While the main goal for any sports team is to win a championship each season, just making the postseason alone can be very difficult. Especially when you broaden the scope to encompass an entire collegiate athletics program.
For a football team to make the postseason, the team must win at least half of its games throughout the regular season. In a conference like the SEC, that can often be a difficult task while some make it look easy. Then you flip over to basketball. In both the men’s and women’s tournaments, it takes an entire season to put together a quality resume to cement your spot in the big dance.
Just look at Texas A&M’s men’s team from this year. The Aggies finished the regular season as the eighth-ranked team in the SEC before going on a three-game tear to reach the SEC Tournament championship game. Texas A&M fell to Tennessee, but even after the improbable run with wins over Auburn, Arkansas, and Florida, the Aggies were still left out of the tournament.
By the end of the 2021-2022 college basketball season, Tennessee was just one of 13 collegiate programs to reach a bowl game in football and the NCAA tournament in both men’s and women’s basketball.
The full list of teams includes Iowa, Miami, Michigan, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Iowa State, Kentucky, North Carolina, Baylor, Arkansas, Ohio State, LSU, and Tennessee.
While each of the three Tennessee teams did find postseason heartbreak in the last five months, all were memorable events or runs nonetheless.
The Vols’ football team, just one year removed from a 3-7 season under Jeremy Pruitt, made it to the Music City Bowl to take on Purdue. Tennessee did lose that game in overtime, but it was a definitive statement that there would be a new era at Tennessee moving forward.
The Lady Vols, led by head coach Kellie Harper, were the most successful of Tennessee’s postseason teams. Tennessee took down Buffalo and Belmont in the first and second rounds respectively in Knoxville before traveling to Witchita for the Sweet 16. The Lady Vols fell to Louisville, but it did mark Tennessee’s return to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2016.
Lastly, Tennessee’s men’s team found a three-seed in the tournament after becoming the SEC Tournament champions for the first time since 1979. The Vols did wind up losing to Michigan in the second round, but the tournament championship did ease some of the pain of Tennessee fans.
With the College World Series approaching, it is a chance for Tennessee to even trim down that list of 13 even further.
Out of the 13 teams that were on the list, only six of those teams are currently ranked in D1 Baseball’s Top 25 Poll. Tennessee is at No. 1, Arkansas at No. 2, Miami at No. 8, Notre Dame at No. 13, LSU at No. 19, and North Carolina at No. 22.
The stability in Tennessee’s athletic programs is truly something remarkable. Stability isn’t something that Tennessee has always had an abundance of in the last decade or more. The Vols have a plethora of talented coaches on campus right now between Josh Heupel, Kellie Harper, Tony Vitello, Rick Barnes, Brian Pensky, and countless others.
The Tennessee Baseball team is sitting at the top of the baseball world with the consensus No. 1 ranking, but the rest of Tennessee’s teams are still sitting with elite company, too.
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Not to mention Women’s Soccer making the postseason and more than likely Softball as well. How many programs can say that?