Tennessee
Ranking Sports Illustrated’s Tennessee Vols covers with SI’s future in flux
Sports Illustrated may be on the road to extinction after 70 years, and so could those iconic Tennessee Vols SI covers.
The Associated Press reported SI is planning to lay off most or all its staff. Time will tell if that holds true.
UT athletes, coaches and even fans have been featured on dozens of SI covers over the decades, and it’s hard to pick a favorite.
But here are our top five SI covers of the Vols.
1. ‘Peerless’ national championship performance
Peerless means unequaled or unrivaled. So Peerless Price, the star of UT’s national championship game, was perfectly cast for the SI cover on Jan. 11, 1999.
It was released one week after the Vols beat Florida State in the Fiesta Bowl for a perfect 13-0 record and a national title.
The complete headline said, “No doubt about it: The Vols are Peerless.” But most UT fans only remember it as the “Peerless” cover, which featured the wide receiver scoring a 79-yard touchdown pass from Tee Martin in the fourth quarter.
More: Relive Tennessee football’s epic 1998 national championship with this commemorative book
Granted, many UT fans recall a different SI cover from that national title. It featured Martin and the headline, “PerfecT.” That cover is framed on walls throughout Tennessee to this day.
So why isn’t it on this list? It was a commemorative issue and not the weekly magazine. It’s a technicality, but both were memorable covers for the Vols.
2. ‘The Tennessee Waltz’
On Oct. 7, 1985, UT quarterback Tony Robinson donned the cover with the headline, “The Tennessee Waltz.”
Any UT fan of that era (or many years afterward) knows that image. They also recall the game that produced it – the Vols’ 38-20 upset of No. 1 Auburn.
Veteran SI writer Rick Reilly penned the cover story. It was evident that he went to Knoxville to write about eventual Heisman Trophy winner Bo Jackson.
Instead, SI called an audible when Robinson tossed four TD passes to shock the top-ranked team in college football. The Vols seized the opportunity and stole the cover fair and square.
3. ‘Ernie and Bernie’ were double trouble
On Feb. 9, 1976, the cover said, “Double Trouble from Tennessee.”
It could’ve easily said, “Ernie and Bernie,” referring to UT basketball stars Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King. That was the title of ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary on the hoops duo 40 years later.
From 1974-77, Grunfeld and King put UT basketball on the map with a 61-20 record, two NCAA tournament appearances and an SEC regular-season title in 1977.
The pair of New Yorkers brought a unique style and competitiveness to the Vols. And the SI cover caught them at their zenith, just before they were voted SEC Co-Players of the Year.
4. ‘The Wizard of Knoxville’
On March 2, 1998, the cover asked, “Is Tennessee’s Pat Summitt the best college basketball coach since John Wooden?”
The answer: Probably so.
It was an NCAA tournament preview edition, and the Lady Vols were vying for a three-peat as national champions.
They won that third straight national title – the sixth of eight during Summitt’s reign – and finished with a perfect 39-0 record.
A month later, the Lady Vols were back on the SI cover: “Perfect” with a Chamique Holdsclaw photo. And there were several other covers that featured Summitt and UT women’s basketball.
But the “Wizard of Knoxville” cover gets the nod in this ranking because it featured a close-up of Summitt and her iconic stare. No other coach ever held such intensity in her face, and that cover captured that.
5. ‘In His Father’s Image’: Peyton and Archie
There could be a separate ranking just of Peyton Manning SI covers. He was a glossy fixture there for almost a quarter-century, but that run started when he was a Vols quarterback.
The first time Peyton Manning appeared on the SI cover was Aug. 26, 1996.
It was a dual image. On the top, Peyton posed as the cover boy of the 1996 college football preview edition. On the bottom was an archived version of Archie’s 1970 cover.
The headline: “In His Father’s Image: Peyton Manning, Idol of No. 1 Tennessee.”
UT fans already knew Peyton Manning was a star. This cover introduced him to the rest of the country as Archie’s son. After that, Peyton stood alone.
Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. Email adam.sparks@knoxnews.com. X, formerly known as Twitter@AdamSparks. Support strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe.
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Tennessee baseball received a commitment from UC Irvine pitcher Ricky Ojeda on June 19.
Ojeda, who is eligible for the MLB draft in July, announced his decision on social media. He visited Tennessee on June 15-16.
The lefthanded Ojeda had a strong 2026 season primarily as a reliever, posting a 3.77 ERA with 62 strikeouts and 20 walks in 62 innings. In 2025, he became the first reliever to be named Big West Pitcher of the Year after going 13-1 with a 3.55 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 66 innings, which also earned him a third-team all-American nod from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Perfect Game.
Whether Ojeda makes it to Tennessee remains an open question. Perfect Game ranked him as the No. 179 prospect for the draft. That would place him in the sixth round.
