TENNESSEE FOOTBALL was in the abyss.
The football program went through six coaches in a little more than a decade, pinballing from Lane Kiffin to Derek Dooley to Butch Jones to Jeremy Pruitt plus two interims. There was little in the way of success, minus a couple Jones years that started promising only to end with 9-4 records.
The Pruit era carried the double whammy of little on-field success with a lot of off-field problems in the form of significant NCAA violations. Pruitt would eventually be hit with a 6-year show cause and the program received five years of probation, a $8 million fine, game forfeitures and scholarship reductions for 18 Level 1 violations and 200 infractions in total.
“Really my attention to athletics here started with attention to the problem which is what was going on with our previous football coach,” said University of Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman. “That was the beginning.”
That was what Josh Heupel arrived to in 2021 after going 28-8 while at Central Florida. He inherited a Tennessee program that went 3-7 in the last Pruitt year and had lost its last 14 games to Alabama in the Third Saturday in October rivalry. Fan morale was low as Tennessee fans watched rival programs Alabama and Georgia dominate the sport.
Heupel’s first year at Tennessee exceeded the minimal preseason expectations, finishing with a positive record (7-6) and bowl game appearance, but everyone involved believed they left wins on the table. In a transition year Tennessee just wasn’t quite ready to break through.
“We didn’t have as much player-led leadership and discipline,” said punter Paxton Brooks. “We weren’t disciplined enough to win those games.”
But there were signs it could be coming, including in an Alabama game that the Volunteers were in until the fourth quarter. The offense, led by Heupel and offensive coordinator Alex Golesh, was exciting and had fans optimistic about the future. Quarterback Hendon Hooker, who transferred in from Virginia Tech, showed signs of being the kind of talent who could guide the Volunteers out of the abyss.
“We sold 17,000 new season tickets going into that year so people were excited about Josh and the style of play and what they had seen in Year 1 when we finished 7-6,” said Tennessee athletic director Danny White. “Fundraising was already having some serious momentum going into that season.”
It all built to a wild scene the following year in Knoxville. No. 3 Alabama versus No. 6 Tennessee with both College GameDay and SEC Nation in town. The city buzzed with anticipation ahead of a game Tennessee fans desperately wanted to win. The final result exceeded even their wildest expectations.
To recount the day, CBS Sports talked to a host of players, fans, administrators and more to tell the story of the 2022 Alabama-Tennessee game. Note: All quotes obtained in original interviews unless otherwise noted.
The buzz builds in Knoxville
Paul Finebaum (ESPN/SEC Network personality): I was in Tuscaloosa on that Thursday night and I joked with the audience that exactly 40 years ago as a young reporter going up there and watching Tennessee upset the No. 2 team in the country with Bear Bryant. I asked somewhat of a rhetorical question, ‘Can it happen again?’
Alex Golesh (Tennessee offensive coordinator 2021-22): It had been awhile there since they were playing really meaningful games into October. We had just come off of beating Florida.
Paxton Brooks (Tennessee punter/holder 2018-2022): It felt like we kind of got a little bit of weight off our back. And then going into Alabama we knew what a tough test it was with their team…that whole week had a ton of excitement.
Golesh: It was a big, big game. I think it had always been in the back of those kids’ minds.
Heupel (2023 at spring meetings): Historic rival for our program.
Danny White (Tennessee athletic director): I think college football is better when Tennessee is nationally competitive and these games against our rivals like Alabama are more meaningful.
Golesh: The rivalry is real but it’s been very one-sided.
Josh Ward (99.1 the Sports Animal host): During the losing streak, so many Alabama weeks were about Tennessee fans just wanting to get through the week. It was difficult to talk about the Alabama game because the Vols were such big underdogs that fans didn’t have a real belief that Tennessee could win. But in that game…fans really believed that the team would have a chance.
Chase McGrath (Tennessee kicker 2022-23): Experiencing that 2021 game and losing in Tuscaloosa put a bad taste in our mouth. We knew next year with the team we had, we had a real opportunity to win. There definitely was a heightened sense of awareness around the facility. We were extremely focused. As a team, you understood the implications of that game. You know, both undefeated, College GameDay, there’s potential national championship opportunities for either team. And then how big it was for the state of Tennessee to have the opportunity to beat Alabama for the first time in 15 years.
