KNOXVILLE - Looking ahead to Saturday's visit by 19th-ranked Oklahoma, Tennessee junior defensive back Cam Sutton said Monday, "This is in our back yard. We just need to play Tennessee football."
Two days earlier, a 59-30 season-opening win over Bowling Green just completed, sophomore running back Jalen Hurd noted, "Tennessee football runs the ball."
Tennessee football. A brand. A mindset. An overall history of excellence the envy of almost every school in the country not named Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma or Southern California.
Tennessee quarterback Joshua Dobbs throws to a receiver in the first half of an NCAA college football game against Missouri, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014, in Knoxville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne)
Tennessee's Alvin Kamara (6) breaks through the Falcon defense to score a long touchdown run in the 3rd quarter. The Tennessee Volunteers hosted the Bowling Green Falcons at Nissan Stadium in Nashville September 5, 2015.In recent years, at least until last January's Taxslayer.com Bowl win over Iowa, it had become an incredibly shrinking giant, however. After winning the national championship in 1998, the Volunteers had not a single BCS bowl appearance past 1999. Four straight losing seasons from 2010 to 2013. A current 10-game losing streak to Florida. Eight straight losses to Bama.
Heck, the Vols even lost two straight to Vanderbilt in 2012 and 2013. The last time that had happened was 1925 and 1926, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was just releasing "The Great Gatsby" and "Silent Cal" Coolidge was quietly occupying the White House.
Yet however disappointing and dispiriting the recent past, the legacy and love of Tennessee football as a brand never waned in the hearts and minds of Vols Nation. When you've won five national championships in 119 seasons and never lost more than seven games in any of those years, there is deeply entrenched pride. Tennessee pride for Tennessee football.
"We think about that all the time," said junior quarterback Josh Dobbs. "We want Tennessee football to mean Tennessee Tough. When I first got here, it took time to build a brand. Now everyone's bought in."
No one likes to take time to build anything anymore. If you can't tweet out a championship in 140 days or less, you're seen as a failure by some. And Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops did nothing to discourage that mindset when he guided the Sooners to a national title in his second season on the job in 2000.
Never mind that he hasn't won one since, though he's played in the national championship game three other times. Once Stoops proved you could win it all one season after a 7-5 start at OU, the expectation level was raised for every fan base with a football history remotely approaching that of the Vols. Especially when Jim Tressel accomplished the same thing at Ohio State, winning it all in his second season (2002) after also finishing 7-5 in his first year.
But if it takes the No. 25 Vols a little longer to achieve such success under Butch Jones, it could be because he started with less and the league he had to topple, the Southeastern Conference, is tougher to tame.
"Last year was a big step," Dobbs noted. "Toward the middle of the season, we made a big jump."
When a reporter asked if that big jump coincided with Dobbs' promotion to starting quarterback on Nov. 1 at South Carolina, a move that led to four wins in the Vols' final five games, he grinned slightly and said, "Maybe, a little bit."
But whatever the reason, Tennessee football has been on the uptick ever since, buoyed by mental toughness, physical talent and a welcome sense of humor, which surely signals a heightened degree of confidence and camaraderie for Team 119.
Especially where running back Alvin Kamara, he of the 144 yards and two touchdowns against Bowling Green, is concerned.
When someone asked Kamara on Monday what he thought of almost being tackled from behind on his long touchdown run against Bowling Green, he said with a wide smile, "I scored."
When a photographer's tall light stand collapsed and fell on reporter John Brice's head, Kamara almost instantly said, "They need to get you all some helmets."
Tennessee running back Jalen Hurd runs past the Oklahoma bench while pursued by Oklahoma linebacker Jordan Evans the Vols' Sept. 13 meeting last year in Norman, Okla. The Vols and Sooners play again Sept. 12 in Knoxville.And when someone later joked to the former Alabama player that one reason he almost got caught on that 56-yard scoring jaunt was because he might have been admiring himself on Nissan Stadium's giant video board, Kamara wryly observed, "Those new Nike uniforms are kind of pretty."
It all adds up to a pretty big opportunity to return Tennessee football further toward the brand it enjoyed in the 1990s, when it averaged over 10 wins a year during Phillip Fulmer's first seven seasons as head coach from 1993 to 1999. Or even the first eight years of the new millennium, when the Vols reached the SEC title game in 2001, 2004 and 2007.
"I was in the Georgia Dome for the SEC title game in 2004 and 2007," said fifth-year senior offensive left tackle Kyler Kerbyson, who grew up in Knoxville. "I looked up to those teams. I wanted to reach that game when I grew up. That's always on my mind."
As he took his turn with the media, Kerbyson turned his attention to Vols Nation, to all those folks who'll file into a sold-out Neyland Stadium on Saturday to watch a ranked Tennessee play a ranked nonconference foe for the first time since California roared into Knoxville in 2006 with a No. 9 ranking and was rolled away following a 35-18 loss to the No. 23 Vols.
"A win would really set the stage going into SEC play," he said. "It would make all the Vols fans happy. This is what they've been waiting for for a long, long time."
Beat Oklahoma and the return of Tennessee football as a proud brand rather than a broken dream could be upon us.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.