SEC Football history: 50 best players of all time

32. Best SEC football players of all time: Doug Atkins, Tennessee football

The No. 32-ranked player on our list was not even recruited to play football, though it did not take long for the coaching staff at Tennessee to notice him on campus. Bob Neyland saw the 6-foot-8 Doug Atkins, a basketball recruit, and got him to come out for the football team, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Atkins would go on to have one of the more impressive collegiate and professional careers of any player to come out of the SEC and would finish his time at Tennessee with letters in football, basketball, and track. A menacing presence, Atkins could run like a deer, and that made him one of the tougher players in conference history to block.

He would go on to be named an All-American during the 1952 college football season and was key on a Tennessee team that won the 1951 national championship. Considered by many as the most dominant defensive player in SEC history, Atkins was a unanimous choice on the conference’s quarter-century team and was named the player of the quarter from 1950 through 1975.

A member of the Pro Football and College Football Hall of Fames, Atkins was just as successful in the pro game, as it seemed success followed him everywhere he went. His No. 91 is retired by Tennessee, and his legacy still lives on.