This is the Most Important Tennessee Football Season in Almost Twenty Years

Tennessee kicks off their most important football season in almost 20 years on Thursday.

 Most important? What?

It’s true. Not since 1997, Peyton Manning’s senior year, has there been this much pressure on a Tennessee team to perform up to the higher than O.T. Genasis-after-an-eight-hour-coke-binge expectations that the fan base has for them.

Let’s go back to ’97 for a moment. Heading into that season, the Vols were loaded with pros all over the field (23 players from that team were selected in the next three NFL drafts), headlined by Manning, the greatest quarterback in school history. They’d also, despite going a combined 21-3 in the two prior seasons, been beaten in back-to-back years by Florida, which placed them second in the SEC East and kept them out of the conference championship game. They were great, but the allure and spectacle of that magical, memorable season was just out of reach. If Tennessee was ever going to beat the Gators, win an SEC Title, compete for the coveted national title, and make their mark on college football history, this would have to be the year right? Manning had shocked the world and returned for his senior year, and the roster was STACKED (Again, 23 guys drafted in the next three drafts). I mean, when were they ever going to have a talent under center like Manning again?

We all know how it turned out. Despite the early season loss to Florida, the Vols were able to sweep the rest of the regular season and capture their first SEC title since 1990 by defeating Auburn in the conference championship game. Who cares that they got curb stomped by Nebraska 42-17 in the Orange Bowl a few weeks later? I know I certainly don’t, because I was only four when that happened, and the only thing I cared about then was playing with Legos and pushing Thomas the Tank Engine toys around. I hadn’t learned disappointment at that point; it would come later in life after watching years and years of Tennessee games and having people like Terrence Cody swat my dreams out of the sky. Sigh….

Bottom line, the ’97 team delivered on almost every expectation the fan base had, and they’d probably be held in higher esteem if the Vols hadn’t turned around the next season and unexpectedly put together perhaps the best season in school history by going 13-0 and winning their first national championship in over 40 years.

So back to this season? Why is it so important? For starters, the number of returning starters is incredible. Tennessee may be the most experienced team in the nation, as they return 17 starters from both offense and defense from last year’s team, as well as Josh Dobbs, who may be the best quarterback in the whole conference. And don’t forget that they’ve got more continuity on the coaching staff than any other team in the East. Georgia, Missouri, and South Carolina all have new head coaches, Jim McElwain is in his second year and still unproven at Florida, and Mark Stoops and Kentucky have spent the offseason promoting their mythical 1950 national championship. Then there’s Vanderbilt, who is wandering aimlessly in the post-James Franklin wilderness. Heck, the most relevant thing to happen to Vandy football the last two years was Jordan Rodgers appearing on and winning the Bachelorette.

(Side note: is that the greatest victory in Commodore history? I mean, he beat out like 20+ other dudes. And JoJo is pretty hot. Never mind the fact that we’d never give the following advice to anyone: “Hey, <insert random name>, you know what’s the best way to find everlasting love and a future spouse? Simultaneously date/get intimate/share feelings with more than 20 people over the course of several weeks, while at the same time dining in and visiting some of the most elegant and extravagant locations in the entire world! THAT’S TOTALLY HOW FINDING A SOUL MATE WORKS IN REAL LIFE AND YOU SHOULD DO IT!”  Never mind that there’s pretty good evidence to suggest that virtually everyone who would agree to appear on this show is freaking nuts (Chad?), or that any normal attractive person like JoJo wouldn’t actually have trouble finding suitable partners, as she could step into any bar or gym or supermarket anywhere in the world and get about as much male attention as she could handle, because in the words of Lionel Richie, she’s a Brick House. Isn’t this basically just an attention and fame grab for the contestants and the bachelor/bachelorette? Oh, wait a second, this is reality television, of course it doesn’t make sense! Any person like me who has watched an embarrassingly high amount of Jersey Shore episodes should’ve already known that. I’ll just shut up now.)

