Editor’s note: This is a daily series revisiting 100 past Tennessee football games ahead of the Vols’ season opener against Syracuse on Aug. 30 in Atlanta. It is not a ranking of games.
The script was all-too familiar.
As Georgia Tech defensive back Gerry Bussell and darted 84 yards down the sideline of Grant Field to put his Yellow Jackets' team up two scores in the second quarter, struggling Tennessee looked like it was going to go away quietly against another rival.
TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM
That had been the case for these Vols in 1964, who were still trying to find their footing under 32-year-old first-year head coach Doug Dickey, a Frank Broyles assistant at Arkansas less than a year before.
Tennessee lost to No. 8 Auburn by a field goal in Birmingham in week 2 and were beat by multiple scores against No. 3 Alabama two weeks before at Neyland Stadium.
Now, a week after a 7-7 draw at No. 7 LSU, The Vols were about to be done in for good against another top 10 team.
Georgia Tech, led by former Vols player and Bob Neyland protege Bobby Dodd, were ranked seventh in the polls the week of Nov. 7 and hadn't lost a game on its home turf in midtown Atlanta in more than a year.
This day was different. This day, Tennessee flipped the script and delivered the sign of things to come under Dickey.
The Vols won, 22-14 after clawing back from an 11-point deficit. It was the highlight of that '64 campaign, the bridge between a six-year stretch of dormancy and one of the most successful runs in program history through the end of the 1960s.
Newspaperman Marvin West quipped in the Knoxville News-Sentinel the following day that it was the "greatest upset since Pharaoh lost at the Red Sea."
His colleague, columnist Tom Siler summed up the meaning of this Tennessee triumph on the same pages.
"Above all else, this contest set the stage for Tennessee's return to football heights," Siler wrote. "A come-from-behind victory at Grant Field sets a coach apart, strikes a mighty blow in the recruiting war, and makes victory-hungry players thirst for more and more and more."
The Vols needed a couple of heroes to get there, the usual suspects and the unexpected.
The Tennessee defense intercepted Yellow Jackets’ quarterback Jerry Priestly five times, none bigger than the pass that Doug Archibald stepped in front of and raced 69 yards the other way for a fourth quarter touchdown.
Bob Petrella had two interceptions. Frank Emanuel and Tom Fisher had the others. Fred Martin helped keep the Vols in it with a couple of field goals.
Then there was David Leake, a place-kicker one year before who was called to duty when Dickey pulled quarterback Art Galiffa to give him some rest in the fourth quarter.
Leake linked up with Al Tanara for a 23-yard touchdown, then led the charge on a 40-yard drive that was capped by Jack Patterson's 1-yard touchdown run, scored on a second effort push.
Overachieving Tennessee, which had won just five games the year before, was 4-2-1 midway through Dickey's debut. Beating Georgia Tech didn't launch the program back among the football elites, though. At least not that season.
The Vols were blanked by Ole Miss at home the following week and ended the season with losses to Kentucky and Vanderbilt, missing out on a bowl game. But '64 set the stage for the remainder of the decade was set.
Tennessee won eight games in 1965 and 1966 before winning the SEC in 1967 and 1969. The Vols went to five-straight bowls games during that run and went 3-1-1 against rival Alabama.
"Our kids deserve all the credit in the world for making a great comeback," Dickey told reporters after the game. "They talked it over and convinced themselves they could do it."
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