Founded as Blount College in 1974, two years before the state of Tennessee came to be, Samuel Carrick became the University of Tennessee’s first president. The school started as an all-male and all-white school but is now a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The university is now home to over 36,000 students. Attending a school full of tradition, the students are almost as vibrant as the school’s “Tennessee Orange.”
Its students, the Volunteers, found their name in the history of Tennessee’s people. A long history of Tennesseans volunteering in wars, including for both the Confederacy and the Union in the Civil War, and the Mexican-American War, led to this nickname. The football team was first nicknamed the Volunteers in 1902.
In 1931, the lyrics were written for the first official fight song of the school, “Down the Field.” However, the song “Rocky Top” has become their unofficial fight song. It was written in 1967 by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant and recorded by the Osborne Brothers.
It began being played by the Pride of the Southland Band during a 1972 halftime performance and has evolved ever since. Again played in 1974, the song is now heard by Volunteers on game days at Neyland Stadium.
With the endzones in Neyland Stadium painted in an orange and white checkerboard pattern, there is an almost decade-long tradition that mimics the pattern. Checker Neyland is a tradition where the fans come dressed in either orange or white to create a checkerboard pattern across the stadium.
Traditions like these are paired with the school’s iconic mascot and band. Smokey X, a bluetick coonhound mascot, leads the Vols through the Pride of the Southland Band, which is in the shape of a ‘T.’
School traditions aside, Tennesseans have traditionally been powerhouses in team sports such as football and women’s basketball.
While the two teams have 14 national championships combined, only two of them have come in the 21st century. These two are the back-to-back national championships that women’s basketball achieved in 2007 and 2008. Women’s basketball also accomplished a three-peat between 1996 and 1998.
Baseball, however, made history this year after winning a national championship. After losing game one against Texas A&M, the Volunteers stormed back in games two and three to secure the school’s first men’s College World Series.
The Volunteers’ success, both old and new, is complemented by an impressive amount of individual titles. Men’s swimming and diving hold 38 individual titles, both men’s track and field teams hold 56 individual titles combined and the women’s teams hold another 40 individual titles. While this totals 134 titles, only 38 of them were won in the 2000s.
In the 2024 final standings for the Learfield Directors’ Cup, Tennessee ranked third. It was the highest rank among SEC teams as the Volunteers accumulated 1217 points, only behind Texas’ 1377 points and Stanford’s 1312.75 points.
Since the turn of the century, Tennessee has not had the same storied success it once had. However, with the school relishing in traditions, its athletic teams are always striving to bring the Volunteers back to the glory days.
