University of Tennessee Athletics
Inside The T – Halloween Wins
October 30, 2015 | Football
By Brian Rice
UTSports.com
Tennessee will play on Halloween for the 16th time when it takes the field against Kentucky at Commonwealth Stadium, with a 12-3 record in previous meetings. The Vols were using the date to inflict losses on other teams since long before Michael Myers started terrorizing Lampkin Ln.
The Volunteers played their first game on the date in 1903, a 10-0 victory over Nashville. UT won just four of its nine games that season, but like the Halloween game, all four victories came by shutout scores. In fact, all nine games that season and the nine games the next season all saw Tennessee either shutout its opponent or be shutout itself.
Tennessee has shut out Halloween opponents on three other occasions since that first game, 67-0 over Chattanooga in 1914, 46-0 against Georgia in 1936 and 26-0 over LSU in 1942. The Volunteers have been shutout just once, 48-0, by Mississippi A&M in 1910.
As the calendar turns, it can be a long time between Halloween games. After a 29-7 victory over North Carolina in 1959, there would be 11 bouts of trick-or-treating before the Vols faced Wake Forest in Memphis in 1970, a 41-7 UT win. 17 more years would pass before a 1987 game at Boston College.
The longest stretch between Halloween games linked perhaps the two most memorable games on the date, 1998 and 2009.
In 1998, the Vols jumped out to a 21-0 halftime lead over South Carolina in Columbia thanks to the right arm of Tee Martin. The junior completed 23 of 24 passes for 315 yards and four touchdowns. The 23 completions came on his first 23 attempts of the afternoon, which gave Martin the NCAA record for most consecutive completions in a game.
The Vols went on to defeat the Gamecocks, 49-14, and would rise to the No. 1 spot in the polls a week later after a win over UAB. Martin and his team held that spot through a victory over Florida State in the Fiesta Bowl for the program’s sixth national championship.
The record for Martin would be tied by California’s Aaron Rodgers in 2004 and eventually stood until East Carolina quarterback Dominique Davis completed all 26 of his attempts in the first half of a victory over Navy.
21 years later, rumors of a Halloween surprise bounced all around Vol Nation in the build up to another meeting with the Gamecocks, this one in Knoxville. Tennessee warmed up wearing all orange, but emerged from the tunnel to run through the T in attire that confirmed the rumors.
Tennessee left the locker room in black jerseys, the first time since orange was introduced in 1922 that the Vols wore a color other than orange or white. The new attire caused a buzz in the stands, one that intensified as UT forced South Carolina fumbles on each of the first two drives and came away with touchdowns on the resulting possessions.
In the second quarter, USC fumbled again and again the Vols turned the miscue into seven points for a 21-0 lead over the No. 21 Gamecocks. Montario Hardesty put the game on ice with his second touchdown run of the night in the third quarter as Tennessee rolled to a 31-13 upset.
It has been six years since the Vols played on Halloween, but they return Saturday to a favorite haunt. Tennessee is 36-14-3 all-time in Lexington and has won 15 of the last 16 games played there.
Not that any of these numbers and memories mean anything for this year, but it is fun to think about. One thing is for sure, the Vols will come to Halloween this year in full costume as football players, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Brian Rice is the writer for UTSports.com. You can contact him after he goes trick-or-treating in the press box on Twitter @briancrice or by email at UTSportsMailbag@gmail.com.
