Is it reasonable to expect Tennessee football to turn around?

Everyone acts like the Vols ought to get their stuff together and get back to competing for Championships on a regular basis. I think the vast majority of CFB fans know that Tennessee was a once great program, going back to the 1930s, '40s, and '50s under Neyland, and they remember the great Fulmer teams and they think that Tennessee football *should* be that good all the time.

But is this factual?

Most people forget that Tennessee was slowly declining as a program for an entire generation until that program caught lightning in a bottle in the 1990s. Just look at their trajectory:

Tennessee Football AP Ranking by Decade:
1940s: #4
1950s: #9
1960s: #15
1970s: #15
1980s: #25
1990s: #4
2000s: #20
2010s: #47

Since the 1940s, the Vol program has been on a very obvious downward trajectory, only to be interrupted briefly by their success of the 1990s and early 2000s. But think about everything that happened simultaneously in the '90s to help that happen:

1. They land a once in a generation type of QB in Peyton Manning who stayed all 4 years and helped get Tennessee into the national title picture nearly every year.

2. This coincides with rival Alabama on probation and in the cellar at the exact same time.

3. This also coincides with the slight slump in success that seemed to plague Florida during the last several years of the Spurrier era, followed by the Zook era in Gainesville. Florida won the SEC in '91, '93, '94, '95, and '96. From 1997-2005, the Gators won just one SEC Title in 9 years.

Conclusion: Everyone seems to treat Tennessee's recent decade of misery as the anomaly. But is it really their decade of great success (1995-2004) that is the true anomaly? Maybe Tennessee football has finally gotten back on track to the trajectory that has been taking place since it started this slow decline in the late 1950s.

I don't think Tennessee football should be ranked #47 in the AP in any given decade, as they currently are from 2010-2016. However, I think it might be unrealistic to consider Tennessee as the type of program that *should* be in the Top 25 every single season.

Are people putting unrealistic expectations on the UT program these days? Maybe Butch Jones has them right where they ought to be. Maybe Tennessee is in the exact spot that Ole Miss found themselves in during the 1970s. Ole Miss was a dominant, national powerhouse from the 1940s up through 1963. I imagine CFB fans in the early 1970s were saying, "It's only a matter of time before Ole Miss gets back to where they are supposed to be.".... only we're 40 years down the road and Ole Miss still isn't back.

Is Tennessee on that same path now?