Tennessee Vols QB Hendon Hooker says goodbye to UT in the most beautiful way possible
Tennessee Vols quarterback Hendon Hooker arrived in Knoxville almost two years ago with very little fanfare and almost no expectations. Hooker was an afterthought. A quarterback from Virginia Tech whom most Tennessee fans weren't very familiar with before Jeremy Pruitt brought him to UT. Shortly after Hooker arrived at Tennessee, Pruitt was fired and Josh […]
Tennessee Vols quarterback Hendon Hooker arrived in Knoxville almost two years ago with very little fanfare and almost no expectations.
Hooker was an afterthought. A quarterback from Virginia Tech whom most Tennessee fans weren't very familiar with before Jeremy Pruitt brought him to UT.
Shortly after Hooker arrived at Tennessee, Pruitt was fired and Josh Heupel was hired as his replacement.
Heupel quickly brought in his "own" quarterback, Michigan transfer Joe Milton.
And Milton, unsurprisingly, won the starting job over Hooker.
You all know the story by now. Milton was injured in Tennessee's second game of the 2021 season and Hooker took the job without looking back.
Hooker then proceeded to become a Volunteer legend. He played well in 2021, but it was this past season when the Greensboro, NC native truly left his mark on Tennessee athletics.
The 2022 season featured wins over Florida, LSU, and Alabama. The Vols went to No. 1 in the nation after a thrashing of Kentucky in primetime on a Tennessee Saturday night in late October.
And Hooker was the catalyst for those successes.
While the season didn't go where Hooker or the Vols wanted it to go — losses to Georgia and South Carolina, plus Hooker's torn ACL, derailed Tennessee's playoff hopes — it was still a magical season that UT fans will never ever forget.
Hooker, unfortunately, doesn't get to play in what should be his final game for the Vols. The aforementioned ACL tear will keep Hooker off the field on Friday night against Clemson.
But Hooker, of course, will be there on the sideline supporting his teammates.
It'll be the last time we see Hooker on the sideline as a member of Tennessee's football team.
On Friday, Hooker said goodbye to Vols fans in the most beautiful way possible — via an excellently written article in The Players' Tribune.
You have to read the whole article, but here's a snippet:
I forget who said that to me first, but I heard it over and over when I became a Vol. I was excited about transferring, and I guess I was trying to see what the energy was. And I’d be talking to people, and it’s this one thing they kept bringing up. Tennessee?? It’s great. But you GOTTA win ball games. CBS at three o’clock, that’s what we want. That’s where we want to be.
And pretty soon I figured out what they meant. The CBS game at 3:30 p.m. — that’s the big SEC game of the week. You know how Alabama is always playing in that game? Exactly. So I got the message: There’s no fooling people in Knoxville. They don’t want to hear about how “Tennessee is back” — they want to see it for themselves. You’re either in that three o’clock game or you’re not. You either matter or you don’t.
We matter now.
It's hard to not get emotional after reading Hooker's message to Vols fans.
Words can't really express what Hooker has meant to Tennessee. But words aren't really necessary — every UT fan knows exactly what Hooker has meant to Tennessee and the Knoxville community.
UT football is in a better place because of Hendon Hooker. Hell, college football is better because of Hendon Hooker.
Featured image via Caitie McMekin/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK
