The Jalen Hurd experience has abruptly and shocking
petered out, as Butch Jones announced yesterday that Hurd was indeed
transferring from the program, confirming the numerous and wild Twitter rumors that
were furiously ablaze on Sunday night.
I appreciate the 2+ seasons that Jalen spent in
Knoxville, but honestly, this isn’t a huge loss for the program. He’s a
downhill runner who needs to build up momentum towards the line of scrimmage
before he gets the football, something he’s never afforded in this spread,
shotgun-heavy Tennessee attack. Alvin Kamara (or a back like him) has and
always will be a better fit in backfield for Butch’s system, something that was
made abundantly clear during Kamara’s absolute destruction of Texas A&M’s
defense a few weeks ago.
It’s also become apparent over the last 48 hours
that Jalen might’ve been more trouble behind the scenes than he was worth. Someone
purporting to be his uncle posted this long, angry, rambling rant on a UT message board, throwing Butch under the bus for supposedly lying about
how he was going to start featuring more I-formation sets in the Tennessee
offense, and about how he’d played hurt and given his all and how he didn’t
feel that anyone appreciated his sacrifices.
Just stop. Look, I’m in the “Butch should be fired”
camp, but if a guy’s attitude is, “Things aren’t going my way, so I’m going to
announce midseason that I’m
transferring, despite the fact that my teammates who I’ve bled with for almost
three years now still have a lot to play for” then I don’t want you on my
sidelines. You went to Tennessee knowing the offense that was going to be run,
despite the fact that you had a zillion other programs that would’ve run more
traditional offense that would’ve suited your skillset much better. Is Butch
supposed to drastically change his scheme for a few plays a game just to make
you happy? If you want to be angry at someone at Tennessee, blame that terrible
offensive line that’s been incapable of opening holes for you for most of your
career.
And then there’s this; “I’m not appreciated for
gutting out my injuries”? Geez…. Come on dude, what do you want, a certificate
of achievement? Did you expect an announcement over the PA system during the
next home game that said, “ATTENTION LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE AS A UNIVERSITY
AND FOOTBALL TEAM WOULD LIKE TO ANNOUNCE THAT WE PETITIONED THE WHITE HOUSE,
AND THEY DECIDED THAT OUR OWN JALEN HURD WAS WORTHY OF RECEIVING A PURPLE HEART
FOR BRAVERY FOR PLAYING THROUGH HIS NUMEROUS INJURIES THIS SEASON. PRESIDENT
OBAMA HIMSELF WILL BE FLYING HERE HIMSELF TOMORROW TO PRESENT THE AWARD TO
JALEN. CONGRATULATIONS JALEN HURD, THE MOST BRAVEST AND MOST COURAGEOUS
VOLUNTEER OF ALL TIME!!!”?
Good luck with the transfer, the ridiculous notion
that it would somehow be a good idea for you to change positions, and the year
you’ll have to sit out. I hope it works out for you. Maybe the next school you
end up at will treat you like the GOD you are.
Interestingly enough though, the Hurd transfer itself
is actually the least interesting part of this story to me. It’s the 2016
version of last year’s Butch-Mack Crowder punching incident that only came out
because Tennessee was in the midst of an extremely disappointing campaign that
saw them lose three different games that they held 13 point leads in. If they
hadn’t lost all those games, that story never surfaces because everything would’ve
been right with the program and the wins would’ve blotted out and suppressed
every negative piece of information. Bad feelings either create negative
stories, or bring inflammatory reports to the surface. The enthusiasm around
the program is as low as it's been since the Dooley years; if the Vols were
7-1 or 8-0, do you really think Jalen Hurd would be pissed off enough to transfer?
No, of course not, because then he’d look like the most selfish athlete of all
time, and he’d get killed on every local and national sports talk show. But
because this has been perhaps the most disappointing Tennessee football season of
my life, and because morale is so low, any problems that the players on the
team have bubble up and explode into massive issues. Butch is losing the fan
base, the boosters, the administration, and perhaps most importantly, the team.
