by Tom Mattingly | Dec 14, 2020 | Columnist, Mattingly
By Tom Mattingly In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, there was one collegiate game on the tube each weekend, several emanating from Knoxville. ABC had the broadcast rights, and whatever game they chose, that’s what the nation saw, with a few exceptions for so-called...
by Tom Mattingly | Dec 7, 2020 | Columnist, Mattingly
By Tom Mattingly Bowl games are fickle creatures, almost two games in one. One team might dominate for a half, and after intermission the other team comes back and makes a game out of it. The 1966 Gator Bowl, No. 22 in the bowl’s history, was such an affair. It was...
by Tom Mattingly | Nov 30, 2020 | Columnist, Mattingly
By Tom Mattingly For those of us who traveled with the Vols over the years, Friday nights on the road were open for most of us, with Saturday’s evening events being scripted nearly to the last minute. Except the game, of course. For me, one of the most interesting...
by Tom Mattingly | Nov 23, 2020 | Columnist, Mattingly
By Tom Mattingly You could probably count the number of 99-yard touchdown drives in the history· of Tennessee football on one hand, but two of them came at Florida Field, in 1971 and 1977 (long before the days it was called the “Swamp” Ben Hill Griffin Stadium” or...
by Tom Mattingly | Nov 16, 2020 | Columnist, Mattingly
By Tom Mattingly In 1926, as former Vol fullback Dr. Andy Kozar has written, Capt. Robert R. Neyland had to “lock his jaw” with Dean Nathan Washington Dougherty and take on the baseball and track coaches to get enough players to hold spring practice. “You hired me to...
by Tom Mattingly | Nov 9, 2020 | Columnist, Mattingly
By Tom Mattingly The passage of time has a way of defusing nearly any controversy, particularly in athletics. Fans often look back at “hot button” athletic issues of the past, many times wondering what the fuss was about. At the time these controversies arose, they...