Brooks: We knew that Alabama was a lot more talented than we were, but we were going to work hard and believe in one another and believe that we could do it and play as clean a football as we can. And we knew if we did that, we would have a chance to beat anybody in the country.
Trevor Daniels (Tennessee fan): The day before there was an energy in the air around Knoxville that I just can’t explain. The atmosphere around Knoxville was unbelievable, you could feel something in the air.
Brooks: I was in the locker room Friday before we traveled to the hotel. And I’m just hanging in there and I’m talking to Hendon [Hooker]. And I remember Jalin Hyatt comes in, and they start talking about this play — what plays that Hendon and the coaches were talking about that they liked. And of course, me being a punter, I don’t really know what they’re talking about. But I just remember Jalin telling him, ‘If that guy plants his foot, or if he comes forward at all, throw it because I’m going to run right by him.’
Golesh: It was like everybody was a Nick Saban disciple in some shape or form. The structure was very similar. When you get into a conference, it takes you a year to figure people out and it also takes a year for people to figure you out. I felt like we kept preparing for the same defensive structure over and over again. LSU was the same, Georgia was the same, in a lot of ways Missouri was the same, Florida was the same. We were 17-18 games into our tenure there and it felt like, ‘OK, I’ve got the answers.’ Now we have to go execute, but I’ve got the answers.
The Friday before Saturday’s live SEC Nation broadcast in Knoxville, Baron Miller, a SEC Network coordinating producer, came to Finebaum with an idea.
Finebaum: I get there and he says I have this crazy idea. Everyone has been burying Tennessee, all the guys are picking Alabama, would you consider picking Tennessee based on the idea of getting in a coffin? I said I don’t know about that. He said we don’t want to tell you who to pick and I said ‘You know what? Screw it. I’ll pick Tennessee.’ He said are you sure? I made the decision and he went over the coffin thing but I wasn’t paying that close of attention.
The next day when he saw the coffin painted in Tennessee orange, the weight of what Finebaum agreed to do began to take hold.
Finebaum: There’s no template for getting in a coffin. I wasn’t sure how to get in, I was kind of awkward. When I got out, they said ‘Are you sure you really want to do this?’ My antennas went up. They are saying to themselves this guy is in his late sixties, we’re going to put him in a coffin but what if he doesn’t get out? I just knew that’s what they were talking about. They thought this guy might just die in the coffin, and then I’m going to lose my job.
They had me look at Undertaker videos of the whole move and I wasn’t sure I was really capable of doing that move. I spent like 10 minutes studying it like I’m going to acting class. They close the coffin and that’s the moment you realize this is fairly serious.
Jordan Rodgers (SEC Network personality): This doesn’t look good for Tennessee fans.
Laura Rutledge (SEC Nation host): Is this Tennessee in a casket? My goodness.
Finebaum: I was so fired up with adrenaline. It was quite an exhale because I knew I pulled it off.
White: When you saw me in my orange jacket pregame, I had a cigar in that pocket. We’re always going to be confident.
Hendon Hooker (Tennessee quarterback 2021-22) to Player’s Tribune: Anyone who tells you that’s just another team, they’re lying. Everyone gets up for Bama.
Donde Plowman (University of Tennessee chancellor): I think that night, except for Alabama fans, there were a lot of people in this country rooting for Tennessee.
The game itself: A back-and-forth thriller
Brooks: That game was basically like a movie script.
White: The energy was electric.
McGrath: Even being from Southern California, I knew about the Third Saturday in October, the cigar game, how deep the rivalry runs with Alabama. But it didn’t really hit me and I didn’t understand it until I experienced it and played there, how passionate the fan bases are and how intense that rivalry gets.
Hooker: What’s crazy is, Bama was on my dad’s birthday this year. And usually when I ask him what he wants for a birthday present, he’s just like, “I want y’all to come in and clean my house,” something simple. But this time he didn’t even try it with simple. He just said to me, “I need that W for my birthday. I need that win.”
