Tennessee

Only eight schools in Division I-A college football have won more than 800 games.  Seven of those schools would be pretty easy for any college football fan to guess:  Michigan (911), Notre Dame (876), Texas (875), Nebraska (867), Ohio State (850), Oklahoma (844), and Alabama (840).  But my guess is that most fans would struggle to name the eighth team on the list.  It is not Southern Cal (798), LSU (755), Penn State (732), Florida (685), Miami (Fla.) (583), UCLA (569), or Florida State (501).  No, it is Tennessee, with an all-time record of 806-361-53.  Tennessee also ranks 10th in winning percentage (.682), 6th in bowl appearances (49), and 7th in NFL draft picks (337).  The Vols also have two AP national titles, one in 1951 and the other in 1998.  This is one of the all-time great college football programs.

It is true, of course, that the Vols have piled up 149 wins -- over 18 percent of their total -- against Kentucky and Vanderbilt, two of the worst programs in all of Division I-A.  It is also true that the Vols have a losing record against their two biggest rivals, Alabama (38-51-7) and Florida (19-24).  And these facts have tended to keep Tennessee from getting the national recognition for which their fans -- and they may have the most rabid fans in the country -- so desperately hunger.

But in General Bob Neyland (that's no nickname, he was a Brigadier General in World War II), who had a record of 173-31-12 from the mid-1920's until 1952, the Vols can claim one of college football's greatest coaches.  Credit must also go to Peyton Manning and Philip Fulmer (all-time record of 152-52), who brought the Vols back to national prominence in the 1990's.  Tennessee fans exaggerate the greatness of their program, to the intense annoyance of their fellow SEC members.  However, they don't exaggerate by much.

Nevertheless, the Vols have fallen on hard times in recent years.  Fulmer lost ground vis-a-vis the rest of the SEC in the 2000's, and a 5-7 record in 2008 was enough for the hot-heads in Knoxville to replace him with the youthful Lane Kiffin.  At the time, most folks on Rocky Top thought this was a brilliant move, and that Kiffin was a young genius who could return them to the top of the heap.  But Kiffin came to believe his own hype, and left for Southern Cal after only one season.  Left in the lurch by Kiffin's swift departure, UT was forced to settle for Derek Dooley, a nice man who did not appear to be up to SEC standards, or at least to Tennessee standards.  Showing unaccustomed levels of patience, the Vols stuck with Dooley for three losing seasons in a row, by which Tennessee had almost disappeared from the national scene.  Dooley was finally replaced with one game left in the 2012 season, with a dismal record of 15-21.  The Vols then turned to Butch Jones, who had enjoyed great success at the University of Cincinnati.  Jones appeared to bring a new level of seriousness and organization to Knoxville, but a lack of talent doomed him to a 5-7 record last year -- Tennessee's fourth losing season in a row.

This year, UT fans are desperate to see significant improvement, and so far the Vols look better.  They opened with easy home wins over Utah State (38-7) and Arkansas State (34-19).  They are almost certainly not ready for a prime time UCFC battle on the road against Oklahoma.  But the ever-ambitious Tennessee fans will like the feeling of being back in big-time college football -- at least for awhile.

Tennessee is 10-10-2 in UCFC play.  But they have not held the title since September 20, 1975, when they were beaten 34-28 by UCLA.  Their biggest UCFC game came on January 2, 1998, when they played Nebraska for the National Championship.  That game, however, did not go so well for the Vols, who lost 42-17.  Since then, they have had three more shots at the crown, losing to Miami (Fla.) in 2002, Florida in 2007, and Florida in 2009.