(Foreword: I just watched the new “Things Vol Fans Say Often” video, and it got me in the mood to talk UT sports, which doesn’t happen every day. Let this be known, though — I know little to nothing about sports, American football included. This article is based on thorough, sourced research and a quasi-passable awareness of Tennessee sports history. For a complete, arguably encyclopedic know-how of all-things-sports, I refer you to the much more knowledgeable, though eternally less charming Robert Z. Ellis, former Beacon Assistant Sports Editor and Editor-in-Chief, and current Sports Illustrated Online Editor.)

In the wake of such a piss-poor football season, and in lieu of what should be excitement for April’s Orange and White game and fall 2012 and beyond, the spirit and fervor of campus seem to have ebbed to an even more inanimate low than the seasonal malaise we usually see around this time of the year. Dissatisfied fans moan, local and national journalists synthesize the cause and solution for UT’s apparent athletic impotence, and the undoubtedly riches-bound sports management majors cacophonously offer their strategies for how we could have beaten Kentucky in November.

And even with Cuonzo’s honeymoon yielding some decent numbers/talent in Thompson-Boling, I still find myself thirsting for a late ’90s-esque excitement for what’s to come on the gridiron in September. Granted, I’m graduating in May and won’t have the same investment as the current underclassmen, but I’m still a Vol, dammit, and I wanna win.

I’m not looking to assess blame here. I don’t have a fix or fresh coaching roster that will remedy the glaring disparity between 2011’s wins and losses. But in the spirit of commemoration and reflection of my limited UT football savvy, I thought it best to substitute a prescriptive “down with Dooley” rant with a simple profile of a man responsible not only for the rise of Tennessee football and its place in the college sports lexicon, but for the foundation of college football defensive strategy. It might not rectify whatever’s ailing our program, but it may just remind us of the eternal potential to resurrect the Volunteer winning tradition.

I’m not romantic in the sense that I behold Tennessee’s history and culture as the GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, or even the reason I applied to UT in the first place, but I do think it important to remember our achievements and to recognize that when sought with passion, dominance, like the seasons and the tide, is cyclical. Did you know 2012 national champions Alabama went 3-8 in 2000 and 4-9 in 2003? Conversely, Tennessee secured a national championship in ’98 in the midst of a 45-5 run, and before 2006, our last missed bowl game was in 1989. And long before that, when American football was still just manifesting, we had Gen. Robert Neyland.

Never mind his never having a losing season. Never mind his 173-31-12 head coaching record. And never mind that he was a brigadier general and interrupted his coaching tenure twice to go pwn a bunch of fascists. The man had a shutout season — his 1939 Volunteers went the entire regular season without ever being scored upon, and remain the last college American football team to do so. The achievement was in the midst of a 17-game shutout streak and is a record that still stands today. Granted, football was a very different game back then, but even given 1939’s standards of athleticism and the fact that less games were played in a season, that is mind-blowing.

Neyland’s accomplishments weren’t limited to Shield-Watkins Field, either. He also designed his namesake stadium and drew up plans that later became integral to its renovation. He was UT’s athletic director alongside being head coach, taught military science during the offseason, and coined the infamous “Seven Maxims of Football” in the 1930s. He punctuated his career with two national championships in 1950 and 1951, was named Sports Illustrated’s defensive coordinator of the century posthumously, and really more than anything, just made a habit of succeeding consistently.

I took this week to write a neutral article because, well, I just sort of felt like it. But there’s still a deliberate message here so don’t mistake my purpose as a half-hearted attempt to wax poetic about the irretrievable past. It’s not. In fact, it’s nearly the opposite — my report on Neyland is a simple reminder that utter dominance is never off the table. Will we ever have another General, or even another national championship? Obviously no one can say for sure, but with the foundation he laid and the tradition he inculcated, there’s a good chance.

— Sam Ellis is a senior in English and political science. He may be reached at sellis11@utk.edu.