I also want to go back to those Twitter rumors
though, something that, in my opinion, is the most fascinating part of this
story. On Sunday night, as I was flipping back and forth between the World
Series and Cowboys-Eagles, I started seeing tweets about Hurd quitting
the team because he was angry about… something? I was instantly skeptical, of
course, first because that’s about as general and uninformative of a statement
as you’d could possibly make about this issue, and secondly, because all the
people that were “reporting” this were average Joes with no legitimate sources
who were saying things like, “My friend’s cousin lives in the same apartment
complex as Cam Sutton, and he told him that Jalen was quitting”. Wait, what? If
“My brother’s uncle’s sister’s baby daddy went to high school with Jalen’s
cousin, and he told me that he was quitting” passes as Tweet-worthy and
reliable information to thousands of people, then what does that say about the
gullibility of our society and our ability to think critically and discover the
truth? And the Hurd Twitter rumors turned out to not be entirely true either,
considering they left out that he was actually transferring and not just
quitting, that he was changing positions, and that he supposedly had
irreconcilable problems with Coach Jones.
Plus, in the last two days I’ve heard/read a bunch
of different stories about Hurd’s season from "friend of a friend or a friend" from multiple different "sources", including:
1. Jalen
didn’t play in or travel for the Texas A&M game because he had an alcohol
related arrest and quit the team for a week, only to have the coaching staff
lie about an injury to protect his image.
2. During
the Georgia game, when Hurd fumbled close to the goal line after getting clocked,
he actually suffered a concussion on that play. The only reason he was allowed
to come back in was because the training staff screwed up the concussion
protocol and sent him back out there, only to realize he was actually concussed
after he caught a touchdown pass early in the second half. They then lied to
the media and said he had a “lower body injury” to protect their asses.
3. A
fake Twitter account claiming to be ESPN’s Brett McMurphy “reported” that Hurd
had been kicked off the team. The tweet actually appeared at the top of the “Jalen
Hurd” search results for a little while.
And those are just the biggies. All of these claims
were either completely untrue, or came from “a friend of a friend of a friend”,
meaning there’s no way to substantiate them at all. Way to go, “Investigative
Twitter Media”; you guys really nailed it. If Hurd got busted for alcohol, then
why did he miss virtually all of the second half against Georgia? Was he doing
shots of Don Julio between plays? And if he did get busted for alcohol between
UGA and A&M, then where’s the police report? Why has he not appeared in a
Knoxville busted paper? And if he got concussed during the Georgia game, then don’t
you think that one of his teammates, a member of the coaching staff, or Jalen
himself, would’ve accidentally let it slip that Jalen got knocked out? After
all, there’s nothing more “commendable” and “tough” than playing through a
concussion, and we all know Hurd wants to be worshipped for all the “sacrifices”
he made.
But the willingness to believe whatever the most
sensational story that pops up on social media is ridiculous. A few weeks ago,
there was a rumor started out of, as far as I can tell, nothing, indicating
that Vol backup QB Quinten Dormady was going to transfer. It blew up Twitter
for a while before dying down when everyone realized there was nothing to it. Just
because someone posts something on the internet, or prefaces it by saying, “sources
say” or, “my friend of a friend of a friend” doesn’t mean it’s even remotely
true. If you hate the mainstream media, that’s fine, but when it comes to
investigative reporting they’re always more reliable than Jim Bob who is living
in a trailer in a Tennessee holler with 312 Twitter followers. They’re way more
connected, have way better sources, have greater access, and have higher standards
of truth to meet before they can even think about publishing the information
they’ve gathered.
Because Tennessee was so mysterious with Jalen’s
injury, and because people are so desperate for answers, they’ll believe
anything that attempts to answer their questions, whether they’re true or not.
Oftentimes, the juiciest stories are the ones we believe the most, because we
have a desire for each and every situation to be more interesting than it
actually is. But common sense, reasoning, and patience help us sort out what’s
true from what’s fictitious.
So don’t give credence to Twitter nonsense. Consider
the source. Do your own research. Ask yourself, “Does what I just heard make
sense?” and “Is this worthy of a retweet/share?”. If it comes from Billy Bob
from Bluff City, or “Random UT Student X”, then I’d go ahead and move on.
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