“Count it down with me . . . Five, four, three, two, one. The national champion is clad in Big Orange. Tennessee 23, Florida State 16.” These were the words of retiring University of Tennessee broadcaster John Ward as the clock ticked off the final moments of the Fiesta Bowl on January 5, 1999 and signified closure of a magical season for the Volunteer football team. From the previous year, the Vols had lost a legendary, record-setting quarterback in Peyton Manning and an All-American defensive end/linebacker in Leonard Little. Most sports pundits considered 1998 a rebuilding season for Tennessee, one in which the team would struggle for any recognition beyond the Southeastern Conference. One of Tennessee’s players, however, summed up the team attitude toward the 1998 season when he said “Nobody expected anything from us. They just didn’t know how hungry we were.” Head Coach Phillip Fulmer sensed the team’s determination to prove the critics wrong and vowed to make the most of his players’ potential. “We asked them to listen to their coaches, and they responded the way we hoped they would,” he said. The rest is history. The Vols finished the regular season 12-0 while beating three teams in the collegiate top ten and three other squads in the top twenty-five. The last unbeaten Tennessee team played in 1956, and the 1998 Volunteer squad was the first to amass twelve victories and no losses in a season. The Vols advanced to first place in the Associated Press poll on November 8 and remained atop the writers’ and broadcasters’ balloting for the last three weeks of the 1998 season. Then with their 24-14 victory over Mississippi State in the Southeastern Conference championship game on December 5, they added a first place in the coaches poll. The capturing of the conference title, combined with losses by previously undefeated UCLA and Kansas State, assured the Vols a spot in the January 5, 1999 Fiesta Bowl opposite Florida State and a shot at the NCAA Division 1-A championship. Tennessee’s defeat of the perennial powerhouse Seminoles, producing a perfect 13-0, national championship season, was one more close game in a season filled with cliffhangers. The Tennessee Vols’ stifling defense and offensive play makers once again turned the expression “rising to the occasion” into an art form.
