Have you ever watched interviews with Muhammad Ali in the days before his last fight?
He was still Ali. Still brash. Still driven. But all the characteristics that made him the greatest of all time had eroded.
His face looked full, his eyes hollow. He moved gingerly. His words were slow and measured.
Few things in sports are more depressing than the end of Ali’s career, even watching it in retrospect. You surely did not need 30 years of hindsight to know he was going to lose to Trevor Berbick.
Tennessee football is in that same desperate, overweight, late-30s phase.
Players are still wearing Creamsicle jerseys. Fans are still packing the 102,000-seat Neyland Stadium. And we all know the band is still playing “Rocky Top.”
But the six-time national champions have won just 12 games the past two seasons and feature their third coach in as many years.
Florida-Tennessee is supposed to be a rivalry, but Gators coach Urban Meyer is 5-0 against the Volunteers, with only one of those victories being decided by less than one score.
As one Tennessee writer put it, the changes in Knoxville did not appear in big, bold letters. Really, the collapse could happen to any program — even, gulp, Florida.
About eight years ago the Gators were in worse shape than the Volunteers. So how exactly did Tennessee implode?
Losing the big one
In 2001, the No. 2 Volunteers were 30 minutes away from their second national championship appearance in four years. But Tennessee blew a 10-point lead to LSU in the SEC Championship, reducing them to a Citrus Bowl appearance.
A second national title would have put Rocky Top at the center of the college football universe the same way it did in The Swamp after 2008. The Volunteers remained a premier team, but they could have been the premier team.
Losing your hunger
Phillip Fulmer became a full-time coach at Tennessee in 1980, just before Ali laced up his gloves for the last time. And just like the former champ, Fulmer was suspected of losing his edge in the 2000s.
Tennessee still recruited well, but the excitement generated by those signings ultimately just left fans even more disappointed.
Three years after signing the No. 2 class in the nation, Tennessee received a No. 3 preseason ranking in 2005. They ended the year 5-6. The Vols were a darkhorse contender in 2008. Those dreams were dead by week three, when they fell to the Gators 30-6.
Losing your credibility
Justifiably, Fulmer was fired in 2008. His replacement, who needs no introduction, entered Tennessee riding a then-culturally relevant platform of “change.”
He brought a new swagger, landed some premier recruits and kept his fists clinched, ready to fight the baddest men in the conference like the newest prisoner. He wasn’t successful in his first season, but he was new and fans were patient. They could take roadblocks. What they couldn’t take was the abrupt departure in January.
And so here lies Tennessee. Their athletic director is under fire after watching a national championship contender become an afterthought incapable of bringing former assistant coaches back from Duke.
What’s worse for Tennessee? A 48-13 loss at home against Oregon, or the fact that the result was precisely what everyone inside Neyland Stadium expected.
Does Rocky Top still feel like home sweet home?
