final nail for Butch Jones. But the last two years haven’t produced the results Kentucky fans had in mind against Jeremy Pruitt: blown out in 2018 with their best team since the 1970’s, turned away at the goal line in Lexington last fall. Kentucky still hasn’t won in Knoxville since 1984.
All that to say this: in 2011, you fully expected to beat Kentucky. But you especially expected to beat Kentucky on the heels of that win over Vanderbilt, when Kentucky is playing a wide receiver at quarterback.
Stats of interest from the box score:
Matt Roark: 4-of-6, 15 yards
Total Yards: Tennessee 276, Kentucky 215
Penalties: Tennessee 5-for-32, Kentucky 11-for-85
And yet.
Kentucky “drove” 62 yards in 15 plays to kick a field goal on their opening drive. Early in the second quarter, they blocked a field goal. On Tennessee’s next drive, the Vols had 4th-and-4 at the UK 31, went for it, and failed to convert. So the Cats led 3-0 at the break, but after that first drive had four punts on three three-and-outs. They opened the second half with another one, Bray was intercepted at his own 34-yard line, then Kentucky went four-and-out. The Vols punted. Three-and-out again.
When we say the Vols got beat by a wide receiver playing quarterback, it’s really the insult after the injury. Roark did his job in not turning the ball over. He did almost nothing else. But on 2nd-and-goal with six minutes left in the third quarter, and the Vols finally ready to quit screwing around…they fumbled. And Kentucky made one drive, including a 26-yard Roark scramble on 3rd-and-12, that found the end zone. The Cats led 10-0 with 14 minutes to play.
I still wasn’t worried. It’s Kentucky. And three plays later, Bray and Rajion Neal connected for a 53-yard touchdown pass. Word. Everything is back on.
Kentucky, as you’d expect, went three-and-out. But Bray was sacked on first down, and the Vols punted back. Kentucky got one first down and punted again. This time the Vols failed to convert a 3rd-and-4, punting it back from their own 26 yard line with 4:34 to go. And one more time, Tennessee’s defense produced a three-and-out. That’s eight for the game.
Needing a field goal to tie, Tennessee got the ball at their own 28 with 2:35 to go. Bray and Rajion Neal connected again, this time on 3rd-and-10, to move the ball to the Vol 41.
But two plays later Bray was sacked again. And then on 4th-and-17, he threw an interception.
It still feels surreal.
Joe Rexrode had a really good story on Derek Dooley and Daniel Hood in The Athletic this week. With almost a decade of hindsight, I’m not sure Dooley did any better or worse than a reasonable expectation of the guy who went 17-20 at Louisiana Tech and took over in mid-January. The biggest what-ifs with him are after this game, many of them named Sal Sunseri. But this is the game that made all those what-ifs carry so much extra weight. Losing to Kentucky – to this Kentucky team – cashed in any reserve goodwill he had. Tennessee fans really wanted him to work for a long time because he wasn’t Lane Kiffin. And the 2011 season in particular was full of so many legitimate reasons for the benefit of the doubt between the schedule and the injuries.
But none of that matters when you lose to Kentucky in the last game of the year, a bitter aftertaste that removed any benefit of all the doubt to come. A fun night against NC State led to a flickering moment of real hope against the Gators two weeks later, the Vols back in the Top 25 and ahead of Florida midway through the third quarter. But that lead vanished in quick and brutal fashion. The Vols were close a number of times against the rest of the 2012 schedule. But close wasn’t nearly enough, most especially because of what happened in this game the year before. The weight of the Kentucky loss carried over everything else to come for Derek Dooley, ultimately ushering in a new regime.
This loss meant a lot for Dooley’s career, but hasn’t changed much in the series overall, or Tennessee’s fortune as a program. The Cats are still trying to beat Tennessee. And the Vols are still trying to get back.
It’s not on our countdown, but one of the best moments for Tennessee football in a decade full of lesser options came in early 2016: Peyton Manning beat Tom Brady in the AFC Championship Game, won his second Super Bowl, and rode off into the sunset.
