Tom Mattingly

Tom Mattingly recalls some great moments in Tennessee football history.

Sometimes you have to wonder if football schedule-makers or promoters ever took a course in geography. In an effort to make intersectional games "work" (that is, making them palatable for media exposure), geographic considerations often take a beating.

If all else fails, the saying goes, wipe the slate clean and start over. There are officially no mulligans, no do-overs, no second chances, if you will, in football, but when the ox is in the ditch, anything goes.

When the experts say football is a "team game," they really mean it. It takes a "team" to win. That's been true since the days of Pop Warner and Amos Alonzo Stagg. Tennessee coaches from the days of Bob Neyland ...

Here's an interesting question for all the armchair historians out there. Name an opposing quarterback who helped defeat Tennessee in a bowl game and became an assistant coach for the Vols several years later.

Talk about a gauntlet. Whoever worked up the 1962 football schedule didn't do Tennessee coach Bowden Wyatt any favors. Not in the least.

The 1971 Tennessee football season offered Vol fans a crash course in what can happen when things are unsettled at quarterback.

Here's a question for your consideration during what is often called the "dog days" of summer, when everyone can barely wait for fall, or at least for the arrival of the Vols back on campus.

When, if ever, could the lowly tie game be perceived as a win?

You may not remember it, but there was once a 9-3 Tennessee team that was not ranked by the Associated Press during the entire season. It's all right there in black agate type on page 171 of the "2010 Tennessee ...

There are times the game-by-game scores in the Tennessee Football Media Guide, pp. 165-173, are just a mind-numbing array of numbers, assembled neatly through seasons stretching from that first game in 1891, Sewanee 24, Tennessee 0, through recent years.

The day was June 2, 1998, 13 years ago this past Thursday.

The immediate future might not have looked bright for the Tennessee football program in 1963.

The old Yankee Stadium in New York City has been torn down.

No one can rationally explain exactly how it works, but the "mind's eye" is something special. Close your eyes ever so slightly, and you can almost see the great moments (and maybe some not-so-great moments) pass in review.