Gameday on Rocky Top

In the quiet of the early summer, we’ve often spent time with Tennessee’s history. Way back in the summer of 2009 at Rocky Top Talk, we counted down the 50 Best Games of the Fulmer Era. The following year we looked at Tennessee’s 20 Most Heartbreaking Losses from 1990-2009. I’ve been going back through the latter this week, comparing some of our toughest losses in the nine years since to see where they might rank. We’ll do that exercise in full later this week, but I want to start with one game in particular.

I was a history major; even as an idiot optimist, I believe there is value in examining our toughest defeats. But what qualifies a game for that list can and will change, specifically based on the quality and quantity of victory surrounding it.

Case in point: how do you feel about this game, nine years later?

So it’s still no fun to watch, of course. But how do you think of it in the context of the last ten years?

When we did our original list of the 20 most heartbreaking losses from 1990-2009, we ranked this game #11, and almost apologized for having it that low. Recency bias was a factor, even with Lane Kiffin out and Derek Dooley in when we did the original list. But in the summer of 2010, we placed it above heart-breakers like the 1990 tie with Auburn and four Florida losses (1996, 1997, 1999, 2002).

This week, when I was putting together my list of the ten worst losses of the last ten years, it didn’t even make the cut.

To be fair, there are more losses to choose from in the last ten years than in the 20 preceding them. That’s literally true, by the way: from 1989-2007 the Vols lost 54 times, plus their first six of the 1988 season. From 2008-2017, the Vols lost 63 times.

But here too, it’s both quantity and quality that count. Tennessee has not had much opportunity for the kind of heartbreak that dominated our old list. How we experience defeat has changed. Our worst losses used to make us mourn what we gave away. Now they make us wonder if we’ll ever get it back.

In 2009, that loss to #1 Alabama was heartbreaking. But it’s not just the sequence of events, the ranking, or the rival. In 2009, we were still attached to the idea of who Tennessee had been for all those years prior. Lane Kiffin’s 45-19 win over Georgia two weeks earlier helped us do that. And the loss to Alabama didn’t take it away; even at 7-6 at the end of the season, fans were very optimistic Kiffin could get the Vols where we wanted to go. Two losses to the number one team in the country, two others by four points each, and a bowl loss to a Virginia Tech team that finished the year fourth in S&P+. We rioted, in part, because we believed in what was happening up until the very moment it was over. And today we enjoy comparing the makeup of Jeremy Pruitt’s staff to Kiffin’s.

In the moment, the 2009 Alabama loss belongs on a list of painful near misses from a championship-caliber Tennessee program. But nine years later, 2009 isn’t the bridge between Fulmer and Kiffin on the straight and narrow road of victory. It’s Exit 2A into the ditch, and there aren’t even any good gas stations.

The program’s inability to sustain success over a decade cut a hard tie from the past, and instead created an era of its own. Viewed through the lens of 2009, the loss to Alabama is heartbreaking. Viewed through the lens of the last decade, it’s a near-miss moral victory akin to 2013 Georgia. The Vols played an equally competitive game with an equally good Alabama squad in Tuscaloosa in 2015, and I don’t think any of us would put it on a list of the ten worst losses of the last ten years either.

Losing always hurts. But it’s not just that the stakes have been lower for most of the last ten years. It’s that this ditch is long and muddy, and you need really good vision to still see the shiny objects in our rear view. At some point it became normal, and our definitions of great wins and bad losses changed based on our surroundings.

The funny thing here isn’t really funny, because we’re putting enough hope in it to take it very seriously: we asked Phillip Fulmer to get out of the car when it was teetering on the edge. Opinions still vary over how many tires were in the ditch back then. And now, after trying and failing in unique and messy ways over the course of almost a decade, Fulmer has the keys again and got to pick the driver. And when in doubt at any point over the last six months, it’s Fulmer’s presence – a shiny object out of the rear view and riding shotgun – that gives me the most hope.

There’s some mud and messiness left, no doubt. Jeremy Pruitt will chase forward progress, with wins and losses along the way this year and beyond. I hope he gets us to a point when losing to #1 Alabama by two points hurts just as much nine years later as the day it happened. And I hope for wins with an even longer memory.

Um, that report that Tennessee linebacker Darrin Kirkland Jr. would be leaving Rocky Top for another school as a graduate transfer? Never mind (maybe):

Would expect formal announcement this week @SEC meetings in Destin, but was told late last night Darrin Kirkland Jr., with his family, met w/ Pruitt & is likely to remain @ UT

— John Brice (@JohnDBrice1) May 28, 2018

As I said, maybe. We’ll see. Who knows?

If true, it’s great news. It’s odd, though. The report that Kirkland was leaving came straight from his own Twitter account. That account has since been deleted. So, all we have is a tweet from the guy himself from an account that has now been nuked, and a subsequent tweet from a guy based on an unnamed source that the guy has changed his mind.

Intrigue!

As I said in our post earlier this week, we’d mentioned in our Vols preseason magazine just how important Kirkland’s healthy return could be to the team, and I still believe that. If he has reconsidered after meeting with both his family and Pruitt, then that’s a good thing for the team.

It’s easy to remember Peyton Manning, Reggie White, Doug Atkins and Johnny Majors for their on-the-field achievements, and they all have legitimate reasons for having their names and jersey numbers enshrined, retired and hanging on the facades of Neyland Stadium for the rest of time.