Manning had been Tennessee’s greatest hero for two decades. Not only did he rewrite SEC and NFL record books, he played 18 seasons at the game’s highest level. Thirteen of Tennessee’s NFL Draft picks taken during Manning’s NFL career made the Pro Bowl: Al Wilson, Jamal Lewis, Shaun Ellis, Chad Clifton, Travis Henry, John Henderson, Albert Haynesworth, Jason Witten, Scott Wells, Dustin Colquitt, Jerod Mayo, Eric Berry, and Cordarrelle Patterson. Arian Foster, a fantasy football god, makes 14.
Jamal won a Super Bowl in 2000 and was the NFL Offensive Player of the Year in 2003 (the same year Manning and Steve McNair split the MVP). Witten made 11 Pro Bowls; only 15 players (including Manning) have ever made more. Berry made five, and would’ve made more if healthy.
But no one ever came close to Manning, in accolades and in popularity among Vol fans. Some of it was the nature of playing quarterback, and the absence of any other NFL starter from Tennessee after him. Some of it was simply Manning.
By the time he retired, the Vols had been in the wilderness for seven years. No offense to Nathan Peterman – we’ll get to him in a minute, actually – but no Vol quarterback had taken meaningful snaps as a starter in the NFL since Peyton. Tee Martin, Erik Ainge, and Jonathan Crompton were all fifth round picks. Tyler Bray, once thought to have the brightest NFL future of any Vol QB since Manning, ultimately went undrafted (but has found stability and success as a backup with the Chiefs and Bears the last seven years).
For a Vol quarterback seeking this kind of long-term legacy, the shoes to fill are large, and have been largely empty since Manning. And into all that stepped a sophomore quarterback we weren’t prepared to expect much of.
#7: Josh Dobbs Ignites
Speaking of unfair expectations, Josh Dobbs’ first collegiate action came against Alabama, Missouri, and Auburn in 2013. Those three teams finished the year ranked seventh, fifth, and second. Dobbs had some excitement around him because he was clearly a different athlete than Justin Worley, who was knocked out of the Alabama game immediately following a surge of optimism against Georgia and South Carolina. And the freshman Dobbs did his best against those odds. He was unable to lead a touchdown drive against Missouri, and the points Tennessee did score against Auburn (23) were quickly overwhelmed by the Tigers’ (55).
And then came one of the first crossroad games for Butch Jones: James Franklin’s final Vanderbilt team, with the Vols at 4-6 and still alive for bowl eligibility. These Commodores would finish the season ranked, and Franklin got the job in Happy Valley. Vanderbilt earned its second win over Tennessee since 1982 the year before in Derek Dooley’s last game; that kind of loss tends not to sting as much from our perspective. But this contest carried real weight for both sides.
Dobbs threw an interception on his first pass attempt, putting the Vols in a 7-0 hole. The Vols went three-and-out on their next two drives, wasting great field position after their own interception. Marquez North was out with an injury. And Tennessee really stayed away from the pass after that.
Dobbs’ final stat line in this game is 11-of-19 (57.9%) for 53 yards (2.8 yards per attempt) with two interceptions. But it was actually even worse than that: Vanderbilt’s infamous 92-yard drive to take the lead with 16 seconds left gave the Vols a few heaves downfield. Dobbs completed two passes against prevent coverage for 14 and 23 yards in those last 16 seconds, then was incomplete on the final play of the game. So before the final drive, Dobbs was 9-of-16 (56.3%) for 16 yards. I think you can handle the YPA math on that.
Something we found ourselves saying some leading up to the 2016 season about Dobbs’ ceiling – do they trust him enough to throw it downfield enough to win? – was first a topic of conversation about his floor. When you have that kind of performance in a crucial game against any Vanderbilt team, you find your way to an assumption from the fan base: this guy isn’t the answer.
Justin Worley was back for his senior season, Riley Ferguson transferred after spring practice, and Tennessee did not sign a quarterback in its (otherwise massively successful) 2014 class. Four-stars Quinten Dormady and Sheriron Jones would come in the next year, setting the stage for competition after Worley left.