Ward: Tennessee got off to a great start partly because of how into it the fans were. Once Tennessee gets a lead early, that place is ready to explode.
Tennessee raced out to a 21-7 first-quarter lead as Hendon Hooker connected with Jalin Hyatt for two early touchdowns.
Golesh: We kept seeing the same structure over and over again. You feel like you’re finding holes in it. That was going to be the big piece going into that game: Can we get Jalin Hyatt up on these safeties?
Nick Saban (Alabama head coach 2007-2024): They created a lot of mismatches.
Malachi Moore (Alabama defensive back 2020-present): I would just say space, closing space would be the main thing. That’s kind of their game plan, to get their play-makers in space and try to get you outnumbered.
Golesh: Pretty much every touchdown we scored with [Hyatt], which was five of them, was some sort of formulated way to get him against what we thought was their worst cover guy.
Jalin Hyatt to ESPN: “[That game] probably changed my life.”
In the third quarter, after a 60-yard bomb to Hyatt, McGrath took the field for the extra point. He missed.
McGrath: Which was the first time that happened to me since my freshman year of college — five years since that happened to me. I remember Coach Heupel coming over to me on the sidelines to try to talk to me. But I kind of had a look in my eye where it’s not usually how I would look at a head coach. I kind of let Coach know, Get away from me. I’m fine. I was not in the best mood. He kind of realized that. He’s like, ‘Oh, you’re good.’ Because I knew there was gonna be another opportunity.
Brooks: If anything, that motivated him. It just made it more interesting.
Heupel: Late third, early fourth, it didn’t look good. But our guys continued to reset.
Daniels: We had Alabama backed up to the endzone and there was a bad snap. After the bad snap, we almost sacked Bryce Young in the endzone. That was the loudest I’ve ever heard Neyland Stadium in my life.
Midway through the fourth quarter, with the game tied, Hooker fumbled the football, Dallas Turner scooped it up and ran into the end zone to take the lead.
Brooks: I remember thinking to myself, like, ‘Oh no. Please don’t let it be one of these things again where we just kind of fall apart.’ But Hendon, one of the things that I really admired about him as a leader, is I felt like he was always cool, calm and collected. You could tell that the whole team fed off of that. He came off the field after that, and was just like, ‘It’s no big deal. Let’s go back to work.’
Golesh: The most unique thing is they went to dime the drive after we fumbled. We were hitting them in the pass game and they felt like we were going to just chuck it up and down. We still talk about it. That was probably one of my prouder moments offensively as a play-caller. They go to dime and you’re down and the instinct is, ‘Man, we’ve got to go chuck this thing.’ But we ran it seven or eight times, threw it maybe once and we stayed on tempo where they couldn’t sub back out of it. We literally drove it down the field.
With the game tied, Alabama got the ball and went on a methodical, 11-play, 43-yard drive, to set up a 50-yard field goal attempt with only 15 second left.
Daniels: Will Reichard misses the kick and right then I told my buddies if we somehow manage to get down the field and win this game, I’m going to be the first damn one on the field.
Golesh: We essentially threw two set-up plays. You practice them all year, starting in fall camp. You know you’re going to get heavy drop coverage, prevent-style drop coverage, and they are essentially beaters into those. It was Thursday walkthrough where we went one set-up play to another set-up play.
Brooks: I had seen us run so many 2-minute offenses, so many quick-hitters, earlier in the year. So I believe at that point we’re going to win this football game.
Golesh: Two incredible throws, the protection was good. We were able to set up a manageable field goal.
Brooks: When he hit that strike to Bru, time out was called. If you watch some of the videos, Hendon came off the field and said, ‘That’s game.”
Saban: Played way too soft at the end to let them go down the field 50 yards and get in field goal range.
McGrath: There was a point where the field goal team huddled up before the final kick. It’s almost as if everyone had full confidence that this was our moment. I remember (special teams coordinator) Coach [Mike] Ekeler basically calling his shot, ‘We won the game. You’re going to make this.’
