Tennessee football: 5 best seasons in program history
By Ethan Lee
Ranking the five best seasons in Tennessee football history.
While the Tennessee Volunteers have struggled on and off for more than a decade, there’s plenty of great, rich history in Knoxville. UT fans have seen their football team struggled in recent years, but there are certainly many years that the Vol faithful can hang their hats on. While many may not remember it, the Vols, at one point, was a definite powerhouse in the Southeastern Conference.
This is a college football program that has won 846 games all-time, claimed six national titles, won 16 conference championships and appeared in 53 bowl games. The team has fallen on hard times lately, but the Vols have one of the most prestigious program histories in all of college football.
With the Vols having accomplished so much throughout their history, it’s not necessarily an easy task to list out the best seasons UT has ever had. That said, that’s exactly what we’re going to do here.
Here are the five best seasons in Tennessee football history:
No. 5: Tennessee football claims national title in 1940
If it weren’t for one game, there’d be an argument that could be made for the 1940 season being the best season in Tennessee’s history. However, Tennessee was unable to get through the 1940 season unscathed, even if the Vols ultimately did claim to a national title that season.
The season started perfectly for Tennessee as the Vols rolled off three straight shutout victories. Tennessee then went down to Tuscaloosa where the Vols beat Alabama 27-12. Tennessee then got three more shutout wins, blanking Florida, LSU, and Rhodes.
After Tennessee beat Virginia 41-14, the Vols snagged two more shutout wins, beating Kentucky and Vanderbilt in dominant fashion. A perfect regular season and all those dominant wins over SEC teams earned Tennessee a conference title and set the Vols up for a Sugar Bowl game against Boston College.
While that Sugar Bowl experience was a less than pleasant one for Tennessee as the Vols fell 19-13, Tennessee still had a remarkable year. Had UT won that Sugar Bowl, this year would have been perfect for the Vols in both a literal and a figurative sense.