How Tennessee became a football power with 1928 Alabama win

The headlights flickered on, aiming at Denny Field. 

The cars surrounding Alabama’s home field were the only source of light as the sun set over Tuscaloosa on Oct. 20, 1928. Tennessee and the heavily favored Crimson Tide, who had gone blow for blow with each other right out of the gate, were  locked in a stalemate as the last bit of sunlight seeped away.

The two sides of the stadium—a combined 25 rows of seats—were still filled to capacity. A few thousand more watched from their standing-room-only perches on each end. It wasn’t supposed to be going this long. 

Just before kickoff, Vols’ head coach Robert Neyland suggested shortening the second half to Alabama’s Wallace Wade in case the Crimson Tide—the football juggernaut that had put southern football on the map with back-to-back Rose Bowl triumphs in 1925 and 1926—were up big. 

Instead, Alabama was fighting for its life in the final minutes. 

When Davis Brasfield’s final pass fell harmlessly to the turf with no time left, a new football power had arrived. 

Tennessee’s 15-13 victory ushered in a new chapter in its rivalry with Alabama. It marked the first meeting between the two teams after a 14-year hiatus and the first on the third Saturday in October. 

It was also the breakout of the Vols’ “Flaming Sophomores,” which included the star-studded backfield of Bobby Dodd, Gene McEver and Buddy Hackman. 

For Neyland, who was promoted two years earlier for the purpose of beating Vanderbilt, it set Tennessee on the course of a decades-long dynasty that included four national championships and a slew of conference titles and College Football Hall of Fame players.

“No greater upset will occur in the South this year than Tennessee’s startling victory in a game packed with dynamite and the unexpected,” Zipp Newman wrote for the Birmingham Post-Herald. “And the only reason the state of Alabama didn’t go broke was because Tennessee was bashful about taking up the short ends of heavy odds.”

The Vols’ climb to the upper echelon of the football elite started with a run.

Denny Field was the epicenter of the sport on that Saturday, at least in the South. Southern Railroad ran a special line to Tuscaloosa for the game, and even though the newspapers regaled stories of mighty Alabama, a hopeful Tennessee contingent made the trip. 

“The University of Alabama is preparing for the biggest homecoming celebration ever,” the Birmingham Post-Herald reported. “The feature will be, of course, the football game between the Crimson Tide of Alabama and the orange and white of Tennessee. Both teams are undefeated and should put up a great battle for supremacy.”

Tennessee rolled over Maryville College and Centre in its first two games before its baptism by fire against Ole Miss. McEver scored the game-deciding touchdown and Hackman knocked away the extra point pass on the Rebels’ game-tying bid to win 13-12 at Shields-Watkins Field. 

Alabama blanked that same Ole Miss team, 27-0 a week earlier, making bettors even more confident when they put $500 on the Vols not even being able to score on the Crimson Tide. 

During Tennessee’s train ride from Knoxville a few days before the game, Neyland called each player into his private compartment one by one. 

“He talked to us about our preparation,” McEver said in Bob Gilbert’s book, Neyland: The Gridiron General. “About what it took to win a big football game…The most important thing he said was that we were better, man for man, than the Alabama players.”

McEver was inspired. And confident. 

In the Birmingham hotel room he shared with Dodd the night before kickoff, he called his shot. 

“If they kick that ball to ol’ Gene, he’s gonna run it back for a touchdown,” Dodd later recalled what McEver told him. 

His words proved prophetic. The 185-pound McEver gathered the ball around the goal line, then took off. In front of him, the Vols’ kick return team darted to opposite sides of the field, taking out any Alabama player in their way. 

McEver was suddenly streaking into the open. He looked over his shoulder, at first to see if anyone was still coming running after him and then in awe to see that they weren’t. Neyland anxiously looked for an official to wave it off, almost in disbelief of what had just witnessed and how easy it was. 

“(Blockers) started cutting down the Crimsons like a reaper in a field of grain,” Knoxville Journal sports editor Ed Harris penned. “The blocking was so efficient that McEver ran the last 20 yards looking back to see if there was any pursuit. There was none.”

Back in Knoxville, fans gathered around radios in downtown department stores to hear the broadcast of McEver’s touchdown run on WNOX. Another man received play-by-play updates by telegram and announced them to the crowd through a megaphone. 

Their jubilation was brief, though.

The Crimson Tide scored in three plays, the last a Beranrd Holm 45-yard touchdown run. The extra point missed to keep the Vols in front, 7-6, but Alabama was threatening again at the Tennessee 20-yard line. 

Holm coughed up the ball at the end of a run and Vols’ defensive end Paul Hug picked it up and ran 26 yards before he was dragged down to come up with the stop. Tennessee wasn’t able to take advantage of the takeaway, but the sequence haunted the Crimson Tide. 

Another costly Alabama error came after a Dodd punt rolled out of bounds at the three and forced John Henry Suther to punt from his own end zone a few plays later. He dropped the ball after the snap and Harry Thayer penned him down for two more points. The Vols’ lead was 9-6 at the end of the first quarter. 

Alabama still had no answer for the  backfield tandem of McEver and Hackman. The two powered through the Crimson Tide defense in response to get back within striking distance.

Dodd seemingly applied the knockout blow in the second quarter when he lobbed a pass to McEver for another score, this one stretching the Tennessee lead to 15-6. It was one of the last plays that Dodd made.

After trying to field a punt at the end of the first half, Dodd was hit by two Alabama defenders at the same time. He was taken off the field on a stretcher, then put into an ambulance, then a train to a hospital in Birmingham with what the team doctor said was a bruised kidney. 

If the Vols were going to pull off this monumental upset, they’d have to do without Dodd. 

The Crimson Tide came off the ropes and hit back after McEver’s second touchdown. Brasfield set it up with a 57-yard kick return to the Vols’ 15. Holm scored in three plays to again trim Tennessee’s lead, this time at 15-13.

The Vols’ defense was back on their heels in the third quarter. Alabama had marched 53 yards to the 25 and were on the doorstep of taking the lead for the first time. Then a slow rumble started from the visitor’s section. It burst into a chant. 

As they shouted, “Hold them, Tennessee!” Brasfield was running for his life, with tackle James Johnston chasing after him. He fumbled the ball away and with it, Alabama’s last, best chance to lead. 

Where McEver was the kick-starter, Dutch Reineke, who entered for the injured Dodd, was the closer. The left-footed punter held off the Crimson Tide in the fourth quarter, and his late interception all but sealed it. 

When word reached Knoxville by wire, Tennessee students began a parade that went on all night through the streets and well into the next morning when they arrived at the train station to welcome the team back. 

On one end of Denny Field, a scrum of reporters ran for Neyland.

“Our boys played far better than we dreamed they could,” Neyland told them. “They made up for their lack of experience by their unquenchable fight. I’m so proud of them that I’d kiss every one of them if I wasn’t afraid they would all take a (swing) at me when I did.”

“I take off my hat to McEver and Hackman,” Wade told the press. “Those boys are as great a pair of halfbacks as I ever saw. They justly won the battle.”

Tennessee went unbeaten, only drawing Kentucky to a scoreless tie late in the season before knocking off undefeated Florida at home in the finale, further proving their staying power. 

“If you want to know the names of all the other Vols who starred (against Alabama), just gaze over the lineup,” the Knoxville Journal’s Frank Godwin wrote. “To the last man, the Vols came through like All-Americans.”