Examples Of Legend Stories

Tom Mattingly: 'Team game' summed up best in three recent examples

When the experts say football is a "team game," they really mean it. It takes a "team" to win. That's been true since the days of Pop Warner and Amos Alonzo Stagg. Tennessee coaches from the days of Bob Neyland have preached the concept of "team."

Game heroes come in all shapes and sizes, however. Sometimes the heroes are not the ones you might expect. They might be an older player buried on the depth chart or a youngster who only needed a chance to prove himself.

The history of Tennessee football is replete with players who have stood tall, making a key play at exactly the right moment. In each of their cases, their contributions should not be forgotten.

Here are four of them.

Anybody remember former Vol wide receiver Bobby Graham, defensive back Buck Fitzgerald, tight end John Finlayson, and defensive end Xavier Mitchell?

Anybody remember each of their most significant plays as Volunteers?

Think back to the critical moments of the 1999 Memphis game, the 2001 game at Florida, and the 2006 Air Force game. The Vols won them all, but it wasn't easy.

Each of them "saved" a game, as we look back at what they contributed through the prism of history.

Bobby Graham was a sophomore wide receiver from Statesville, N. C., who seemed destined for obscurity until Homecoming Day, Sept. 25, 1999, when the Vols trailed Memphis 16-10 late in the fourth quarter.

The Vols had lost to Florida a week earlier. Three years earlier, they had lost to the Tigers at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium. A loss at Neyland, on Homecoming, could have proven catastrophic. Losses to Memphis have that impact, real or imagined.

Things really looked bleak, and fans were expecting the worst until Tee Martin threw what seemed to be a desperation pass in Graham's direction down the east side going to the north end.

Graham hauled it in, the play covering 53 yards. That put the Vols in position for the winning score and sent fans scurrying to their game programs to see exactly who No. 11 was. They know now.

Afterwards, Graham emerged from the shadows to become a capable receiver, often called a "possession receiver" by media pundits.

He wasn't the fastest guy in the world, but he could catch the ball.

When Bobby made his first major contribution as a Vol, Tennessee fans, old and young, breathed a sigh of relief. There would be no loss to the Tigers that afternoon.

Bobby had proven emphatically what he could do, if only given the chance.

The Meme and the Operant

Sandy Hobbs and David Cornwell | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 27, 2002

This is an edited version of a paper read at the Association for Behavior Analysis International Conference, Venice, November 2001. Although written primarily for psychologists, we hope it will be of interest to a wider audience. It contrasts a behaviourist approach to contemporary legend (derived from B.F. Skinner’s concept of “operant conditioning”) with an approach derived from Richard Dawkins’s concept of the “meme”.