Tennessee's defense made statement in '71 upset of Penn State

The shadow began to pour over Shields-Watkins Field. 

The sun was setting on what had been a delightful afternoon at Neyland Stadium for Tennessee on Dec. 4, 1971. But the No. 12 Vols were still looking for an exclamation point. 

Jackie Walker provided it. 

The All-American Tennessee linebacker, in his final game on the Vols’ home turf, stepped in front of John Hufnagel’s pass and darted towards the south end of the stadium. Walker waltzed into the end zone, untouched until he was mobbed by orange-clad teammates under the goal post. 

If reality hadn’t yet set in for Joe Paterno’s No. 5 Penn State team, it was most certainly starting to. The Nittany Lions watched Walker stride down the sideline with Tennessee’s third takeaway of the afternoon, and with it, their 15-game win streak and national championship bid. 

The dagger, applied by Walker climaxed a 31-11 triumph and one of the most convincing displays inside the Vols’ storied football cathedral.

“Potent Penn State, the pride of the East was decisively eliminated from the undefeated ranks as a fire-eating Tennessee team found Lion taming a rather pleasant way to finish a season,” Marvin West penned in the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

It was a fitting finish, Walker snagging a pass and driving it across the goal line like the final nail through the Penn State coffin. Tennessee snagged seven of them for scores that season and Walker set an SEC and NCAA record with five. 

The start was fitting, too. 

Just before kickoff of a rare nationally televised game on ABC, the Majors family was honored at midfield, including the Vols’ All-American and star defensive back Bobby Majors. He stood alongside his brother, John Majors, who 15 years earlier was an All-American tailback at Tennessee. 

Another brother, Bill Majors, was honored but noticeably absent. The hero of one of the greatest victories in school history when he smashed Billy Cannon at the goal line to knock off No. 1 LSU in 1959, Bill died alongside two other Tennessee assistant coaches in a car-train collision in Knoxville six years earlier in 1965. 

Majors walked back into the locker room and fought back tears, but it was a futile fight. Teammates watched as the tears streaked down his face after a long embrace with his father, Shirley Majors. 

Moments later,  Majors was streaking through the Penn State kickoff team and into open field. He was tripped up just past midfield by the last player standing in his way but took a punt back 44 yards for a touchdown to put the Vols up 21-3 less than 30 seconds after Bill Rudder powered into the end zone from the 2-yard line in the second quarter. 

Majors accounted for 195 return yards in his final act on Tennessee’s home turf. 

“I’ve dedicated my career to Bill and my family, and my mind was still on that ceremony when the game started,” Majors told reporters. “When I got that kickoff and when I got hit, I thought nothing else but the game.”

Majors might have been the tone setter, but it was Walker and Conrad Graham that opened the way for the rout. 

The Nittany Lions were driving early in the second quarter, hovering around the Tennessee 25-yard line when John Hufnagel ran to his right and right into the arms of Walker, who jarred the ball loose. 

It hung in the air for a moment, then Graham got underneath it, side-stepped one Penn State lineman and raced 75 yards for the score. As it turned out, the Nittany Lions’ lone opportunity to hang around had just been snuffed out and the statement they were looking to make for the pollsters was turned around on them. 

“I knew we were ready, but I didn’t think it would be this good,” Walker regaled to newsmen. “What makes it special is all the bad mail we got from Penn State fans. There had been so much talk going on about Eastern football not getting a fair amount of credit. I wanted to whip ‘em good. We did.”

Inside Tennessee’s locker room, where tears flowed a few hours earlier, more were flowing after. And so was the water. 

Vols’ second-year head coach Bill Battle and the rest of the coaching staff were dragged into the showers by players in celebration. Even Battle’s threat to make them run extra laps for dousing their coach didn’t stop them. 

Footballs were handed out as trophies to out-going seniors. Even Bobby Langston, who despite his cerebral palsy sold Knoxville News-Sentinel papers at Gibbs Hall, often on credit to players who didn’t have the money for one, was given a ball by Battle.

Ray Nettles, another piece of the Vols’ incredible linebacking corps, hugged Walker and started crying as the realization that he had just played his last game in Knoxville overcame him. 

“I don’t want to go,” he said. “Tennessee people are so great.”

Nettles had more to say about Penn State, but linebacker Jamie Rotella was within earshot and stopped him. 

“You’re leaving,” Rotella said. “But we got to play these guys next year.”

The result—and the venue—was the same. 

Tennessee athletic director Bob Woodruff one-upped Paterno and got the Nittany Lions to return to Neyland Stadium just nine months later—this time at night, a Vols’ first at home. Condredge Holloway dazzled in his home debut in a much closer 28-21 win. 

Tennessee’s 1971 team followed up its thrashing of Penn State with a come-from-behind, 14-13 win over Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl where Walker, Majors and Nettles finished their careers in the usual way. 

The three may have left their biggest impression in their Knoxville swansong, though. 

“This team felt it wouldn’t be beaten today,” Battle said. “And I don’t think it would have been beaten by anybody.”