I probably led the league in word count in defending Justin Worley in the first half of the 2014 season, so no need to revisit all that. But kudos to that kid for standing back there behind the greenest of offensive lines, which eventually led to him getting knocked out for the season for the second year in a row.
By that point, the Vols had missed a critical opportunity for the second time under Butch Jones: first Vanderbilt to stay bowl eligible in 2013, then perhaps the Gators at their lowest point since we started playing them every year in 2014. Tennessee imploded in the red zone, lost 10-9, and a lot of momentum Jones had built through recruiting fell by the wayside. After a win over Chattanooga, back-to-back top five opponents from Ole Miss and Alabama compounded the problem.
Against the Tide, Nathan Peterman got the start. With a fist-pumping Lane Kiffin on the sideline, Alabama scored a touchdown on its first snap and raced to an unbelievable 27-0 lead just 18 minutes into the game. In the stadium and probably elsewhere, you felt like they might go for 100 points and 1,000 yards.
Peterman gave way to Dobbs, whose first three drives ended in two punts and a fumble. And to be sure, Bama’s defense probably relaxed up 27-0. But Dobbs worked a 10-play, 84-yard drive to get the Vols on the board, then Aaron Medley knocked home three to make it 27-10 at the break.
In between the Vol defense stopped the Tide on its opening drive of the third quarter, setting up this from Dobbs: 3rd and 7 complete to Marquez North for 22, 3rd and 2 to Ethan Wolf for 10, 3rd and 8 on his own with a brilliant 15 yard pump fake scramble, then another 3rd and goal at the 9 and another touchdown as Von Pearson hit the brakes and they flew right by.
Tennessee didn’t complete the comeback, falling 34-20 after cutting Bama’s lead to 27-17 at that point. But Dobbs erased the memories from Vanderbilt and put possibility on the table. You only had to wait a week to cash it in.
I’ve called this Tennessee’s most rewatchable game of the decade a number of times. Unlike the options from 2016 that carry mixed amounts of frustration for what that season didn’t become, this game – as an incredible team performance, insane comeback, and the genesis of Josh Dobbs as the Tennessee quarterback of the decade – is pure joy. Honestly, Tennessee’s wild comeback against Indiana in the Gator Bowl is probably underrated because this one happened just five years earlier. The after-midnight-but-hey-it’s-daylight-savings! postgame is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.
In his next-to-last start in 2013 against Vanderbilt, Dobbs was 9-of-16 for 16 yards and two interceptions before facing the prevent defense, plus 11 carries for 23 yards.
In his first start in 2014 at South Carolina, Dobbs was 23 of 40, 301 yards (7.5 YPA), 2 TD, 1 INT. Plus 24 carries, 166 yards, 3 TD on the ground.
What kind of decade was it for Tennessee? The total unpredictability of last season is only good enough for eighth on our list of the most important football stories of the last ten years.
For now.
The version of 2019 where it doesn’t work out for Jeremy Pruitt and the Vols down the road leaves last season as an interesting anomaly, but beyond that? We talked a lot late in the year about the most impressive piece of history from 2019: the Vols covered the spread six games in a row, from Mississippi State to Missouri, for the first time since 1990. In that run, Tennessee turned 1-4 into 8-5, and earned forgiveness for losing to Georgia State. It’s an impressive feat.
But for 2019 to truly be remembered well, the Vols of the current decade have to do more than make us forget Georgia State. They have to make us remember it.
If Darrell Taylor doesn’t get drafted in the first round after my bedtime, the Vols will continue this trend:
UT First Round picks who played for Fulmer: 19 in 18 years
UT First Round picks who played after Fulmer: 3 in 10 years
(If Taylor does get drafted tonight, he’ll at least join a strong group of Cordarrelle Patterson, Ja’Wuan James, and Derek Barnett as post-Fulmer first rounders.)
If no Vols are taken in the second round, you’ll have this:
UT Second Round picks who played for Fulmer: 17 in 18 years
UT Second Round picks who played after Fulmer: Justin Hunter
(Alvin Kamara was quite the steal in round three.)