Brooks: He’s no stranger to game-winning kicks. I mean, he hit a game winning kick his freshman year at USC against Texas. So he’s just one of those guys. He’s very much Southern California, laid back, relaxed kind of energy, which just gives you this calm confidence.
McGrath: It didn’t matter if there were 100,000 people in the stands, millions watching.
Brooks: I was nervous. I was like, ‘Just catch the ball and put it down.’
McGrath: We’re playing Alabama for the first time to beat them in a million years. You understand that in the back of your mind, but you can’t think about it
Brooks: When I heard him hit it, I was like, ‘Oh, he just crushed that.’
Moore: I remember just hearing the thud — the double thud — and thinking we were straight.
Brooks: People think he just kind of hit a knuckleball. You can’t physically hit a ball that way where it spins kind of sideways. If you watch it on film, the guy tipped it, and he starts to celebrate.
White: Maybe there was a little extra gust of wind that helped that ball get barely over the upright.
Daniels: I saw where it peaked and I decided at that moment to rush the field. I was already running on the steps and hopping the fence.
Brooks: It was meant to be.
Moore: And then it [fell] through.
Brooks: It’s rare [for a tipped ball] to go in from that part of the field, but it was just one of those things. It was a storybook ending to a storybook game. I mean, the defensive lineman was three yards in the backfield and we had our fastest operation time all year. We were flying. Thankfully we did, otherwise it could have been blocked and the game could have ended a different way.
Finebaum: It is one of the most iconic finishes to a football game I’ve ever seen.
A raucous, smoky party begins
According to a report from a Tennessee meteorologist, the celebration literally caused the earth to shake.
McGrath: My first memory was trying to stay upright because everybody probably wanted to dogpile on me and I knew if those big boys jumped on me I might be seriously injured. And I see all the fans running on the field and I think, ‘Whatever happens, I have to stay vertical.’ And then all of a sudden I get lifted up and have a crowd surf moment and seeing everybody light up their cigars and the goal posts coming down.
Daniels: I was one of the first over to the field goal. We were all jumping up trying to grab the field goal. Cops and security were trying to keep us away from it, but we kept jumping up. Eventually we got it torn down. As we were snapping the field goal, when it snapped and it fell to the ground, somebody’s cigar ran all the way down to my side and I got really bad burns from that.
Hooker: I’ve never felt so proud after a game. As soon as it was over I found my parents, and while they’re hugging me my mom starts crying these big old tears and I’m like, “Hey, Mom, come on now. We can’t be looking ugly on TV. We gotta tighten up.” And of course my dad … I just told him, “Happy birthday.”
McGrath: The first three people I see are Velus, who was in town for a bye week, and a guy named Daniel, who I played with at USC, and then Trey Johnson, who was on staff at Tennessee and also on staff at USC with us. It was funny. During the game, when I went to warm up in the net right before I hit the game-winner, there’s so many people on the sideline. It was absolutely chaotic. And those three guys — Daniel, Velus and Trey — they were actually by my kicking net and acted as security guards to clear the area and make sure I have enough room to get warmed up. And then I get dropped down in the crowd and for whatever reason, those are the three guys I get dropped down by. They kind of acted as security guards to escort us to where the families were sitting.
Brooks: I was just trying to make my way back to the locker room, and all of a sudden I get kind of a push. The crowd kind of pushes all together. And I’m like, ‘What in the world are just people pushing for?’ I thought, I thought they were trying to push towards the locker room. And then I looked to my right, and I see the goal post going by me, and a couple guys riding the goal post. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s the goal post right there.’
White: I was on the field. I was standing right next to Heath Shuler. He started hugging me and jumping up and down.
Daniels: Being on the field in Neyland Stadium is something surreal.
White: I had grown men crying and snotting all over me on the field.
Brooks: It probably took me 45 minutes to an hour to work through the crowd of people. People hugging you and celebrating with you and taking pictures with you. I ran into a bunch of people I knew that I was like, ‘What are you doing here?’
McGrath: Bru, he lost his helmet in the whole thing. We saw later there’s some fan walking with his helmet down Cumberland.
