For only the fifth time in school history, Tennessee football is heading to a bowl game with five or more regular season losses. It makes sense that the Vols would have very few experiences in postseason play with this many losses.
After all, five-loss regular season teams didn’t start making postseason appearances regularly until the 1980s. That was just as the Vols were about to enter a roughly 20-year period in which they were a regular in the top 25, never flirting with five losses.
Once they fell as a program this decade, they began to miss out on bowl games altogether, evidenced by the fact that they missed a bowl in five seasons this decade.