The Tennessee Volunteers’ home loss Saturday may have been their most embarrassing upset of the decade.
As for the Georgia State Panthers who beat them? It doesn’t even rank as their best win in program history, according to head coach Shawn Elliott.
Georgia State has only recorded 20 wins since it moved up to college football’s top level in 2013, but Elliott told reporters beating the Vols wouldn’t rank higher than second on that list.
What could possibly top getting your first Power Five win at an SEC team that paid you nearly a million dollars just to show up? To Elliott, a win in the 2017 AutoNation Cure Bowl does.
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“I just want you to understand, to win that first bowl game in school history is something that’s very, very special,” Elliott said. “We hoisted a trophy. We played in the postseason. In my 23 years of coaching, that will probably be the No. 1, it may be top of the list in victories.”
There’s no doubting that Georgia State’s 10-point win two years ago against Western Kentucky was a game-changer for the program. It capped the school’s first winning season and it had dropped its previous bowl game, the inaugural AutoNation Cure Bowl in 2015, to San Jose State.
Still, that doesn’t diminish their massive victory as 26-point road underdogs.
“As far as a football program, this is a close second,” Elliott said. “But I like hoisting that trophy. We don’t get anything for winning this game. Maybe a pat on the back (but in) three weeks people will forget what we’ve done.”
It’s hard to believe that people will forget about this upset, even if Tennessee continues its downward spiral since firing Phillip Fulmer in 2008.
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