Meet the Volunteers--History and Tradition

A football season is a unfolding story, and the stories of seasons remembered and woven together form a legend and a tradition. The tradition is rich at Tennessee. They've been to 48 bowl games and won six national championships, including the first BCS title in 1998-99. They've won thirteen SEC titles and have 22 members in the College Football Hall of Fame. General Bob Neyland built the tradition and the players enriched it. Giant names have run through the T and danced in the checkerboard end zones, among them Doug Atkins and Reggie White, NFL Hall of Famers, and Peyton Manning, one day to retire as the greatest passer ever.

2008 Photo By Claire Binhammer

Long ago the '39 team held opponents scoreless for an entire season, in all 17 straight games. They earned their first Orange Bowl the year before, their first Sugar in '40. The 1950 team beat number two Texas in the Cotton Bowl. The '56 SEC champions blanked Georgia Tech 6-0 in Atlanta. Backed up to their own goal line late in the game, tailback Johnny Majors took a direct snap from center and boomed a punt seventy yards to ice the game.

Doug Dickey came to coach in '64, and he was the one who put the "T" on the helmet. He had the Pride of the Southland Band form a "T" before gametime and had the players run through it, painted the end zones in the checkerboard squares.

Peyton Manning took over at quarterback in '94 when a knee injury fell Todd Helton. His teams were 8-4, 11-1, 10-2 and 11-2, winning an SEC title in '97. Tee Martin took over the reins the next year, and the Vols were peerless and paid the price, defeating Florida State in the first BCS title game 23-16.

But the tradition is older than that. It is much richer. A bluetick coon hound dances and howls on the sideline, and the rumor is he once nipped a clumsy Alabama player in the leg. On campus the students paint a rock of knoxville dolomite that is 500,000 years old. The tradition goes back to the orange daisies that dot the hills above campus, to the Seige of Knoxville in The Civil War, when the school had to close it doors, nearly destroyed in the shelling. Before the Alamo Governor Brown called for 2,000 men and 30,000 volunteered. The nickname is that old, and older still. It dates to the founding of the country, then Andrew Jackson and The Battle of New Orleans.

Of course football players do not care about any of that. They'll ride on the team bus to the stadium with their ipods and earpieces, solemn and ready to compete. The Tennessee players will take the Volunteer Walk and shake hands with thousands of eager fans. The Oregon players will file into the visitors locker room with the insane cheering above them, the band booming and proud.

They can't know the history that flames the passion. They don't have time. They're young, and care little for such things. But the passion that rises from the Tennessee faithful knows all these, and more, moments handed down from grandfather to father to son, stories told faithfully by legendary announcers and embellished over favorite beverages. Passion gives rise to hope. For the Volunteer fans, last week was hope awakened. In the weeks to come they'll learn how hope should be defined, and what hopes must be deferred.

Wish that I was on ol' Rocky Top Down in the Tennessee hills
Aint' no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top Ain't no telephone bills
Once I had a girl on Rocky Top Half bear, other half cat
Wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop I still dream about that

Chorus
Rocky Top you'll always be Home sweet home to me
Good ol' Rocky Top
Rocky Top Tennessee, Rocky Top Tennessee