How Curt Watson made his mark in 1969

Bill Britton stood inside Neyland Stadium in May 1969 and saw something familiar.

Tennessee was holding its annual Orange and White game that spring, and the former assistant coach under Robert Neyland couldn’t take his eyes off of freshman fullback Curt Watson.

Watson dazzled, running all over the Vols’ starting defense for 193 yards. Britton had seen it before.

“That boy looks like the best runner I’ve seen around here since Gene McEver,” Britton told then-Knoxville News-Sentinel sports editor Tom Siler.

It was the ultimate compliment for a Tennessee ball carrier. McEver set all kinds of program records during his playing career from 1928-29, which he later parlayed into a College Football Hall of Fame induction in 1954.

Everyone else saw it too on a rainy day at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia that November.

Watson slugged through the mud—and the Georgia defense—for a school-record 197 yards and a touchdown in a 17-3 Vols’ triumph that set No. 3 Tennessee on course for its second SEC title in three years under head coach Doug Dickey.

“It’s hard to tackle a wet uniform,” Watson told reporters, giving the sporting press a subtle description of his herculean effort.

Even if the No. 11 Bulldogs’ defense had found a way to slow him down, they would have had an equally difficult time stopping Don McLeary.

McLeary ran for another 100 and scored the Vols’ other touchdown.

“I’ve never seen that kind of running,” Tennessee quarterback Bobby Scott said. “I’d hand the ball off and carry out my fake and they’d still be running.”

Watson, an all-star runner from down the road in Crossville and dubbed the “Crossville Comet,” was ineligible because of rules barring freshmen from varsity competition the previous year when the Vols came from behind in the final minute to tie Georgia with no time left on the clock in a 17-17 draw at Neyland Stadium.

Tennessee went on to win eight games and make a Cotton Bowl appearance. The Bulldogs won the SEC.

Georgia was still in the race for another league crown in 1969, but its margin for error was thin.

The Bulldogs beat Tulane, Clemson and South Carolina, but lost to Ole Miss, 25-17 in their conference opener. They responded with wins over Vanderbilt and Kentucky leading up to their rematch with the Vols.

Tennessee, meanwhile, was unbeaten, winners of five-straight over Chattanooga, No. 17 Auburn, Memphis State, Georgia Tech and No. 20 Alabama at Legion Field in Birmingham the week before.

Clashes between Tennessee and Georgia were rare in those days. The 1968 meeting between the two schools was the first in 31 years despite being in the same conference and only separated by some 230 miles.

They bickered like old rivals in the leadup to that game, though.

The Vols installed Tartan Turf that summer—the first of its kind in the south. Bulldogs’ head coach Vince Dooley was against his team playing on the unfamiliar surface in the season opener for both teams, as well as Tennessee’s alleged lack of communication about its installation at the SEC spring meetings.

Insults were hurled in newspapers from Nashville to Atlanta and continued up until kickoff, which was televised on ABC. One year later, it was hardly a footnote. This time, the headliner was top billing in the SEC, which was a three-team race that Saturday.

Tennessee, Florida and LSU were unblemished in the league. A loss for two teams and a win for another gave that team a leg up. Georgia could get back in the conversation if all three lost.

Dooley spent that week in the film room, trying to figure out a way to stop Watson and move the ball against the Vols’ stellar linebacking corps as he replayed Tennessee’s thumping of Alabama two weeks earlier.

“Defense is what makes Tennessee a great team, but they also have a very good offense,” Dooley told the Atlanta Journal. “Curt Watson is probably the best fullback we’ve faced. Bobby Scott isn’t spectacular, but he has poise and he moves the team. They can move the football and the defense also scores.”

Dooley watched everything he saw in the projection room painfully play out in front of him a few days later.

Billy Young and Mike Jones ended Bulldog drives with interceptions. Steve Kiner ended two more with fumble recoveries.

Tennessee made mistakes, too. Bobby Majors lost his grip on a slippery ball on an early Georgia punt and the Bulldogs jumped on top of it at the 28-yard line. They reached as far as the 10, but Craig Elrod lost the ball and Kiner recovered it.

In one of his few displays of immortality that afternoon, Watson gave the ball right back. The Vols defense held again and forced a field goal. The Bulldogs didn’t score again.

The Watson-McLeary show began late in the second quarter when the two powered down field on Tennessee’s first scoring drive. Watson set the stage with a 6-yard run up the middle and McCleary capped it from the goal line.

Mike Jones snagged a Mike Cavan pass on Georgia’s ensuing drive to give the ball right back to the Vols’ offense with three minutes left in the half. Watson scored a few plays later for a 14-3 lead.

The Bulldogs started to gain a little momentum in the early-going of the third, but Jackie Walker—literally—took it away, knocking the ball loose from Cavan and into the hands of Kiner.

Watson put Tennessee on the doorstep of putting it away with a 49-yard run. George Hunt’s 39-yard field goal with seven minutes left was the dagger.

“(Tennessee) just rammed the ball down our throats,” Dooley bluntly told sports writers.

“Tennessee brought some old-fashioned, prehistoric football in which man gets what he wants by foot to Sanford Stadium Saturday afternoon and ran Georgia right out of the Southeastern Conference pennant race,” Furman Bisher penned for the Atlanta Journal.

Watson might have looked like he was firing through the Bulldogs’ defense like the fighter jets he later flew with the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels, but he didn’t think so.

He felt the licks at the line of scrimmage, but powered through them. He felt the full force of being plowed into the wet, muddy turf at the end of a long run, then he got up and did it again.

The Bulldogs knew it was coming every time. It didn’t matter.

“Don’t get the idea that it was easy,” Watson inside the cramped visitors locker room at Sanford Stadium. “You can damn well believe those Georgia boys were hitting. When I broke out of tackles, I guess it was because it’s hard to hold on when your pants are slippery wet.”

As the Vols were putting the finishing touches on Georgia, Florida lost to Auburn and LSU floundered against Mississippi State. Tennessee was alone at the top of the SEC mountain.

They weren’t knocked off of it, either, though Ole Miss landed a big swing when Archie Manning and the Rebels blanked the Vols in Jackson, Mississippi, 38-0 two weeks after the Georgia game.

Tennessee outlasted Kentucky and held off Vanderbilt to wear the SEC crown again.

Watson ran for 115 yards and two touchdowns in the Vols’ grand finale against the Commodores at Neyland Stadium. He rushed for 121 yards and was named the Most Outstanding Player in Tennessee’s Gator Bowl loss to Florida a month later.

“We had a struggle for two or three weeks,” Dickey said after the Vols’ 40-27 win over Vanderbilt. “I think this team sort of peaked out after the Georgia game and we were struggling for a while. But the boys got together again today and played football. I’m proud of them.”