Every season there’s a matchup that’s billed as the “Game of the Year.”
The game that’s supposed to have it all … excitement, hard knocks, cheers and tears, fans on the edge of their seats, and a significant outcome that impacts the college football landscape.
There won’t be any suspense about identifying that game for the 2022 season.
It was played on Saturday afternoon and early evening in Knoxville, Tenn. It had all of those things and more. There won’t be a better game this season than Tennessee 52, Alabama 49, the 2022 “Game of the Year.”
There’s a lot to say about the uncontrollable delirium, the immeasurable euphoria that erupted inside Neyland Stadium as Chase McGrath’s 40-yard field goal fluttered over the crossbar on the game’s final play like a baseball knuckler or a dying bird.
It was just one game, a single contest midway through a long season.
But for a lot of folks, it was much more than just a single game. In order to understand what made this game different, why this game was special, you have to understand Tennessee football for the past 15 seasons, actually understand what Volunteer football has been for the past quarter century.
Twenty-five seasons ago, Tennessee won the first of two consecutive SEC Championship Games, edging Auburn, 30-29. The next year, Mississippi State was the loser, 24-14.
There have been 23 conference championships since then. Alabama has nine; LSU has five; Auburn, Florida and Georgia each have three. For Tennessee – zero. The Volunteers did play in the title game three times, losing to LSU twice and Auburn once.
Tennessee hadn’t won the traditional Third Saturday in October game since October 21, 2006. Since that day in Knoxville, Florida and South Carolina have beaten Alabama. Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Texas A&M have done it twice. LSU has won five games over Bama and Auburn has done it six times. Again for Tennessee – zero.
More could be pointed out, but you get the picture.
Disappointment. Frustration. Heartbreak. Irrelevance. Words that have described once proud Volunteer football for a long, long time.
So the table was set again in Knoxville last Saturday. In most of the past 15 seasons, the game has been a runaway. A few times though, Tennessee had teased the Big Orange fan base only to lose it down the stretch.
But it was supposed to be different this time … again. Undefeated Tennessee was ranked No. 6 nationally, already with a road win at defending Atlantic Coast Conference champion Pittsburgh, a 40-13 demolition of LSU in Tiger Stadium, and wins over MAC teams Ball State and Akron by a combined 122-16. The defense was much improved over recent seasons, while the other side of the ball ranked No. 1 nationally in total offense. Quarterback Hendon Hooker, the Virginia Tech transfer, was among the best at passing and running in all of college football.
Still, it was Alabama. Sure, the Crimson Tide had barely survived Texas and Texas A&M, but they do have Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Bryce Young, and three Tide defenders were Lindy’s first-team preseason All-Americans. When the game kicked off, the Tide was a 7.5-point favorite.
It was a game of individual superlatives.
Young threw for 455 yards and two touchdowns. Jahmyr Gibbs ran for 103 yards and scored three times for Alabama. Hooker had 385 yards in the air with five touchdown passes. Wide receiver Jalin Hyatt caught six for 207 yards and a Tennessee single-game record five touchdowns.
The defenses must have gotten off the buses somewhere back around Pigeon Forge. When the ball was lined up for the final play in regulation, Alabama had two more first downs (31-29) and two more yards of total offense (569-567). There were 12 combined touchdowns and 1,136 combined total yards.
But after all of the offensive fireworks, the outcome ironically rested on the foot of Chase McGrath, the sixth-year redshirt senior placekicker from Newport Beach, Calif., who played his first three collegiate seasons kicking for Southern Cal and likely grew up knowing nothing at all about the Third Saturday in October.
“It wasn’t my cleanest hit,” McGrath said after the game. “I didn’t have the best contact on the ball.”
He was right. The kick was ugly, really ugly, but it was good and the streak was over. Fifteen years of nightmares had turned into dreams come true.
There was no slowing down, much less stopping, the wave after wave of orange that flooded onto Shields-Watkins Field. And the blaring music, resounding around Neyland and out over the Volunteer Navy moored along the river outside the stadium, echoed up into the mountains nearby.
“Rollin’ down the backwoods
Tennessee by-way
One arm on the wheel …
As the words from the song, fittingly made popular by the group Alabama, were reverberating loudly, both goal posts came down, carried out into the night and into the streets on the shoulders of UT students, before being ceremoniously thrown into the Tennessee River. By Sunday night, over $67,000 had already been raised by Volunteer fans to replace the sunken posts.
“Hold her up tight
Make a little loving
A little turtle dovin’ on a Mason-Dixon night …
You have to suspect there was a lot that too, especially among a generation of Tennessee fans that can’t even remember what happened in October, 16 years ago.
“Fits my life
Oh, so right
My Dixieland Delight.”
Who knows what will happen in the remaining six weeks of college football? Still so many games to be played, so many teams still with a chance.
But, on that one day, after 16 long years, it did feel “oh, so right” for oh, so many.
The “Game of the Year” had been all it was supposed to be.
And, its sounds may still be echoing through the hills of east Tennessee.