Golesh: It takes like 15 seconds to get from the box down to the field. When we got down there on the field, it was already like half full. I saw my wife and kiddos and just stood there with them and embraced the moment.
Plowman: It was one of those moments where you see grown men crying and they’re with their grandchildren crying. It was a beautiful thing.
Golesh: You see the smoke lit up in the stadium, they’re playing Dixieland Delight and I still get goosebumps thinking about it.
White: I definitely didn’t understand how meaningful it would be for fans until the scene afterward. The emotion, the pent-up frustration of losing to one team for so long. I didn’t go through that so I didn’t understand it as well until after I experienced that.
McGrath: I said, ‘I’m going to go into the locker room.’ So they open the door, and it’s like a fog machine, right? All this smoke comes bellowing out, and there’s just like 600 people in there.
Golesh: I have a picture of my kiddos with Peyton Manning in the locker room after the game and everyone has cigars. I remember Hawk, the equipment guy, gave me a cigar on the way in and I thought, this is going to be the sweetest cigar I smoke in awhile.
Heupel: I smoked it slow, but it was dang good.
Brooks: The locker room was full of current players, former players, recruits, family members. I didn’t even know Peyton was in there. It was mayhem.
Golesh: When I got home, that cigar, whatever was left of it, was sitting in my cup holder. My wife grabbed it and for Christmas I got a picture of the stadium from outside where it looks like cigar smoke from across the river and she’s got that cigar butt at the bottom glued on to the frame. It’s a really cool picture.
Golesh, already a hot coaching candidate, deservedly earned platitudes and attention following the win over Alabama. He loved his time at Tennessee and had little interest in leaving Knoxville before becoming South Florida’s head coach. He still thinks back fondly on that night.
Golesh: When you peel back all the crazy shit that’s going on in our profession, when the lights come on and you’re getting to coach in that environment, that’s what you live for.
Plowman: Everyone talks about that night we beat Alabama as maybe one of the greatest nights of their life. It meant so much to the university, its alums and, honestly, the entire state. It changed the way we carried ourselves.
Finebaum: You watch the end of the game and everything about it was just spectacular. It also felt like the beginning of the end of Nick Saban.
Daniels: I’ve always had it good … but that day, that 24 hours, is hard to beat.
Randy Boyd (University of Tennessee president) on how much fine will cost: It doesn’t matter, we’ll do this every year.
Plowman: I was going to get the call from Commissioner Sankey the next day about the fine. I probably felt the same way as Randy but I wasn’t going to say it on a videotape.
Daniels: One of my favorite parts of carrying the goalposts was going down the strip and stopping traffic for an hour. The people that were trying to order food, most were celebrating but there were a few who hated sports and mad that their orders were taking long. They were honking at us, trying to get us out of the way, and some were genuinely mad. I loved it.
McGrath: The most amazing fan base in college football. A woman went into labor that night and gave birth the next morning to her baby, Heidi Chase. My girlfriend and I have talked to the family over the years. We went to Disneyland together in California and I’ll be meeting with them when I go to the Bama game. They even sent me pins with my face and their daughter’s face on it, and they say Chase².
Daniels: Once we threw it in the river, everyone is videoing and we watched it float maybe 20 yards or so and we were like, ‘Wait a second. We can saw this thing up and keep it.’ About four or five of us swam out, retrieved it and then these guys said to take it back to a fraternity and we can cut it up. We met up the next day, sawed it up and we all got about a six or seven inch piece. Ben (Gleason) still worked for the football program and knew Chase McGrath. At the end of the season, we took it over to his house, had him sign our pieces and then we gave him his own piece.
Obviously, McGrath said, you don’t want your kick to get deflected in any way. But in this case, he’s thankful because there are no nets in Neyland Stadium and a clean hit would have sent a piece of history into the stands where “some fan would take it home like it was Shohei Otani’s 50/50 ball.” Since it was tipped, it landed in the field of play where Tennessee’s equipment managers quickly scooped it up, threw it in the ball bag and got off the field.
McGrath: So when I ended up getting the ball back to me, the specialists, we had all of these HD photos because there were a million angles of that kick. And the first ball I got, when I looked at it, it was not the ball I kicked in the photos.