But you may not know that much about Bill Nowling, Rudy Klarer, Willis Tucker and Clyde “Ig” Fuson, whose Nos. 32, 49, 61 and 62 hang alongside those of the other four. It’s their contributions off the field that led to former athletic director Mike Hamilton’s decision to retire their numbers for good in 2006.

It was one of the few good things Hamilton did as UT AD.

Because, while Manning, White, Atkins and Majors may have been Tennessee legends, Nowling, Klarer, Tucker and Fuson are national legends. They paid the ultimate sacrifice, dying for our country in battle so that we can remain free.

This Memorial Day, while we are all enjoying our lake trips and weenie roasts, we need to remember what the holiday is actually for. And, it would be good for you as a Tennessee fan to remember a little about the four former Vols who left this world ensuring we can have the same rights we enjoy today in ours.

Hopefully one day when your child is sitting beside you in Neyland Stadium — hopefully watching a worthwhile football team again — and he or she looks up and asks you about these men, you’ll be able to tell them a bit about them.

Back in 2009 on our old Rocky Top Talk site, I wrote essentially this same article in our “100 Days of Vols” series. I’m writing it again. It will never be enough to say thank you. Then, I wrote:

Bill Nowling, Rudy Klarer, Willis Tucker and Clyde Fuson are names that don’t immediately come to mind when you think of the Tennessee greats. A few years ago when we counted down the top 100 Vols of all-time on my old blog, 3rd Saturday in Blogtober, none of those guys made the list. But they’re the biggest heroes to ever wear the orange and white.

Nowling (No. 32), Klarer (No. 49), Tucker (No. 61) and Fuson (No. 62) gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom in World War II. They died so we could be free and so we could stand out there today, eat hot dogs, have cold beverages, shoot fireworks and practice our beliefs — whatever they may be. They died for more than a petty football game. It’s easy in the South for football to be “life” and “death.” We talk about plays killing us and about the field of battle and use all these sports cliches to describe what we see on those yard lines.

But a lot of us have no idea what true battle, true war, is. The ones of us who do know that a football game is just a football game.War is war. Life is life. And when you put that precious life on the line for a bunch of strangers, and you lose that life, that’s the most selfless act imaginable. Nowling, Klarer, Tucker and Fuson did that. For you. For me.

UTSports.com provided a little information on them all when they were honored back in ’06.

Nowling played from 1940-42 for General Robert Neyland (whose rich war history you should read about, as well). According to the article, Nowling was a three-year starter at the all-important position of fullback. In ’40, the Vols were the national champions, and Nowling was a big part of that. Those were some of the best teams in school history. Just how good?

The Vols lost just four games during Nowling’s three seasons.Nowling was a St. Petersburg, Florida, native who died August 9, 1944, while serving in World War II at the age of 23.

Klarer was a teammate of Nowling who played in 1941-42. He started in his final year for the Vols after serving as a backup his first season.

The native of Louisville, Kentucky, was a key member of the 1943 Sugar Bowl champions, but he left the team immediately after the win over Tulsa for Officer’s Training in the Army at Fort Benning, Georgia, according to the UTSports.com article. “Klarer was a 2nd Lieutenant and platoon leader in Germany during World War II. He was killed in action on Feb. 6, 1945, and Klarer received the Silver Star citation posthumously,” the article states.

Tucker was a hometown boy, a Knoxville High School graduate who played two years on the offensive line for a pair of dominant UT squads in 1939 and ’40.

He was a backup at center and guard on the undefeated ’39 team, and then Tucker earned a letter on the national championship team the next year while also standing out as a sprinter for the track team. Tucker, who was named the top track athlete in Tennessee from 1900-50, lost just two games during his career at Rocky Top, and never lost a regular season game, according to the UTSports.com article.

Tucker was killed in action in Germany just prior to the Battle of the Bulge on Nov. 28, 1944, at the age of 26.

Finally, Fuson played just one season for the Vols, sharing time with Nowling at fullback on the 1942 team that finished 9-1-1.  He, like Klarer, was a Kentucky native, hailing from Middlesboro. He enlisted in the Army in 1943 and was killed in action in Germany on Dec. 4, 1944, while serving with the 84th Infantry Division.

“These four courageous men made the ultimate sacrifice for this country,” Hamilton said at the time he made the decision to retire the numbers. “We recognized them in the past, but this is a good opportunity for us to recognize their families on the field. It is of significance the ceremony will be during the Air Force game, when UT plays one of the many honorable branches of the military.”

These four men are legendary, just as are the others who died fighting for us throughout the years. Hollywood may glamorize death, but those that come in battle are often gruesome, gritty and heartbreaking to those left behind. It’s easy to think of football as a safe haven, no matter how violent it is, but the bottom line is these are 18-22-year-old kids “battling” on our television sets. During World War II, these were the same kids who were dying by the thousands on foreign soil.

So, enjoy your day off tomorrow. Enjoy all the trappings of freedom that we have. But find a soldier and thank him or her for the sacrifices they and their families make every single day. Then think of those who didn’t make it home to hug their loved ones one last time.

We may “live and die” with every Vols play. But these men literally died protecting us, preserving our way of life and honoring what it means to be an American. Thank you all, gentlemen — and to all the ladies and gentlemen who serve us still.

You are the legends, in the truest sense of the world.