Sweet Emotion............Ivan Maisel

[OrangeEmpire]

ESPN.com - NCF - Maisel: Vols claim meaningful win over Tide

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Of all the highly ranked teams that avoided upsets Saturday, none had a more emotional victory than No. 7 Tennessee's 16-13 win over Alabama.

No. 5 Texas came back in the snow at Nebraska. No. 10 Notre Dame escaped against UCLA. No. 11 California took a Hail Mary punch from Washington and came back to win in overtime.
But they don't write books about the rivalry between Longhorns and the Huskers. The Irish and the Bruins are still better known for basketball games. The Golden Bears and the Huskies don't have a rivalry that caught fire in the Coolidge Administration and never cooled.
Alabama and Tennessee may be in different divisions of the SEC, but there's no other game in the conference where the winners play for victory cigars.

"This is a sweet victory," Fulmer said. "We fought back to respectability. We're back in the top 10. We're playing good, solid football. We won two big games against top 10 opponents [California and Georgia] at the time. We lost a heartbreaker here to a fine Florida team. We earned respectability. Now, could we handle success?"

Stat of the game... 1. When Bama's Tim Castille scored on a two-yard TD in the third quarter, it was the first TD in this rivalry since the second quarter of the 2004 game.

 

[General Jack]

Thanks for posting the link, good article.

 

[volfan2024]

Nice article.Thanks!

 

[KSVOL]

Maisel puts this game in perspective for the rest of the country. Like he said they don't write books about Texas-Nebraska, UCLA-Notre Dame, etc.... This game is huge to the Crimson and Orange. I think he even reminds us this is our true rivalry game, not the Florida Gators or the UGA dawgs. To me and other fans who have been around a while, this is the sweetist victory.