Tennessee's OT Loss Shows Young Vols Not Quite Ready for National Prominence

The battle between 19th-ranked Oklahoma and No. 23 Tennessee on Rocky Top served as a welcome-back party for the eventual winner.

Tennessee left before the music got turned up.

With a two-touchdown lead in hand heading into the fourth quarter at home, the Vols offense went stagnant and its defense finally broke, as the Sooners scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns and two more in consecutive overtimes to send the Vols to a 31-24 loss.

It's one that hurts badly for the Vols, who had this game in hand until the final frame.

The loss shows that these Vols aren't quite ready for the national spotlight yet.

This was the logical next step for the program to take to get back into a place it once called home, and what better stage than this—a big lead at home going into the fourth quarter against a ranked opponent?

Instead, quarterback Joshua Dobbs struggled mightily through the air. The junior completed just 13 of his 31 passes for 125 yards, one touchdown and a pick on the final play of the second overtime that sent the Vols home. 

As head coach Butch Jones noted (via Seth Stokes of 1180 in Knoxville), the Sooners cranked up the heat on Tennessee's unproven offensive line and the Vols didn't have an answer.

If they didn't have an answer for Oklahoma at home, playing with the big boys in the discussion for the College Football Playoff is out of the question.

As Wes Rucker of 247Sports noted, it's been a very long time since this program was on a stage this big, and sometimes you have to take one step back to move two steps forward.

Tennessee has been littered with frustration ever since it lost the 2007 SEC Championship Game to LSU. The once proud program has been burned by head coaches, burned by its own hires and burned by its own recruiting faults to a point where Jones' first priority has been to build a sturdy foundation that had become unstable over years of neglect.

All hope didn't disappear when Zack Sanchez picked Dobbs off to close out the comeback.

Andy Lyons/Getty Images

While the way it occurred is painful, a loss to a ranked opponent is nothing to be ashamed of, and something these Vols can build off of moving forward—perhaps en route to the SEC East title or, at the very least, SEC East contention.

Georgia didn't exactly look like world-beaters vs. Vanderbilt on Saturday, Arkansas—which Tennessee hosts on Oct. 3—was beaten by Toledo, and it's not like South Carolina, Missouri and Florida look like elite programs at this point of the season.

Next year is the likely season Tennessee returns to the national spotlight. When the season kicked off, 34 players on the roster had played one year or less with the program and 22 newcomers made their Tennessee debuts in the opener, according to Tennessee's game notes.

It had the chance to accelerate that process had it finished off Oklahoma.

For now, anything more than a title in a weak division is premature for the Vols, and Saturday night's second-half debacle is proof that they're not ready for the game's brightest spotlight quite yet.

Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Statistics are courtesy of CFBstats.com.

Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report, as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.