On this Thanksgiving Weekend, play the hits, baby.
Four years ago on December 19, news broke of an NCAA investigation into Tennessee’s program. We essentially didn’t know who Tennessee’s football coach would be in 2021 for more than a month, with Danny White hired as athletic director on January 21 and Josh Heupel coming on board six days later. In that winter, approximately one million players entered the transfer portal. Coming out of the weirdness of covid, Tennessee’s football program felt more vulnerable than at any point in my lifetime.
And four years and one or two days later, Tennessee will play in the first 12-team College Football Playoff.
That’s the reward for a 10-2 regular season, capped off by an incredibly impressive performance against Vanderbilt today. When the Dores ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown and Dylan Sampson fumbled two plays later, a case of the oh no’s threatened to break out all over the Volunteer State. But then/now, you can start to remember.
I’m typing this in our living room looking at our Christmas tree, where a national championship ornament hangs from Omaha. The basketball team just finished its most impressive season ever, and the current squad would be favored over them in KenPom.
The football team won ten games two years ago, beat Bama two years ago, in what all felt a bit like a fever dream. This? This feels much more real, in part because there are still cigar remnants on campus from this season too.
You can believe in Tennessee.
Because it was real, it wasn’t perfect. But consider not just where Tennessee has been, but the rest of college football this season. In what SP+ considers one of the best conferences we’ve ever seen, playoff contenders went on the road last week and left unhappy. Georgia needed eight overtimes and well past midnight at home to survive just a few hours ago.
So yeah, Tennessee got down 14-0.
And then Tennessee hammered Vanderbilt.
The Vols finished with 538 yards at 7.4 yards per play. Vanderbilt finished with 212 yards at 4.3 yards per play. Given the circumstances and the start, the performance we saw from this team, including its still-young quarterback, might be their best of the season. Nico Iamaleava completed 78.2% of his passes, a season high against FBS foes. Four touchdowns is a season high in SEC play. He did all of that without Bru McCoy and no receptions from Squirrel White. On the ground, 42 yards trails only his 44 against Alabama in SEC play.
Meanwhile, Dylan Sampson went for 178 yards and became the all-time rushing leader at the University of Tennessee. DeSean Bishop added 61 yards on 13 carries. The very best Tennessee teams of the past had the talent and depth to make you believe in the next man up because he was wearing the same uniform as the other guy. Today, especially in the second half, it was Bishop and Mike Matthews and many others, who helped Tennessee win in style with everything on the line.
And everything is everything. Tennessee will be one of a dozen schools playing for the national championship. Depending on your opinion of the committee’s opinion of Ohio State, the Vols might already have enough to host a first round playoff game. But you can sit back and watch Notre Dame right now or Texas tonight to see if we get even more help.
When Tennessee had an exciting bowl opportunity in the past, it always felt like it extended Christmas just a little bit. But we’re in the Advent business now, a Happy Thanksgiving to get in the bracket, and now the waiting and watching for more. And more than anything, it’s another opportunity, and as we always say, the opportunities are the real prize. We won’t win the natty every year. But we can give ourselves a chance to. And the Vols did it beautifully today.
I’m an old blogger and an increasingly old preacher; in church world, it’s easy to think of things as pre-and-post-covid, or more specifically, since people came back to the building.
Since the people came back to the building at Tennessee:
Baseball
- 2021: Omaha
- 2022: SEC Champions, maybe the best regular season team ever
- 2023: Omaha
- 2024: National Champions as the #1 overall seed
Basketball
- 2022: SEC Tournament champions, 3 seed
- 2023: Sweet 16 via a win over Duke, 4 seed
- 2024: SEC Champions, Elite Eight, 2 seed
- 2025: Current highest KenPom rank in program history
Football
- 2021: Seven wins in year one
- 2022: 11-2, New Year’s Six, Beat Bama
- 2023: 9-4, Citrus Bowl
- 2024: 10-2, College Football Playoff, Beat Bama
The “worst” item on that list that doesn’t involve year one is a 9-4 football season last year, which would’ve tied the “best” season any Tennessee football team had from 2008-2021.
And every time one of these teams is in action, you can believe in their opportunity to make their very own version of the very best.
You can believe in Tennessee.
Go Vols.