With an 8-4 record, Tennessee Football may have trouble motivating itself for the Citrus Bowl against the Iowa Hawkeyes. After all, this is a follow-up to an 11-2 season in which they won the Orange Bowl and finished ranked No. 6.
However, tight end Jacob Warren, who is wrapping up his sixth season at UT, hasn’t lost perspective of where the program was before that breakout year in 2022. He acknowledged, though, that freshmen may not understand that.
“If last year’s your first bowl experience, I think if you’re a freshman and that was the very first thing you came into and it was like, wow, this is this is what it is like, I think that you maybe have a weird feeling about this one,” he said. “If you’ve been through the kind of things that a lot of the guys in the program have been through, you cherish this one, and you understand that.”
That experience for Warren includes going 5-7 in 2018, going 3-7 in 2020 and seeing his head coach get fired. He also was part of the 2019 and 2021 teams that barely got into bowl games, as both of them finished with 7-5 records.
Throughout that time, Warren acknowledged he’s been in bad bowl games and some of the best bowl games. He touted the balance of the Citrus Bowl, which he notes is an exciting bowl game even if it’s not in the upper-echelon.
“You have the Gator Bowl, which is a good bowl, the Music City Bowl, which is a good bowl and the freaking Orange Bowl which is one of the best,” he said. “Now let’s find one right in the middle where we can go just have a good time.”
The Citrus Bowl was a much better postseason invite than Tennessee Football expected. They finished fifth among SEC teams, but the Alabama Crimson Tide are in the College Football Playoff, and the Missouri Tigers, Ole Miss Rebels and Georgia Bulldogs are all in New Years Six bowls.
That unexpectedly high number of SEC teams in the top bowls opened the door, and the LSU Tigers were there last year, which is how UT landed in Orlando. Warren says the prestige of the bowl should help with the motivation.
“One thing that helps is I do believe we got one of the better bowls that we probably could have, an 8-4 team, I think, getting into the Citrus Bowl, playing the, didn’t win the championship but the runner-up for the championship in their conference, and I think it’s a great challenge,” he said.
Some of the most memorable seasons in UT history ended with a trip to the Citrus Bowl. Over the last 30 years, two of their five best seasons ended there, in 1995 and 2001. Peyton Manning also set a bowl game record with 408 passing yards in the Citrus Bowl to end the 1996 season.
As Warren mentioned, Iowa did with the Big Ten West this year and finished the regular season 10-2. Kirk Ferentz’s program played UT in 2014 in the TaxSlayer Bowl, which is also the Gator Bowl. The Vols won that game 45-28.
“I think they’re a great team,” Warren said. “They have a great defense, and what fires me up is being able to go and play a great defense like that, that is known for holding people to not many points and just being extremely stout, being extremely tough and hard-nosed.”
The last time Tennessee Football played in the Citrus Bowl, was a 45-17 win over the Michigan Wolverines to finish the 2001 regular season 11-2. They beat the Ohio State Buckeyes to end the 1995 season and Northwestern Wildcats to end the 1996 season.
Unlike those games, though, this is a clash of completely different styles. Josh Heupel obviously likes to run tempo on offense, and Iowa plays ball control, trying to keep total scores of games in the 30s. Warren expressed excitement about the mixing of two totally different “types of ball.”
“We play very different styles of offense for sure,” he said. “They play a style of defense that we’ve seen before, but they do a good job as we’re starting to look at it and just watch a little bit more of it.”
This will be Warren’s last game for Tennessee Football as well, so expect him to take advantage of the time in Florida and being able to take part in all of the fun bowl festivities. Just two years ago, UT fans would have given anything to go to this bowl.
