How play No. 1 set the tone in an unforgettable night for Tennessee

Former Tennessee standout Joey Kent is asked about it everywhere he goes. 

There hasn’t been a room that the former Tennessee wide receiver has entered over the last 30 years where someone hasn’t brought up the night the Vols ended nine-years of misery against Alabama and the play that set the tone in a 41-14 romp at Legion Field in Birmingham on Oct. 14, 1995. 

“We lined up in a four receiver set,” Kent would say. “It didn’t make sense to line up in a cover 3, but that’s what Alabama did.”

It was the first play of the game, and as Kent stood at the 20-yard line, he was worried Alabama was disguising its defense. By the time Peyton Manning’s pass landed in his arms at the 35, there was no mistaking it. 

Kent slipped past Cedric Samuel around the 40, then out-ran three more defenders for an 80-yard touchdown 14 seconds in. 

The Crimson Tide was caught off guard. So was nearly everyone else.

But not John Ward. The “Voice of the Vols” detailed Kent’s every step through the airwaves of the Vol Network as he darted across midfield and strode towards the corner of the end zone, almost as if he was in the huddle before the play instead of perched high above the field inside of a radio booth. 

“What did he do? All he did was score!” Ward exclaimed. “Joey Kent! Touchdown Tennessee on Play No. 1!”

The play and the call became the perfect marriage. One could not be brought up without the other anytime the Third Saturday in October was discussed. It still can’t.

Todd Calhoun, Kent’s longtime business partner in the pharmaceutical industry in Nashville, heard Kent regale the play over the years. Then in 2020, he suggested Kent draw it up. 

Like a page from a playbook, Kent laid it out: 11 circles and four routes on an orange backdrop with Ward’s call written on it. 

Their company, “The Legendary Play” was started. Other plays followed: Tennessee’s Hail Mary to beat Georgia in 2016 and one of Jalin Hyatt’s five touchdowns to end the 15-game losing streak to Alabama in 2022. 

But “Play No. 1” remains an icon, three decades after Kent opened the way for a most satisfying victory.

“I feel incredibly lucky for (Ward) to say my name throughout my entire career,” Kent said. “To make that call, he just made it iconic. He made that play the iconic play that it is.”

This is the story of that play, a radio booth at Legion Field and how a near-decade worth of disappointment was undone in one night. 

10 years in the making

The white sheet was draped over an overpass just outside of Chattanooga. 

Brent Hubbs saw it and the large No. 9 painted on it as the car he was riding in steered towards Birmingham hours before No. 6 Tennessee played No. 12 Alabama in a primetime bout at Legion Field.

The 21-year-old Hubbs was in his second year with the Vol Network and on his way to his first road game where he would go into the Alabama locker room and get a soundbite from Crimson Tide head coach Gene Stallings for the network’s postgame show. 

Mike Keith, who handled the pregame, halftime and postgame shows, was with him. The two saw all kinds of signs between Knoxville and Birmingham of Alabama’s dominance in its streaky series with Tennessee. 

The Crimson Tide had won eight of the last nine. A tie in 1993 was the only game in that stretch that the Vols didn’t lose. The No. 9 was plastered on bed sheets, banners and mile-markers, left as painful reminders for the orange caravan heading down I-59. 

“The Alabama people just didn’t have any belief that they were going to lose the football game,” Hubbs, who now serves as the sideline reporter for the Vol Network, said. “Their whole thing was, ‘It’s Tennessee. We always beat Tennessee.’ For Tennessee, there was some confidence. But could they get this done?”

“You just had a feeling for the first time in forever that Tennessee was just better,” Keith, now in his first season as the Voice of the Vols, added.

Tennessee had been the better team before—at least on paper. But the Vols seemingly found ways to lose when they played Alabama. 

After beating the Crimson Tide in 1985 on its way to an SEC title, heartbreak and frustration followed for Tennessee. The Vols had tied Colorado and Auburn in 1990, but were still unbeaten and coming off of a 45-3 thrashing of Florida. Alabama was 2-3 with a loss to Southern Miss. 

Phillip Doyle drilled a 47-yard field goal on the last snap of the game and the Crimson Tide won, 6-9. It was Tennessee’s lone SEC blemish in another conference championship run. 

