Neyland Press Corps
NeylandPress_
Before he eluded SEC defenses, Stanley Morgan had to elude his own teammates after one practice in 1973. Here’s the story of Morgan’s arrival—and —emergence at Tennessee 🧵
The speedy freshman from Easley, South Carolina, dazzled to the point that even his upperclassmen teammates were in awe—even frustrated after being unable to get their hands on him.
"He was just beating everybody," then-junior quarterback Condredge Holloway said. "Catching little hitches and he was gone. Nobody could catch him in practice. Boom! He was gone; he would just run off and leave everybody."
Some of the players, Holloway included, wanted to test that speed with some good old-fashioned hazing following practice. “Some of us got together and said, ‘We’ll just grab his young ass and tie him up to the goalpost,’” Holloway said.
Hudson Field, where Tennessee practiced, consisted of three fields side by side. The group chased Morgan across all three and couldn’t get a hand on him. “He would dodge us and run. We tried to get him in a corner and he would just juke us and take off. We never did catch him.”
“We finally decided that we weren’t going to chase him anymore. He was just amazing.” Opposing defenses soon learned that lesson, too.
Morgan totaled 39 touchdowns and 4,642 all-purpose yards at Tennessee and was an All-SEC player in 1974 and 1976. Morgan was the first running back in school history to run for 200 yards in a single game with 201 yards against Hawaii in 1975. 🎥 @VolNetwork
@VolNetwork Story originally from Russ Bebb’s “VOLS: Three decades of Big Orange Football.”
