The 1998 Tennessee Volunteers football team represented the University of Tennessee in the 1998 NCAA Division I-A football season. Tennessee entered the 1998 season coming off an 11–2 record (7–1 SEC) in 1997. The Volunteers were given a preseason ranking of #10 in the AP Poll.
The Vols won their sixth national title after defeating Florida State in the Fiesta Bowl, the first BCS National Championship Game. The '98 Vols beat eight bowl teams, including six January bowl teams, four top ten teams, and three BCS bowl-bound teams. The 1998 Tennessee Volunteers are ranked as the #3 college football team of all time by the Billingsley Report computer ratings.
Tennessee was expected to have a slight fall off after their conference championship the previous season. They had lost quarterback Peyton Manning, wide receiver Marcus Nash, and linebacker Leonard Little to the NFL. Manning was the first pick overall in the 1998 NFL Draft. Tennessee was also coming off a difficult 42–17 loss to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, and were in the midst of a five game losing streak to the rival Florida Gators. Nonetheless, the Volunteers ended their season in Tempe, undefeated, becoming only the fourth school in modern college football history to complete a 13–0 season.
Read more about 1998 Tennessee Volunteers Football Team: Preseason, Captains, Schedule, Statistics, Honors
Famous quotes containing the words football team, volunteers, football and/or team:
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)