But don’t forget this either; this is the highest expectations by the Tennessee fan base for a season since ’05, when the Vols entered the year ranked 3^rd in the preseason, and preceded to have one of the most frustrating and flabbergasting campaigns in school history, a 5-6 debacle that helped sow the seeds for the end of the Phillip Fulmer era during the 2008 season. This squad enters the season ranked 9^th, and there’s been an extraordinary amount of buzz, both regionally and nationally, from the media about this team. I knew things were getting serious a few weeks ago when I watched Colin Cowherd pick them to win the SEC title and make the college football playoff. Yikes. Talk about pressure. Sorry if it makes me nervous to lump mountains of expectations on a team that blew three leads of at least 13 points last season, who is also coached by Butch Jones, someone who has proven to have clock management/decision making issues throughout games.

Don’t underestimate just how important of a year this is for Butch. The Vols have improved every season under Jones, culminating in last year’s 9 win campaign, their most since 2007. The talent level is leaps and bounds better than it was when he took over, and the “What’s his jersey number” robbery jokes don’t carry the same weight now as they did in the past. I don’t want to discount or ignore all the good things that are going on, I really don’t, but those blown leads last season are still at the forefront of my mind. The offense fell apart in the second half of the Arkansas game and the fourth quarter of the Oklahoma game, and Butch bungled the hell out of the Florida game by not going for two in the fourth quarter with a chance to give the Vols a 14 point lead. Sure, he didn’t give up a 63 yard touchdown on 4th and 13, but the extra point kicked after that would’ve just tied the game, rather than give the Gators a 1 point lead. I mean, how does having a 13 point lead with less than ten minutes left in the game help you? Is Florida going to have time for three scoring possessions (a touchdown and two field goals) that would tie the game in that short amount of time? Of course they wouldn’t. THAT’S WHY YOU GO FOR TWO!!!! AAARRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Butch seems like a genuinely good person, but not going for two in that situation is almost as dumb as Gregg Popovich taking out Tim Duncan, his best rebounder, on the most crucial possession of the SEASON in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals, when all you needed was one rebound to win the championship. If things turn sour quickly, or if the season plays out a lot like last year, could Butch be on the hot seat, or even be fired? Remember how low morale was last season after all the double digit blown leads? What if Tennessee didn’t win that Georgia game? The easy, go-to excuse is, “They just didn’t know how to win yet”, but that’s a ridiculous, bad media narrative. What the hell does that even mean? Is “winning” a skill? I thought it was the other way around, that the skills and talent you had and the decisions you made throughout the game enabled you to win. Winning is the goal of playing, it’s not a skill that helps you win. That’s Ludacris.

The Vols shouldn’t have any trouble with Appalachian State, but that “Battle of Bristol”  game the following week makes me nervous. On paper, they shouldn’t have any trouble with Virginia Tech, a squad with inferior talent and a new coach. Then again, you can’t rule out the Butch factor. This is probably the biggest Tennessee football moment since their national championship game against Florida State, and wouldn’t it be the most Butch thing possible for Tennessee to show up and take an early lead, one that they’d hold the entire game until they inexplicably blew it late in the game with like 5 or 6 clock management/on field blunders? We only saw that happen three times last season.

Assuming they get by Tech, they’d have Florida in Knoxville two weeks later. Again, they should win this game. After all, the Gators will be trotting out the immortal Luke Del Rio as their new starting quarterback for an offense that didn’t score more than 28 points in any of its final 9 games last season. I’d feel really good about this game if I pretended that Tennessee didn’t have a tortured history against Florida, considering it’s hard to be oozing with confidence when they’ve lost this game 11 straight years, including the last four which were all extremely winnable.

The Florida contest is the start of the most brutal part of the schedule, a four games in four weeks stretch in which the Vols will travel to Georgia and Texas A&M on back-to-back Saturdays before hosting Alabama on October 15^th. Their first seven games are really the entire season, as the easier South Carolina-Tennessee Tech-Kentucky-Missouri-Vanderbilt portion of the schedule begins on October 29^th after their bye week.

By the wee hours of October 15^th (or perhaps sooner), we’ll know if this team was worthy of all the hype, and on their way towards a memorable season, or if this is just another disappointing, should’ve-been-greater Butch Jones-coached squad that blows leads and winnable games and causes Tennessee fans to either hide their sharp objects or find themselves at the bottom of more than a few Jack Daniels bottles.