One of the best parts of last season’s finish is the way it came on the shoulders of guys who stayed. Darrell Taylor, Daniel Bituli, Nigel Warrior, and Marquez Callaway all made an enormous difference; they’ll all get a phone call at some point this weekend, be it the draft or free agency. And of course, Jauan Jennings was building on an already memorable legacy.
Tennessee didn’t beat any ranked teams in their late season run. But they also weren’t sending the kind of talent that regularly beats ranked teams to the NFL this season. Before the turnaround, all of us spent time lamenting the fact that, “Just play the young guys!” wasn’t necessarily an option the Vols weren’t already exploring. This team was what it was after losing to Georgia State and BYU. This program was what it was after the last 10+ years.
But they found a way anyway.
I want only good things for those five seniors, this weekend and in the years to come. The truth is, their Tennessee legacy is now out of their hands.
If 2019 stands alone, it’s a really interesting story. But if it becomes the first chapter?
Of the most important stories of the last decade, it’s only number eight for now. But if Pruitt and the Vols get things right to start this decade, 2019 will become one of the best and most important stories of the 2010’s.
My wife and I got married in August of 2013. When we came back from our honeymoon, the first question everyone asked was, of course, “What do you think of the new uniforms?”
Unlike Lane Kiffin’s last minute switcheroo with the black uniforms, Tennessee fans got almost two months of build-up for the smokey grays. My informal opinion is most fans went on to prefer the Nike version with its truly unique helmet, as opposed to the adidas version that eventually showed up at just about every other school they had under contract. The black unis were a hit because, in large part, the Vols played so well in them, even those who really hated the idea couldn’t be so loud about it. I’ve joked before that in my eight years of writing at Rocky Top Talk, the only comment my dad ever left on a post was to express his disdain for the black unis.
Uniforms are serious, polarizing business. As we speak, it feels like Nike is intentionally screwing up NFL uniforms just to make more money when they bring back the old look a couple years later. I’m a fan of clean, unique looks. It’s one of the great things about Tennessee: our orange is immediately distinguishable, as are our checkerboards even when Kentucky tries to steal them. The memories of the Butch Jones era aren’t always fond, but those first Nike unis with the checkerboard stripe down the side of the pants and the back of the helmet? I love those. It keeps everything great about Tennessee’s traditional look, and adds a slight touch to make them even more uniquely ours. If you have an iconic franchise, there’s no reason they should ever wear something like this:
Apparently the new Celtics “City” uniforms leaked. If true, burn these immediately and cancel the days they were supposed to be worn. These are awful. pic.twitter.com/UAykbilHPo
The initial reaction to the smokey grays seemed somewhere in the middle – a big change for an iconic brand. But in the weeks (and years) ahead, man, they sold. Not just the jerseys, but lots of gray merchandise. I still have a lot of it; it’s helpful when you’re trying to be loud, but not too loud, in hostile territory.
Year one for Butch Jones started off okay: the Vols beat Austin Peay in the opener, then rode an enormous wave of turnovers to blow by Western Kentucky 52-20. Then the Vols were Marcus Mariotaed at Oregon, and Nathan Petermaned themselves at Florida. A 31-24 survival of South Alabama didn’t warm any fuzzies.
Georgia came to Knoxville ranked sixth. The year before, they came as close to disrupting Alabama’s dynasty without actually doing it as anyone, a feat only topped by themselves a few years later. In 2013 they lost a 38-35 thriller at Clemson in the opener, then rebounded with a 41-30 win over South Carolina. The week before Knoxville, they beat LSU 44-41. These dudes were tested, and the Aaron Murray, Todd Gurley, Malcolm Mitchell offense was lighting it up. The Dawgs opened as 10.5-point favorites and it swelled to 13.5 by kickoff.
My wife comes from a huge baseball family, heavily familiar with the sports DNA. But she was newer to football. And getting married three weeks before the first game of the Butch Jones era, I was nervous. It’s a question many of us have asked at some point in the last decade: will the Vols be good enough in time for this person I love to become attached to them?
