Bobby Dodd, dashed Rose Bowl hopes and Tennessee's triumph of Florida in 1928

Charles Bachman stood inside the visitors locker room at Shields-Watkins Field clinching a telegram in his hand. 

The first-year Florida head coach did his best impression of his own former coach, Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne when he held up the piece of paper in front of the team. 

In moments, the Gators would put their unbeaten record on the line for the final time against Tennessee on a frigid afternoon in Knoxville on Dec. 8, 1928. The last bit of motivation their coach gave them was that a win would clinch a spot in the Rose Bowl a few weeks later. 

That’s the way the story has been told for 97 years, anyway.

What is certain is that somewhere in the depths of the Vols’ packed-out stadium for what newspapers dubbed the “Game of the Season,” Robert R. Neyland sat in a wheelchair. It was only the second time the Tennessee head coach had seen his team in more than a week. 

Neyland spent the previous days either in the hospital or at home battling the flu. He showed up to one practice, but had to be rushed back home. Doctors implored him to remain there, but on the Saturday of the Vols’ 2 p.m. kickoff against Florida, he rolled into the locker room. 

Maybe it was the rare, vulnerable sight of their coach, who a little more than a decade earlier was a three-time champion boxer at West Point and officer in the U.S. Army during World War I, but Tennessee played inspired football and won, 13-12 on a muddy, wet field that later stirred up controversy.

“Tennessee’s Volunteers out-generaled, out-smarted and out-fought the widely heralded Florida Gators to dash the enemy’s southern championship aspirations into oblivion on Shields-Watkins Field here yesterday afternoon,” The Knoxville News-Sentinel’s Bob Wilson wrote.

Five years before the invention of the SEC and more than 60 years before Tennessee and Florida became the league’s premier annual rivalry that decided the conference champion for a decade, the two schools toiled in the Southern Conference. 

The Gators entered December 1928 as one of the south’s best teams, and were close to staking their claim as the best in the nation. Florida wasn’t just undefeated, it had out-scored opponents 324-31 and was coming off of a 60-6 thrashing of Washington and Lee at the end of November. 

“Though everything points to a one-sided victory for the Florida Gators in their joust with the Tennessee Volunteers on Shields-Watkins Field tomorrow, we believe the Vols have a chance—though only a slim fighting chance,” Wilson penned for the News-Sentinel. “It will be remarkable if Neyland’s men halt the victorious march of the undefeated, untied eleven from the hurricane-swept sands of the tropical state.”

Neyland’s third Tennessee team hadn’t lost, either. The Vols’ highlights included a thrilling, 15-13 win over Alabama in Tuscaloosa and 6-0 triumph of Vanderbilt in Nashville. 

One week before playing Florida, Tennessee tied Kentucky in a scoreless stalemate at home, leading to the Gators being heavy favorites despite playing on the road in near-freezing temperatures. 

The Vols’ bout with the flu didn’t help their chances, either. 

The News-Sentinel reported that “several” players were forced to their sick beds the week of the game, including veteran guard Farmer Johnson. Neyland had been suffering from it even longer, and there was no prospect of him even being in attendance.

Starting quarterback Roy Witt—the hero of Tennessee’s win over Vanderbilt two weeks earlier, had avoided illness, but a shoulder injury made his status uncertain. 

“It will require super-human efforts from the light Vol eleven to register a victory,” one Knoxville sports writer opined. 

Tennessee might not have had super humans, but it had “flaming sophomores.” That was the nickname given to the 1927 recruiting class that featured Buddy Hackman, Gene McEver and Bobby Dodd. 

A year earlier, Dodd and Hackman—both Tennesseans–- had their sights set on Vanderbilt and were about to enroll when Neyland sent a Knoxville sporting goods dealer named Frank Callaway to Nashville to lure them back east. 

McEver was a tougher pull. He was nearly set on joining the Marines before a baptist minister in his hometown just over the border in Bristol, Virginia convinced him to go to Wake Forest—a baptist school. 

McEver had been in Winston-Salem for a week when Tennessee assistant Bill Britton showed up letting him know that Neyland still had a spot open for him. He accepted after he told the Wake Forest staff, first. 

All three players made up perhaps the greatest backfield in school history and were key in elevating Tennessee to the upper echelon of the college football elite. They showed signs of it in 1928. Beating Florida was one of them. 

Fittingly, it started with Dodd, who got the starting nod at quarterback in place of the injured Witt. 

Melted snow from the day before turned the turf into mush, but it didn’t slow down the Vols early. Dodd began their first scoring march with a 6-yard pass to Hackman in the second quarter. 

McEver sliced through the Gators’ defense for five more yards, then Hackman tacked on another seven on an off-tackle run. Florida stuffed McEver once, but Dodd responded with a 15-yard pass to Hackman on the next play. 

Tennessee reached the one and were held up on three-straight runs before McEver powered through the left side on a fourth down and into the end zone to give the Vols the lead. 

Dodd, who called the plays in the huddle, faked out the Gators on his extra point attempt, dropping back to kick before tucking the ball and darting towards the line of scrimmage. Just before he got there, he lobbed a pass to wide-open Herc Alley to put Tennessee up, 7-0. 

Florida showed signs of life in the third quarter, though. The Gators paid off their opening drive of the second half with a Royce Goodbread 1-yard for a touchdown, but in what ended up being the most critical defensive play of the afternoon, Dodd knocked away Carl Brumbaugh’s pass on the extra point try to keep the Vols ahead at 7-6. 

Florida tried some trickeration of its own in the early-going of the fourth quarter when Clyde Crabtree took off with the ball instead of punting on fourth down on the Gators’ side of the field. His last-second attempt to lateral the ball at the 30 was picked off by Hackman. 

As Hackman strode down the sideline, Tennessee guard Arthur Tripp took out three Florida players, clearing the way for the touchdown that opened up a 13-6 lead. 

The Gators got another chance late after a Dodd punt from his own end zone covered just 28 yards and gave Florida’s potent offense a short field to try and at least draw even to protect their unblemished record. 

They scored in just three plays, pulling within one on Tommy Owens’ run from the goal line. But Brumbaugh’s game-tying field goal missed low and wide and so did the Gators’ hopes of the Southern Conference title and a Rose Bowl bid. 

Those went to Georgia Tech, instead. The then-Golden Tornado finished off Georgia around the same time that Tennessee put its finishing touch on Florida. Less than a month later, they defeated California in Pasadena to complete a perfect 10-0 season. 

It was the second national title-winning season for Georgia Tech. In a poetic twist, Dodd led it to another in 1952 as its College Football Hall of Fame head coach and later the namesake of its stadium in midtown Atlanta. 

“Too much credit for Tennessee’s triumph that carried the Orange and White through its second successive season without a licking can not be given to Bobby Dodd,” Frank Godwin wrote for the Knoxville Journal. “His smartness kept the Vols always two or three jumps ahead of Florida and answered that final gun in glory unmarred by a single flaw.”

Florida later argued that the field conditions at Shields-Watkins Field cost it a shot at the Rose Bowl. Some accused Tennessee of watering down the field the night before the game, though Bachman denied that was the reason his team lost. 

The two teams went in different directions after that. 

Florida didn’t officially win a conference title for another 63 years and didn’t win its first national championship until 1996.  

Dodd, McEver and Hackman returned to lead the Vols to another undefeated season in 1929 and set up the program’s surge through the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, which included three national titles under Neyland.  

“It surprised me to see the boys play so well,” Neyland, who coached the entire game from the bench before returning home and to his bed, told reporters in a brief postgame appearance. “They beat a wonderful team…Our boys played way over their heads. I’m awfully proud of them.”