Seventy-Five Years, Two Shades of Orange, and One Set of Heroes
On September 26, the University of Texas will walk into Neyland Stadium for the first time in history.
Let that sit for a second. Two of the most recognizable programs in college football. Two schools that have been arguing over the same two letters since before either one of them had a fight song. And in more than a century of playing this sport, the Longhorns have never once set foot in Knoxville.
It's only the fourth meeting all-time. The other three were all played in Dallas, on New Year's Day, at the Cotton Bowl. Texas leads the series 2-1. The last one was in 1969 and Nixon hadn't been sworn in yet.
So this is new ground. But it isn't a game between strangers.
The Man Who Was There
To understand what this matchup means, we went to the only place you can go for a first-hand account: a man who lined up against Texas twice. Jim Haslam came to Tennessee in 1948 to play for General Robert R. Neyland. He was a starting tackle on the 1950, 1951, and 1952 teams, and captained the '52 squad. And on January 1, 1951, in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, he played in the only game Tennessee has ever won against the Texas Longhorns.
He's 95 now. He sat down with us in Knoxville to talk about it.
The first thing he wanted to tell us wasn't about the game. It was about the tunnel. The Vols were lined up under the Cotton Bowl, waiting to run out, and the Texas band was playing “The Eyes of Texas.” General Neyland turned to his football team and said:
“They're playing ‘The Eyes of Texas’ now. We'll be playing the Tennessee Waltz when it's over.”
Here's what makes that line land even harder seventy-five years later. “Tennessee Waltz” wasn't just a song. Patti Page's recording had reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart dated December 30, 1950 just two days before kickoff. It was the biggest record in America that week, and it would stay at No. 1 for nine weeks. Neyland knew exactly what he was doing.
Then there was the scouting report, delivered before they ever took the field.
“General Neyland told us we were going to be behind at halftime. He said Texas was bigger than we were and stronger than we were, but that we had more heart. We went in down 14-7. Then we scored two touchdowns in the second half and won it 20-14. How about that?”
How about that. Ninety-five years old, and he still says it like a man who can't quite believe he got to be there.
January 1, 1951
The game he's describing is one of the great afternoons in Tennessee football history, and it's worth setting the table.
Tennessee came in 10-1. Texas came in ranked No. 3, Southwest Conference champions, undefeated in league play. Seventy-five thousand people packed the Cotton Bowl.
The Vols struck first. Hank Lauricella broke loose on a 75-yard run, reversing field three separate times, slowing down to let his blockers catch up and Herky Payne hit John Gruble for the touchdown it set up. It's still one of the most famous runs in program history.
Then Texas took over. A blocked Lauricella punt gave the Longhorns the ball at the eight. They punched it in. Then they threw for another. Halftime: Texas 14, Tennessee 7.
The second half belonged entirely to Tennessee. Andy Kozar bulled in from the five. Jim Hill picked off a Texas pass. The teams traded fumbles on back-to-back plays, and the Vols turned the Texas giveaway into the winning score — Kozar again, his second of the day. Tennessee outscored Texas 13-0 after the break and rushed for 295 yards on the afternoon.
Final: Tennessee 20, Texas 14. Several selectors named that 1950 team national champions. It remains Tennessee's only win over the Longhorns. And here's the detail almost nobody knows: Robert Neyland was born in Greenville, Texas. The general who told his team they'd be playing the Tennessee Waltz, whose name is on the stadium the Longhorns are about to visit, was a native born Texan.
The Other Big Orange
When Texas beat Tennessee 36-13 in the 1969 Cotton Bowl, the university's own recap referred to the Longhorns as “the other Big Orange.” That's the whole thing in four words.
Both schools are UT. Both schools wear orange and white. Both have a live animal on the sideline. Both have a hand sign every fan in the country recognizes. Both have a song that a hundred thousand people will sing without being asked.
It got so tangled that in 1986 the two universities had to sit down with lawyers and divide up the continent. Under the settlement, Tennessee holds the commercial rights to the interlocking UT mark east of the Mississippi River plus West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, thrown in for the LSU trip. Texas gets everything west. That is a real agreement between two real universities about two letters of the alphabet.
Even the orange was a reaction. Tennessee adopted orange and white in 1889. Texas went to a darker burnt orange in the 1920s in part to separate itself from the other schools already wearing the color — Tennessee chief among them.
And when Texas joined the SEC, the league's own materials listed Tennessee as “UT” and Texas as “TEX.” Josh Heupel had already planted the flag at SEC Media Days: “There's only one real UT.”
We happen to agree. And we don't think it's an argument.
At our tailgate this week we're handing out a sticker. Three lines:
The Original. UT. Since 1794.
Here's why that date settles it.
Blount College, the school that became the University of Tennessee was chartered on September 10, 1794, by the legislature of the Southwest Territory, meeting right here in Knoxville. It was the 24th college chartered in the young United States. Tennessee itself wouldn't become a state for another two years. This university is older than the state it's named after.
Now go look at what Texas was in 1794.
It wasn't a state. It wasn't part of the United States. It wasn't even part of Mexico. Mexico didn't exist yet and wouldn't win its independence from Spain until 1821. In 1794, Texas was a remote frontier province of New Spain, administered out of Madrid. It would be forty-two more years before Texas was a republic, fifty-one before it was a state, and eighty-nine years before the University of Texas opened its doors on September 15, 1883.
Eighty-nine years. We'd been UT for the better part of a century before there was anybody to share the letters with.
That's not trash talk. That's a founding date.
When Texas Called, Tennessee Answered
Here's what makes this more than a logo argument.
In 1836, Texas was fighting for its life. Nobody was required to go help. That's exactly the point.
Davy Crockett came to Texas with a company of Tennessee riflemen. They were not soldiers. Nobody drafted them, nobody paid them, and nobody would have thought less of them for staying home in Greene County. They went because men who neededhelp had asked for it. On March 6, 1836, Crockett died inside the walls of the Alamo with those Tennesseans around him, buying the one thing the Texas cause didn't have and couldn't manufacture: time.
Thirteen days of it. Thirteen days for an army to gather.
Sam Houston is the man who used them. Raised in Blount County, a few miles from where you're sitting, he taught school in a one-room building outside Maryville that still stands today. He'd fought under Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend and carried the wounds from it the rest of his life. In Texas he took command of an army that barely existed, kept it together through a retreat that half his own men wanted to mutiny over, and then turned and struck at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.
The battle lasted eighteen minutes. His men went in yelling Remember the Alamo. Santa Anna was captured the next day. Texas was free.
Houston became president of the Republic of Texas, then a U.S. senator, then governor of the state. The largest city in Texas carries his name. The Alamo is the most sacred ground in Texas. And a Tennessean stands at the center of both.
That's not a coincidence of geography. That's the whole idea behind the word on the front of our jersey.
Tennessee is the Volunteer State because Tennesseans have a two-hundred-year habit of showing up uninvited when somebody's in trouble. When the government asked this state for 2,800 men for the Mexican War, roughly 30,000 answered. They had to turn people away. That's the definition. A volunteer is somebody who goes when he doesn't have to.
Texas knows what that's worth better than anybody. Texas is standing today because of it.
So when the Longhorns come to Knoxville on September 26, understand what's actually happening. This isn't a road trip into hostile territory. They're coming home to the people who showed up for them.
Two UTs. Two oranges. One set of heroes.
Only one of us has Rocky Top.
See you on the 26th.