Georgia scored 10 points on their first two drives. The Vols got a field goal early in the second quarter, but the Dawgs immediately answered with a touchdown. It was 17-3 at halftime, and the Vols had punted four times, plus a three-and-out to open the third quarter.
And then Georgia missed a 39-yard field goal with nine minutes left in the third quarter.
I don’t know how many fans do the two-possessions math, but it’s enough to make a difference. The Vols hadn’t moved the ball all day, but we were still in it with #6 Georgia. And when that happens, all it takes is one play.
The spark, as it turned out, came from Pig Howard. We all know where this game is headed, but before that, Howard caught a 33-yard pass from Justin Worley to get the Vols to the Georgia 40 yard line. Worley ran for 11, then Howard ran for 10. And then, on 3rd-and-10:
The Vols got a stop, but couldn’t capitalize. But Michael Palardy, doing double duty, bombed a 57-yard punt to back the Dawgs up. Tennessee’s defense earned a three-and-out.
There’s a list of great Neyland Stadium moments that happened in a loss. Everything until the end zone interception in the final minutes against #1 Notre Dame in 1990. The screen pass to Travis Stephens pre-hobnail. Cedric Houston almost going the distance right away against #1 Miami in 2002. Everything before the flash flood against Oregon in 2010. That first interception against Oklahoma in 2015.
This is definitely on that list:
Before he was the guy making three dozen tackles in big games, Jalen Reeves-Maybin was the guy who blocked this punt. Devaun Swafford gets the score, I believe it’s Geraldo Orta who gets the decleater at the goal line. And Neyland and the Vols are fully alive.
What’s truly amazing about this game is that everything left to happen all transpired in the last minute of the third quarter, the fourth, and the overtime. Aaron Murray ran for 57 yards on the last play of the third, Georgia scored on the first play of the fourth, and maybe it’s over. But nope: Rajion Neal busts one on 4th-and-1 for 43 yards, then finishes off the drive, and we’re tied again. The Vols get a stop, and two epic drives unfold. Tennessee goes 80 yards in 13 plays, converting two 4th-and-1’s and a 3rd-and-10. Neal scores again from seven yards out, and the Vols have their first lead of the day, 31-24, with 1:54 to go. Rajion on the day gets 148 yards on 28 carries.
Aaron Murray, to his absolute credit, refuses to be denied. Ten plays, 75 yards, no timeouts, three third down conversions, including a two yard pass with five seconds left to send it to overtime.
You know how it ends. But this one was a great example of what can be in a coach’s first year, even when you don’t win. Butch Jones was already off and running on the recruiting trail. But this one made people believe, including my wife. It’s a great testimony to what Neyland can be, even when we don’t win.
The Vols had to sit with it through the bye week. South Carolina, ranked 11th, was next. Tennessee didn’t play as well as they did against Georgia.
But Marquez North and Michael Palardy found a way.
If you forgot, and I bet you haven’t, Derek Dooley never beat a ranked team in three years. When Butch Jones almost got #6 Georgia, then beat #11 South Carolina?
Here’s one of the pictures that’s changed the most over time:
Butch Jones and Vols AD Dave Hitman Hart chest-bumping after win over South Carolina: pic.twitter.com/5bPgJMWRr2
When it happens, you think it’s the first of many. Turns out, it might’ve been the best win in all of Jones’ tenure. His teams went on to beat #19 Georgia, #12 Northwestern, #19 Florida, #25 Georgia, and #24 Nebraska. None were ranked higher on gameday than #11 South Carolina here. Among teams ranked in the final AP poll, Jones’ Vols beat #24 Northwestern in 2015, and #14 Florida and #16 Virginia Tech in 2016. None finished the year better than South Carolina in 2013 at #4.
You just never know. We thought Marquez North would be a star for years to come, but this became his finest hour. These two games over three weeks felt like the beginning, like they should’ve earned a much higher place than #9 on our list of the most important stories of the decade. They’re still a terrific example of what can be powerful, in a coach’s first year and in Neyland at all times. But they’ve become the first example of what came to haunt Jones’ tenure: great moments that didn’t ultimately last because they didn’t turn into great seasons.
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