So I grabbed the ball they gave me and said [to the equipment managers], ‘Hey guys, so we looked at the photos and this isn’t the ball I kicked. It’s completely fine. If you guys want to keep it, whoever has it, I don’t want to, like, cause any issues, and I completely understand. You guys keep the ball. I appreciate it. I just don’t want this ball because this is not the ball I kicked.’ And they were like, ‘No, Chase, we promise that wasn’t it. You guys can come take a look at the ball bag.’
So there were about six balls we pulled out. The managers, the guys who caught it, a few of them had their personal phone cameras. Because they were recording it, and you could see them catch it and see the ball an inch away from their camera. And each ball has all these markings. The Power T has different fadings. The dimples on the side of the ball, there’s different markings that were on there. They’re like, ‘Dude, it’s one of these in the bag.’ And we all kind of got together, all the specialists and a few equipment managers and held out all these different photos and angles and found the ball that matched it up perfectly.
And so they let me go home with the ball. [Laughs] We just wanted to verify. We were able to get photo evidence, so it’s all good.
Postscript: The aftermath
Plowman: It had huge effects on the university. Our admissions folks told us that within 24 hours, 2,000 applications from out-of-state dropped immediately.
Finebaum: When Tennessee won, the (coffin) thing kind of metastasized in terms of viral hits. It became part of the texture of the weekend.
Brown: I think it’s kind of propelled our program forward and everything, recruiting, and then letting our guys have the confidence to go out and just play free and and know that, we’ve done it so they can do it too.
Plowman: One of the things that’s happened here – and I think beating Alabama is a piece of it – but also a lot of other things. The University of Tennessee has become a destination college, for every 17 year-old in the country it seems has Tennessee on their list now. That’s a great thing for the university, for the state. This fall we had close to 60,000 applications for the freshman class. That’s crazy numbers.
Ward: That was the game that proved to any Tennessee fan that was still waiting to see something to believe. Beating Alabama, ending the losing streak, doing that to a Nick Saban team, got every Tennessee fan on board.
White: I felt like I made the right decision bringing Josh here the day I made that decision and continue to feel that way. To use the term validate, that validation comes more from what I see happening daily in our football program and the way that he’s building it.
Following the win over Alabama, Tennessee went up to No. 1 in the rankings ahead of another big rivalry game, this time against Georgia. Hooker suffered a torn ACL against South Carolina, and the Volunteers ultimately finished 11-2 and No. 6 in the country.
Ward: There was a large enough percentage of Tennessee fans at that point that didn’t even know what Tennessee being back meant. Fans who had grown up hearing about how good Tennessee was but never actually saw it themselves that was the first time they saw it.
White: I still don’t think we’re back-back. We have a lot of work to do. You can’t build one of, if not the best, athletic departments in the country overnight. We can’t do that without our football program being one of the very elite in the country.
Hooker: We knew if we truly wanted to plant that flag for this program, we had to beat one team.
White: That was a special season, we had a great year, but as you know, bringing a football program back is more than one data point of one game or even one season.
Alabama returns this weekend to Knoxville for the first time since 2022. Finebaum and SEC Nation will again be in Knoxville ahead of No. 7 Alabama versus No. 11 Tennessee, though don’t expect a return of his Paul-bearers.
Finebaum: I’m in Dallas this year for SEC Media Days and I’m walking in the hallway and run straight into Josh Heupel. Someone in one of the TV rooms showed him the coffin deal. He had never seen it. He said that was hilarious, that was unbelievable. No matter what you do, you know you’re probably not ever going to top it.
White: I think Josh has done a phenomenal job building it the right way. I think it’s going to be a great game. Having Alabama here is always special. It’s one of the most historic rivalries in all of college football.
Plowman: That loss (against Arkansas) was really disappointing, but five years ago, I think I would have heard, ‘Oh that’s it, we’re done, we’re not that good.’ I don’t see that now. It’s OK we’re going to beat Florida and then Alabama’s coming here and we’re going to beat them again. There’s a difference in people’s confidence levels.
