Sunday was an eventful day that involved some twists and turns with Tennessee eventually landing a bid to play in the Tasxlayer Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla. on Jan. 2 against Indiana.

It will be the first postseason trip for the Vols since knocking off Nebraska 38-22 in the Music City Bowl in 2016.

It will be only the second meeting ever between Tennessee and Indiana. The Vols won the only previous match-up 27-22 in the 1988 Peach Bowl.

Plenty of information on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon suggested that the Vols would head to Nashville to play in the Music City Bowl, but things as the day progressed. In the end the Vols are heading south to take on an Indiana team that finished 8-4 this season.

“Nashville would have been a fantastic destination, they’ve done a great job with their bowl. It’s a great venue and a great place and it’s obviously in-state," athletic director Phillip Fulmer said on Sunday evening.

"The conference commissioner in the end makes the decision. He asked for our preferences and we’ve been back and forth on it a couple of times as far as what was best and in the end I think we landed in the right place for this football team at this time."

Tennessee heads into the postseason as one of the hottest teams in college football. After a 1-4 start that included a season opening loss to Georgia State the Vols won six of their final seven games and closed the year on a five game winning streak.

Few would have anticipated that the Vols would be ending their year in a bowl game after that start, even fewer would have predicted they would land in Jacksonville as opposed to sneaking into a bottom tier game. Yet here they are after staying the course and turning things around.

“We were 1-3 heading into the first off week. We had a disappointing start to our year and our felt like our seniors and our coaching staff did a fantastic job keeping this group together,” Jeremy Pruitt said.

“It’s a very young and inexperienced team and they stayed together, showed a lot of resiliency and fight. They hung in there and found a way to win ball games down the stretch. I’m really proud of the opportunity this team has presented itself with here at the end of the year and giving these seniors an opportunity to play one more time.”

The postseason trip is first and foremost a nice reward for a team that never game up. Perhaps the biggest benefit for this particular team, one that’s stuffed with so much youth from the last two recruiting classes, are the 15 extra practice a bowl game affords.