Should Ojeda join the staff, however, he would instantly become one of the team’s top options out of a bullpen that struggled immensely in 2026. The pitching staff is also under new leadership under pitching coach Austin Knight, who was hired from ECU.
Ojeda is the fourth player to announce they will transfer to Tennessee this offseason, joining two-way Mercer transfer Braydon Kersey, Northwestern State pitcher Brody Trosclair and Air Force infielder Wyatt Hanoian.
Who’s leaving Tennessee baseball
- UTL Jay Abernathy (Oklahoma)
- RHP Nic Abraham
- INF Ariel Antigua (Arizona)
- INF Finley Bates
- RHP Ari Bethea
- OF Hutson Chance
- RHP Sawyer Deering (San Diego State)
- OF Nate Eisfelder
- 1B Evan Hankins (Virginia Tech)
- UTL Hunter High
- RHP Brayden Krenzel (Arkansas)
- INF Manny Marin
- INF Ethan Moore (Missouri)
- UTL Chris Newstrom
- LHP Taylor Tracey
- C Cash Williams (West Virginia)
Who’s joining Tennessee baseball
- RHP/DH Braydon Kersey
- LHP Brody Trosclair
- INF Wyatt Hanoian
- LHP Ricky Ojeda
Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_
JACKSON, Tenn. (WBBJ) – An exciting day of sporting clays in West Tennessee is doubling as a major fight against hunger.
Today’s “Shooting Hunger” event took place at the Carroll County Shooting Sports Park in Huntingdon. It’s a partnership between Tennessee Farm Bureau, Tennessee Farmers Co-Op, Farm Credit Mid-America and Rural First.
Since 2015, Shooting Hunger has helped provide more than three million meals to Tennesseans with money going to food banks, backpack programs, and local hunger relief. A $500 scholarship will also go to the top youth shooter in each flight.
“We’re joining together to raise money for school backpacks to feed hungry kids. We do these, we actually do three of these across the state of Tennessee so at the end of the day we take, we take all the money we put it into a pile and when we divide equally amongst all 95 counties across the state of Tennessee,“ said Bryan Wright, executive vice president for the Tennessee Farm Bureau.
Organizers say events like this matter because one in six children in Tennessee struggle with hunger.
Copyright 2026 WBBJ. All rights reserved.
Tennessee director of track and field Duane Ross gauged the hunger of the men’s 4×100-meter relay team to pull off the upset.
“They said, ‘Coach, we’re going to win,’ ” Ross said. “When they bring you that much confidence, you can grab your popcorn and enjoy the meet.”
No popcorn was consumed, but the appetite was there from the start.
Traunard Folson, Davonte Howell, T’Mars McCallum and Elijah Clark finished in a school record time of 37.98 seconds at the NCAA Outdoor Championships on June 12 in Eugene, Oregon. It was the the program’s first national title in the 4×100 since 1983 and the fourth-fastest in NCAA history.
Four other relay teams never crossed the line. Auburn, the two-time defending champion, had run an NCAA-record 37.75 in the semifinal, but had a botched handoff on the last exchange. Arkansas, the reigning SEC champion, also dropped its baton, along with Oregon and Houston.
McCallum said staying clean through a race of chaos starts with a focus on winning, even in practice.
“In the moment we can’t really worry about anything else, just what we can control,” McCallum said on June 18. “We came to practice every time with the idea of, ‘OK, we’ve got to make sure this is fixed, because we know if we run that time, we can win.’ “
It was the final event of McCallum’s college career. It didn’t fully hit until the long flight home to Knoxville.
“I was like, we really did it,” he said. “Now we have a school record, the first team to ever go under 38 seconds here.”
Whether belief had anything to do with what went wrong in those four other lanes isn’t something Tennessee’s runners can answer. It’s exactly what they point to for why theirs didn’t.
Clark, a freshman who ran the anchor leg, said winning was just a matter of starting the race.
“We knew we had it the whole time,” he said. “No matter who did what, what happened, we knew what the outcome would come to.”
Ross said the victory wasn’t a surprise inside the program either.
“I wouldn’t say unsung,” Ross said. “I’ve watched this team all year long, and we were expecting to come out of there with the championship. It was a tight competition down to the last event.”
Tennessee finished third in the men’s team standings with 46 points, its best total since 2002.
Howell, a junior who ran the second leg, said the belief behind the relay team’s confidence was built long before the race.
“Three of the four of us already ran under 10 seconds,” he said. “Last year we all trained together during the summer, all lived together. We already had the bond, and adding the freshman on anchor was just a cherry on top. He figured it out at SECs, ran a 10.1, season’s best, and we trusted him to bring it home.”
Clark said the title is already part of something bigger to him.
“The goal is to always make history,” said Clark, who was hired by Tennessee four years ago after a successful run at North Carolina A&T. “It’s been one of my dreams. To be able to be on the wall, especially at a school like this, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
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