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It’s a condition affecting thousands

by Tony Basilio

It was Oxford University historian Niall Ferguson who allegedly authored the concept of “virtual history” or “counterfactuals,” but sports fans know otherwise.

Ferguson’s idea was to look at how history might have been altered if we could change the outcome of some pivotal event: What might have happened, for instance, if an assassin’s bullet had not ended the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968? But sports fans have indulged in fanciful games of “What if...?” since the dawn of competition. And what Ferguson has been calling “virtual history” in the halls of academe bears much resemblance to certain symptoms of what we call “Vol mania” here in East Tennessee.

It seems that loving the Vols has been (and perhaps forever will be) a year-round game of “What if... ?” In an idle moment recently, I came up with a few Vol-centric counterfactuals of my own.

• What if... former Vol football coach Doug Dickey hadn’t left UT to coach the University of Florida back in 1969? Would the deep, dark 1970s have happened on Rocky Top? Though he is rarely mentioned in discussions of great head coaches at Tennessee, there is no denying that Dickey brought UT back to gridiron prominence. From ‘64-‘69, the Florida graduate led the Vols to two SEC Championships.

When Dickey left to coach his alma mater after the season of ’69, Tennessee seemed on the precipice of greatness, a level of success not seen since the glory days of Gen. Neyland. With his departure, UT began a long, slow descent into mediocrity, a malaise that lasted until well into the 1980s. What if Dickey had stayed? My guess is that UT would have captured at least one national title before 1975.

• What if... Prozac had been invented before recurring depressionbrought an end to the Ray Mears era of college basketball at UT? During Mears’ tenure, he did the near-impossible, bringing rarefied status to basketball in what had traditionally been a football culture. Always the showman, Mears’ greatness gets lost in his “Barnum of Basketball” nickname, as well as his inability to win in the NCAA Tournament. But I believe the 51-year-old future hall-of-famer was just getting started when he retired after only 15 seasons, during which he won 278 games with a .713 winning percentage, capturing three SEC Titles along the way.

Since Mears abdicated, Tennessee basketball has lost its soul and its identity. I propose that 30 healthy seasons from Mears would have brought eventual tourney success and built a UT hoops tradition that would still be strong today.

• What if... former UT running back Chuck Webb hadn’t blown out his knee early in the 1990 college football season? The much-heralded Webb, a redshirt sophomore out of Toledo, was on his way to a huge night in a tune-up game versus Pacific when he made a bad cut and had to leave the game. That was the last time UT fans saw Webb on a football field; to this day, many observers maintain that he was the most talented back in school history. That he played in only 13 games makes him UT’s version of James Dean.

What if Webb had stayed healthy in ’90? As it was, Tennessee was talented enough to win without Webb. With Webb, UT tied eventual co-national champion Colorado in the Pigskin Classic. It’s not a stretch to imagine that a healthy Webb would have enabled Tennessee to win out and play for a portion of the national title versus Georgia Tech.

Other great pieces of UT “Virtual History” to consider:

• What if... former football coach Bowden Wyatt had junked his antiquated single-wing offense and successfully recruited a hotshot Johnson City quarterback named Steve Spurrier back in the early ‘60s? What would UT football look like today?

• What if... Lady Vols basketball coach Pat Summitt had taken over the UT’s men’s team a decade ago when the job was open? Would her ability have translated to the men’s game?

• What if... Todd Helton had signed a professional baseball contract with the San Diego Padres right out of high school? Would Rod Delmonico’s tenure at UT have been shortened? Would Helton still be enjoying the Hall of Fame-caliber trek he’s on?

• What if... Ole Miss hadn’t been on probation in football when all-world quarterback prospect Peyton Manning came out of high school? Would Manning still have a street named in his honor on the University of Tennessee campus?

Perhaps the most pressing question of all is: “What if... I had a life, and didn’t have time to sit around thinking about UT sports all day?” I think I’ll take a page from Ferguson’s book and invent an academic exercise of my own. I’m calling it “Virtual Vol Mania.”

Tune in and talk sports with “The Tony Basilio Show” each weekday from 3-6 p.m. on the network (670 WMTY-AM, 850 WKVL-AM, 1140 WLOD-AM, 1290 WATO-AM, or 1400 WGAP-AM)

May 27, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 22 © 2004 Metro Pulse