It’s bad enough that Tennessee is dealing with losing perhaps their worst loss in program history on Saturday when they were run out of their own building by Georgia State. Now they have to deal with the added insult of not even being the best win in their opponents extremely youthful program history.
While on the abstract, beating a CUSA program in the Cure Bowl would seemingly rank down the list of great victories in school history, that’s not the case for Panthers head coach Shawn Elliott. His 2017 victory over Western Kentucky in Orlando that season sticks out for being the first bowl win GSU ever and capped off a successful 7-5 campaign in his debut leading the team.
Though he has a good reason as to why that is tops, it is a bit jarring after the fact for UT fans to see that beating an SEC program in their place is a bit further down the pecking order.
“It’s second,” Elliott said of the win over the Vols in a press conference after the game. “I want you to understand, to win that first bowl game in school history, that’s very, very special. We hoisted a trophy. We played in the postseason. In my 23 years of coaching, that will probably be the No. 1, top of the list in victories.
“As far as a football program, this one (Tennessee) is a close second. But we don’t get anything from this game. Maybe a pat on the back and three weeks people will forget what we’ve done.”
Something says that nobody will forget what Georgia State did on Saturday and certainly not in either Atlanta or, especially, Knoxville for years to come.