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.

Dale Jones locked eyes with Greg Richardson.

The Alabama wide receiver had just gotten the ball and was heading toward Jones, the Tennessee linebacker who had just come off of a block and was playing the blitz.

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But Jones changed course when he saw Richardson. He buried him for a 12-yard loss and the Vols were going to get the ball back in the waning minutes of a tie game at Legion Field on Oct. 15, 1983.

Tennessee trailed by two scores in the third quarter. That was expected. The Vols drew even in the fourth. That wasn’t.

But here they were, on the turf of the “Football Capital of the South,” a place Tennessee hadn’t beaten its biggest rival in since 1969, with a chance thanks to Jones’ stop.

Then it came down to another Jones: Johnnie. On third-and-4 from the Vols’ own 34, Johnnie Jones took a pitch from Alan Cockrell.

Johnnie Jones raced 66 yards, untouched, dodging the finger tips of Freddie Robinson at the goal line for the go-ahead score.

Tennessee won, 41-34 in a triumph as exhilarating as the one the Vols claimed in Knoxville to end an 11-game losing skid in the series.

The Vols weren’t supposed to win. They weren’t even supposed to be tied late.

Tennessee was a 13-point underdog, with losses to No. 10 Pittsburgh and No. 11 Auburn earlier that season and its most impressive win against an unranked LSU team the week before.

But the Vols hung in. They hung in when the No. 11 Crimson Tide went up multiple scores twice in the second half. They hung in when Alabama tried putting it away in the fourth and when the Crimson Tide had the ball back for one final drive.

For Tennessee head coach Johnny Majors, it was another sign of the program’s rebuild in the seventh year of his tenure.

The Vols hadn’t beat Alabama in back-to-back years since winning four-straight between 1967-70.

“This has to be one of the greatest, most exciting collegiate games ever played,” Majors told reporters after the game.

For Johnnie Jones, the hero, his legendary trek to the end zone was a prophecy fulfilled.

Four years earlier, when he was being recruited to Tennessee by Memphis businessman Ed Murphey, Jones was given the usual promises and guarantees. One of them was that he would score a game-winning touchdown against Alabama.

Jones dismissed it as typical recruitment fodder. That afternoon, he lived it.

“I turned the corner and all I saw was daylight,” Jones told reporters inside the Tennessee locker room. “When I cut to the middle, I knew I was going to go all the way. I know they wouldn’t catch me.”

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