by design | Dec 9, 2024 | Columnist, Mattingly
Defense by DeLong, Steve and Keith By Tom Mattingly If you wanted to go to war on the gridiron, you’d need to have Steve DeLong on your side. Steve DeLong could play the game… and play it at a high level. Steve died Aug. 18, 2010, at age 67, but left Vol fans a...
by design | Dec 2, 2024 | Columnist, Mattingly
‘He was as good to me as anybody in my lifetime’ By Tom Mattingly Over the years, it hasn’t mattered how players ended up at Tennessee to play football. It didn’t matter who you were, or what your “credentials” were. Once players arrived in Knoxville, they...
by design | Nov 25, 2024 | Columnist, Mattingly
‘There’s no hero like the first hero’ By Tom Mattingly There’s no hero like the first hero, the saying goes. The passage of time cannot erase the memories that begin at a young age and continue across the years. Throughout the years, schoolboy football...
by design | Nov 18, 2024 | Columnist, Mattingly
‘A vigorous competitor, strong on sniffing out a good story and then getting it’ By Tom Mattingly In the days Knoxville had two newspapers, the morning Knoxville Journal and the afternoon Knoxville News-Sentinel, each paper covered the sporting scene...
by design | Nov 11, 2024 | Columnist, Mattingly
Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel By Tom Mattingly You may not remember it, but there was once a 9-3 Tennessee team in 1983 that was not ranked by the Associated Press (AP) during the entire season. It’s all there in black agate type on p. 333 of the “2023...
by design | Nov 4, 2024 | Columnist, Mattingly
1956: ‘Unbeaten Giants—Something Had To Give’ By Tom Mattingly Looking at this year’s Vol football schedule begs an important question for us old timers. Where the heck is the “Rambling Wreck,” AKA Georgia Tech? It’s been 37 years since the Vols and Tech...
