From the sports pages of Tennessee's No. 1 newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, are those unforgettable football wars that our generation and those of our fathers and grandfathers grew up watching with amazement and often recalled at the dinner table, along with those incredible ballplayers whose legendary exploits in those memorable games Vols fans cherish most. Includes features on Johnny Majors, Reggie White, Heath Shuler, Peyton Manning, and others.

Tennessee football is hundreds of victories, the giant stadium, passionate fans, sensational statistics, unforgettable plays, unbelievable stories--Jack Reynolds hacksawing his Jeep in half, Richmond Flowers racing a quarter-horse, Peyton Manning dropping his drawers. Tennessee football is the checkerboard end zone and the Pride of the Southland band and nicknames like Bad News and Wild Bull and Swamp Rat. It is that 1928 con job and the stunning triumph over Alabama. It is the series of miracles that produced the national championship of 1998. Tennessee football is long runs and long passes and long punts and 161 extra points in a row. It is a million memories of pancake blocks, knockout tackles, impossible interceptions, missed calls and fumbles lost and found. Tennessee football is fantastic comebacks and horrendous upsets and the wonderful, awful difference in winning and losing. What is Tennessee football? It's really the men who put on the pads, pull on the jersey and fasten the chin strap. Their names are carved in marble on the Tennessee wall of fame. The are unforgettable. A chosen few are bigger than life. They are the legends. It's easier to be a Tennessee legend if you could get your hands on the football--Johnny Majors, Hank Lauricella, Willie Gault. If you didn't run with it or throw it or catch it, next best thing was to chase it--Doug Atkins, Steve Kiner, Reggie White. The deck is stacked against offensive linemen. To qualify, they must be extra legendary. Generally speaking, legends, like good wine and cheese, need a little age. It is often said that the best football players get better and better at Tennessee, beginning about 10 years after eligibility expires. Thatsaid, three are in this book as young legends, so ordained without benefit of gray beards or rocking chairs. There hasn't been and may never be a more memorable quarterback than Peyton Manning. Al Wilson was the heart and soul of the national championship team of 1998. John Henderson was America's best defensive lineman in 2000. Three cheers for the legendary Volunteers, hip, hip, hooray...

"Haywood Harris and Gus Manning, who together represent more than one hundred years of following the Vols, conducted dozens of interviews and combed through countless newspaper articles and picture collections to tell this story. In these pages, the reader will encounter demanding but fair-minded coaches - from the legendary Bob Neyland to Doug Dickey and Phillip Fulmer - who guided their teams to the national spotlight, as well as the many outstanding players whose running, passing, kicking, blocking, and tackling made the difference in game after game."--BOOK JACKET.

Authors Harris and Manning span the decades that weave together the story of University of Tennessee Vol history and tradition.

“The best book on college football I’ve read in a generation….If you love college football, you’ll love this book.” — Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Boys Will Be Boys and The Bad Guys Won! Part Season on the Brink, part Fever Pitch, On Rocky Top is a rollicking, all-access pass to the rough-and-tumble world of University of Tennessee football. The book chronicles the 2008 season, during which the team suffered its second worst record ever and Head Coach Phil Fulmer, the most beloved and recognized man in Tennessee, was fired. Author of Dixieland Delight, Clay Travis offers a fascinating inside look at the inner workings of a major college sports program, and chronicles a season of promise that went terribly wrong, ending a long, fabled era.

In the exclusive behind the scenes look, sports fans can unlock the fascinating history of the channel that changed the way people watch and interact with their favorite teams. It began, in 1979, as a mad idea of starting a cable channel to televise local sporting events throughout the state of Connecticut. Today, ESPN is arguably the most successful network in modern television history, spanning eight channels in the Unites States and around the world. But the inside story of its rise has never been fully told-until now. Drawing upon over 500 interviews with the greatest names in ESPN's history and an All-Star collection of some of the world's finest athletes, bestselling authors James Miller and Tom Shales take us behind the cameras. Now, in their own words, the men and women who made ESPN great reveal the secrets behind its success-as well as the many scandals, rivalries, off-screen battles and triumphs that have accompanied that ascent. From the unknown producers and business visionaries to the most famous faces on television, it's all here.