What did I learn during Tennessee football's epic 2022 season? The Vols are back | Ryan McGee

This foreword by ESPN personality and Tennessee graduate Ryan McGee appears in the new book from Knox News and The Tennessean, "ReviVols! How Tennessee's epic 2022 delivered a return to the football elite." The limited-edition 160-page hardcover book, which tells the story of the Vols' meteoric rise under Josh Heupel and includes a special foreword from Ryan McGee, is listed at $39.95 but can be purchased for $31.95 for a limited time at Vols.PictorialBook.com

We all had that moment during the 2022 college football season, didn’t we? That flash of belief and, in Big Orange Country, relief, when we finally allowed ourselves to take a deep breath and say aloud “Tennessee football is back!” with that exclamation point instead of a question mark.

Just to clarify, when I say “we“ I am referring to a lot of different groups of people. Tennessee alumni, fans, those who were raised in the shadow of Torchbearer and those who were born elsewhere, but at some point in their lives became Volunteers. I’m even referring to the media members who have sat in the rows of the Neyland Stadium press box chronicling the Vols through both the historically great and the hysterically grim.

Me? I’m all of the above. I was born and raised in the Carolinas but came over the Smoky Mountains to matriculate The Hill as a student. I arrived just in time for the glory days of the early 1990s, even landing a job with the football team on the video crew. I fell in love with a coed from Farragut who was in class with me during the week and sang at Dollywood on the weekends. It doesn’t get any more Tennessee than that. I used my degree from UT to land a job with ESPN and eventually I became one of those folks working in the press box on Saturday afternoons … just in time to watch the Vols slowly descend into a decade-plus of chaos.

'REVIVOLS': Capture the thrills of Tennessee football's epic 2022 season with our special book

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That is why I was reluctant to go all-in on Tennessee at the start of the 2022 season. As you read this now, don’t act like you weren’t right there with me. I know that you were and that’s OK. Everyone, whether they root for Tennessee or are simply fans of college football in general, we all had learned our lesson over and over again. We couldn’t and shouldn’t allow ourselves to fall in love with the promise of a great football fall in Knoxville because so many of those encouraging preseason prophecies had turned into Old Testament plagues.

Then came 2022. Week by week and game by game, we all had that moment. Something along the autumnal timeline that proved to us that this season was, finally, the season.