Alabama Football: Vols are desperate for any glimmer of hope

Alabama football fans follow the flounderings of the Tennessee Vols. It is not because of any apprehension. The up-to-today, 5,299 days of Alabama Football domination will reach 5,480 days before the Tide and the Vols play in October. Wins in the 2021 and 2022 seasons will push the count to 6,000-plus days.

Alabama Football has longer win streaks in its history. The Tide’s win streak record against one opponent is 22 games. The 22 straight wins have happened twice; against Vanderbilt and Mississippi State. The Vandy streak is current and goes back to 1985.

Meanwhile, the Vols are in disarray. A contrived internal investigation resulted in firing Jeremy Pruitt and avoiding the large buyout owed to him. The Vols hired Kevin Steele to be interim head coach. Jeremy Pruitt had hired Steele as an assistant coach, but less than 10 days later, Pruitt was out.

After being Auburn’s head coach for less than six weeks, Steele did not last three weeks with the Tennessee jobs. No tears need be shed for Steele, he was paid handsomely for both gigs by Auburn and Tennessee.

Steele was pushed out in Knoxville because Vols AD, Danny White wanted to hire Josh Heupel. It can be argued Alabama Basketball fans should go easy on Danny White. White hired Bobby Hurley to coach the Buffalo basketball team, who hired Nate Oats as an assistant. When Hurley moved up to a better job, White chose Nate Oats as his head coach.

Then again, Danny White appears to be a guy who thinks he can talk improbabilities into reality. A few seasons ago, he was the author of UCF’s outlandish claim of a football National Championship. For those who have forgotten that was in a season when Alabama Football won the ‘real’ National Championship. Apparently White somehow missed the fact, that mythical national championships ended with the BCS back in 1998.

White does know something about 1998. He knows that was the season of the Vols’ last championship.

White talked about the 1998 National Championship recently.

"We’re not going to win our next national title doing the same things we were doing in 1998. We need to be creating our new reality and innovating what our future looks like. And that’s an unwritten story we need to go write."

There is nothing noteworthy in what White said. What does stand out is that among favorable media and Tennessee fans, White got good reviews for the three-sentence drivel.

Not even an old retread like Phil Fulmer would try to replicate the football of 1998. That ‘new reality’ White mentions, is actually that the Vols are overdue and behind in every way. What the Vols need is not innovation, they need to lay a new foundation, solid enough to build a program on.

Maybe beneath his habit ‘to spin’ Danny White knows that. If he doesn’t, hopes of winning a game against Alabama Football will continue to haunt Vols’ fans well into the future.

Alabama Football fans love the streak against Tennessee. Reluctantly we can admit a stronger Tennessee program is good for the SEC.