But no loss may have been more deflating than the one in 1993, when it seemed Charlie Gardner had put it away with a 73-yard run only for Alabama to cover 82 yards in 11 plays and no timeouts left and score on a Jay Barker quarterback sneak from the goal line with 21 seconds left. 

David Palmer ran around right end and scored on the two-point conversion for a 17-17 tie. 

“It was worse than a kiss-your-sister tie,” Hubbs said. “That was the most painful tie. Because Tennessee had out-played them the entire game. Tennessee was the better team. They just didn’t finish down there.”

There was reason for optimism in 1995, even after the Vols gave up a big lead in a loss at Florida in September. Peyton Manning was now the unquestioned leader at quarterback and had a stellar wide receiving corps that included Joey Kent and Marcus Nash to throw to. 

But Alabama’s defense, under the direction of defensive coordinator Bill Oliver, would be another test for Manning. So would leading Tennessee into the house of horrors that was Legion Field. 

“The question was, could Peyton match wits with somebody?” Hubbs said. “Peyton’s whole career evolved into how he could out-smart defensive coordinators and that was kind of the first battle test.”

As Hubbs and Keith neared Legion Field, Tennessee offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe sat in his hotel room in Birmingham, running through scenarios and trying to scheme up the Vols’ first play. 

‘Tennessee’s night’

Joey Kent locked eyes with Peyton Manning. He had seen the look before. 

As Manning went under center, Kent surveyed Alabama’s defense one more time. Tennessee had practiced the play against cover 3 and he was sure it would set up for a big gain. 

Running out of the slot, Kent split two defenders and streaked unaccounted for as Manning hit him in stride. He saw Cedric Samuel closing in, then paused for a moment. 

Kent’s delay caused Samuel to overrun him. When he looked upfield and saw Marcus Nash blocking in front of him, he knew he was gone.

In a poetic twist befitting of the Third Saturday in October, it was the kid from Huntsville that had just set the stage. 

“It was one of the most exhilarating feelings that I could ever try to imagine,” Kent said. “Scoring the first play of the game against a team that you grew up watching and knowing what that game meant to a lot of people and to the program, it was just an incredible feeling.”

Years later, Kent asked Cutcliffe about it. He spent a week running every scenario in his head. It lasted up to kickoff. Then he remembered how Alabama’s defense lined up against a four receiver set on film. 

The moment the ball was spotted, the call was made. 

“Peyton and I looked at each other a couple of times just making sure we were on the same page,” Kent said. “We knew it was going to be an explosive play because we had practiced it. I knew the ball was coming to me.”

Legion Field was stunned. The Crimson-clad faction was, anyway. Tennessee fans relished the validation that the Vols weren’t only better, but this time that they could win. 

In the radio booth, Brent Hubbs and Mike Keith were in awe, not just of the Vols quick strike, but John Ward’s call of it. It was a Ward masterclass from the time Manning dropped back to when Kent stopped at the wall in the back of the end zone.

No detail in the 80 yards in between was left out of his account.

“He’s got the moment,” Keith said. “He’s got the play. He’s got the players. He’s counting you down. You’re getting everything that he does and the realization that it’s Play No. 1 and the specialness of it with his excitement because it’s at Legion Field, it’s against Alabama, Tennessee hasn’t beaten them in nine years.

“All of that is captured without him even saying it because of how he says it. It’s beautiful.”

Hubbs thought back to the Saturdays of his youth, playing pick-up football in the backyard or working part-time jobs as Ward’s voice blared through the speakers of his truck.

Now, he had a front row seat. 

“To be in the booth and see him and hear him call it, for a young broadcaster, it was pretty doggone special now,” Hubbs said. “It was pretty special.”

Keith had been captivated by Tennessee football from the moment he watched Stanley Morgan score the game-winning touchdown to beat Tulsa from the stands at Neyland Stadium as a 7-year-old in 1974. 

It led him to the Vol Network as a student in 1987, but he had never seen Tennessee beat Alabama in person. It was finally unfolding before him and Ward was the narrator. 

“He was masterful,” Keith said. “He called a masterful game. It just added to the lore.”

