Condrege Holloway's 1973 Georgia Tech performance was epic

Maxie Baughn wouldn’t have changed anything. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if he did.

The Georgia Tech defensive coordinator watched in disbelief from somewhere inside Neyland Stadium on Oct. 13, 1973 as his gameplan was foiled again by Condredge Holloway.

The first time Holloway—Tennessee’s elusive, jaw-dropping quarterback—escaped the grasp of a Yellow Jackets’ defender to complete an 11-yard touchdown pass to Bill Rudder might have been chalked up to luck.

The second time he did it, it bordered on sorcery.

It happened less than a minute after Holloway’s first escape act. Eddie Brown set it up with an interception, putting the Vols right back within striking distance in a tie game.

Holloway dropped back to pass again, looking to his right. There was no one open. He ran forward as one Georgia Tech would-be tackler grabbed him around the waist. He still kept moving, dragging him for a few yards before slipping away.

Two more defenders crashed in. Holloway split them. Another was in front of him, but he stepped to the side and made that one miss. Just to prove he could play smash-mouth football, too, Holloway lowered his shoulder into the last man standing in his way.

Holloway danced into the end zone to finish off one of the most stunning and dazzling runs ever played out on the turf of the Vols’ storied football cathedral. It also gave Tennessee the lead for good in a 20-14 triumph.

“If we had to do it over, we wouldn’t do anything different,” Baughn told reporters. “(Holloway) is just the type of player who is hard to defend.”

“You can practice all you want,” Georgia Tech head coach Fulcher said. “But you can’t simulate Holloway’s moves or his second effort.”

“His moves are not fluid or smooth,” Yellow Jackets’ defensive end Bobby Daffer added. “They are raw. Sporadic. Fast. He beat us.”

Georgia Tech had gotten a small taste of it the year before in Atlanta. Holloway was making his first start—the first Black player to start at quarterback for an SEC team. He threw an early interception that should have been taken back for a touchdown.

Instead, Holloway chased it down, the Yellow Jackets settled for a field goal and Tennessee won running away, 34-3. One year later, Georgia Tech was getting the full Holloway experience.

“Wild are the ways of this Tennessee football team,” Marvin West wrote for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “Like mixing Russian roulette and skydiving with an umbrella. Bill Battle’s Volunteers, undisputed champs for nail-gnawing excitement, lived dangerously again yesterday at Neyland Stadium. But it was Georgia Tech that went down in front of a limp, stunned gathering of 70,616.”

It was the theme of Tennessee in ‘73: Playing from behind and then going back in front in the most theatrical way imaginable.

The Vols did it against Duke in the season opener and vs. Kansas in Memphis—both wins by a combined five points.

Of course, having the “Artful Dodger” helped. That was the nickname given to Holloway by the sporting press and he played like it, as Georgia Tech learned.

His style of play inspired even songwriters. “Go Holloway” by Johnny Vol and the Orange Peels was a local hit.

“We’ve come to expect it, but we still don’t believe it,” Tennessee running back Paul Careathers said.

“(Holloway) has got to do the things that he does if we are to win,” Vols’ head coach Bill Battle said. “We don’t have a reverse. Condredge is our reverse. We don’t have a draw. Condredge is our draw.”

Battle brought Holloway to Tennessee by way of Huntsville, Alabama where he was a three-sport star at Lee High School, spurning in-state football giants Bear Bryant and Alabama and Shug Jordan and Auburn for the opportunity to play quarterback.

Even before he played a snap in a meaningful game, some 30,000 fans showed up to Neyland Stadium to see Holloway play in a freshmen game against Notre Dame in 1971. It was a precursor of things to come.

Tennessee was a blockbuster hit with Holloway leading the offense throughout his three-year career.

He got off a last-second pitch to Haskel Stanback in a 28-21 win over Penn State in 1972, came back from the hospital to flip into the end zone—hurt shoulder and all—for a game-tying touchdown in a 17-17 draw with UCLA in 1974 and somehow lofted a pass to Larry Seivers on a two-point conversion to beat Clemson later that same year.

But Holloway’s performance against Georgia Tech might have topped them all just for the absurdity of it.

The off-balance pass to Rudder that should have been a sack, the five broken tackles and powering through a defender for a touchdown; one highlight after another and every bit important in a one-score victory that extended the Vols’ win streak to 11 games.

“You can’t describe it,” the Vol Network’s John Ward exclaimed as he watched Holloway high-step into the end zone from the radio booth atop Neyland Stadium. “There’s no way to describe it. Just rack up six and give it to Holloway.”

Living on the edge caught up with Tennessee a week later in a loss to No. 2 Alabama that was followed by a 35-31 defeat at the hands of Georgia two weeks after that. Injuries piled up for Holloway the following season, but he played through them, providing more reality-defying plays in torn jerseys and on sore knees and bruised shoulders. 

As for finding the words to describe what he did to the Yellow Jackets’ defense, Holloway left that to his coaches, teammates, the defenders that spent the whole afternoon chasing him and the opposing coaches that tried in vain to scheme up ways to stop him.

Holloway’s description of his play was far less poetic, to the point that you wouldn’t think much of it if you didn’t see it with your own eyes.

Self-praise eluded him like he eluded defenses. 

“I never ran over anybody,” Holloway told reporters as he smiled inside the Vols’ postgame locker room. “Maybe they missed me a time or two, but I didn’t mash anybody.”