NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Volunteers didn’t defeat a single power conference program that finished with a winning record during the 2017 and 2020 football seasons.
Those were the final seasons for coaches Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt, respectively, in Knoxville.
Josh Heupel’s fifth season as Tennessee’s coach came to a close Tuesday night with a 30-28 loss to Illinois in the Music City Bowl, and the only team his Vols conquered that finished with a winning record was East Tennessee State. Tennessee’s 8-5 record yielded a fifth consecutive winning season, something the Vols last accomplished during the first five years of this century, but there will be no final ranking in the Associated Press poll for the first time since Heupel’s debut year in 2021.
Missing out on a Southeastern Conference championship every year since 1998 is one thing given the unquestioned strength of the expanded SEC, but Tennessee has the resources and tradition to warrant top-25 success on an annual basis, which is why Heupel had uttered “disappointment” to describe 2025 even before the outcome inside Nissan Stadium.
“Throughout the course of a season, it’s a series of one plays that make a difference,” Heupel said Tuesday night. “There are a few of them that will be burned into my brain for a long time. The disappointment of tonight or of any of the games during the season have a chance to be the fuel that you use as motivation.