There was little time to take it all in inside a booth directed by Ward. In his 27th year calling football games for the Vol Network, he had an expectation of professionalism even as Tennessee piled on after its opening salvo.

Nash caught a 25-yard touchdown from Manning. A few plays after Leonard Little dislodged the ball from Brian Burdgdorf and Bill Duff recovered, Manning faked everyone on keeper and strolled into the end zone untouched to open up a 21-0 lead in the first quarter.

Steve Early, who would later go on to become the Vol Network’s general manager, could hardly contain his excitement by that point.

Early may not have been the only one, but he was the only one that Ward could see.

“John turned to (Early) and said, ‘Be professional. We are here to call the game. We are not fans,'” Keith said. “Steve pulled some tricks on me over the years and would pull some tricks on me later, so I’m just thinking this is the most hilarious thing that I’ve ever seen. 

“Being in the booth with John was not easy. It was not where you went to go to your happy place.”

Alabama scored in the second quarter, but Manning answered with his third touchdown pass of the half, and second to Nash for 30 yards and an emphatic 28-7 edge at halftime. 

As Ward handed over halftime show duties to Keith and walked out of the press box, Keith waited until the next commercial break to give his best impression of Ward getting onto Early. 

Ward walked back in moments later to a boisterous booth. 

“I’ve got everybody in the booth hee-haw laughing,” Keith said. “John comes back in and he goes off again. And the reason he goes off again is because I’ve got Steve laughing so much. So, he takes it out on Steve.

“Then he said, ‘We are not fans.’ He turned and looked at me dead in the face and said: ‘And if you believe that, whatever.'”

Laughter gave way to tension again with just over two minutes left in the third quarter, though. 

Montoya Madden finished off a 97-yard drive with a 15-yard touchdown run to trim the Vols’ lead to 28-14. Suddenly, visions of 1993 came creeping back. 

Tennessee needed an answer. Jay Graham provided it. 

On the first play of the Vols’ ensuing drive, Graham took a handoff from Manning, caught the edge and took off. He rumbled 75 yards for a touchdown to swell the lead back to three scores. Alabama didn’t score again. 

“When (Graham) did that, it was kind of like, tonight is Tennessee’s night. They’re going to win this thing,” Hubbs said. “This is how it ends right here. It was lights out when Jay Graham hit the end zone.

“They just slammed the door on that run. From that point it was a party. It was an absolute party for Tennessee.”

Cigars and grown men crying

The locker room beneath Legion Field smelled more like a billiards hall. 

Cigar smoke filled every crevasse as Tennessee coaches, players, managers and Governor Don Sundquist toked on the fruits of victory. 

Chants of “I don’t give a damn about the whole state of Alabama” rang out in a Vols locker room again. Hubbs and Keith came down from the booth and worked their way in for the postgame show. 

“I’ve been around a lot of locker rooms,” Hubbs said. “But the joy, the relief, all the emotions that came into that night that just exploded out, was really, really cool. You could almost paint the emotions. I mean, they were just thick. It was just kind of all over the place.

“It was like, ‘Wow, we won!’ Then it was like, ‘We didn’t just win, we beat the crap out of them!’ It was everything rolled into one.”

Just outside, on the field where so many Tennessee nightmares had played out, Vols players were dancing around it, celebrating among the fans that lingered to take in every precious second.

A handful of fans laid on the turf, their hands zip-tied by police for scaling the walls and running onto the field. Even they were smiling. 

A few fans made it into the locker room where Tennessee head coach Phillip Fulmer passed out cigars to anyone wearing orange. 

“There were just grown men crying and just weeping out of joy,” Hubbs said. “There were staff members that were crying. It was such a big deal…The jubilation, the relief, the euphoria, every emotion you could imagine was there.”

Kent was somewhere among the pandemonium and smoke. He might not have been aware of it at the time, but he had solidified his own spot in Third Saturday in October lore. 

The Vols didn’t just end the losing streak—they started one of their own, rattling off seven-straight wins against Alabama in a stretch that included two SEC titles and a national championship for the program. 

All of it might as well have been set in motion the moment Kent turned up field and roared across Legion Field in one glorious stride. 

“I think that particular night, we could have beaten anybody in the country,” Kent said. “It was time. It was our time to turn the corner.”