KNOXVILLE – If you’re a Tennessee football fan, remember this date: Oct. 26, 2019.
That’s the day your Volunteers program officially returned to Southeastern Conference relevance.
Sure, the unofficial return may have come a week earlier inside Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium, when UT lost 35-13 to a top-ranked Crimson Tide bunch in a game that could have ended in a much closer score.
But late Saturday afternoon, inside a Neyland Stadium that was louder and prouder than it’s ever sounded when including only 87,397, the Vols blasted South Carolina 41-21 to send an unmistakable message to the rest of the SEC that playing the Big Orange will once more be a big problem.
“We really dominated the second half in all phases,” second-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt said. “This was a chance for our program to grow up. Good to see we had an opportunity to put that on display tonight.”