Skip Bayless, LeBron James, and Feelings over Facts

Come back with me to June. The Cleveland Cavaliers, led by LeBron James, erased a three games to one NBA Finals deficit against the 73 win Warriors, and won a dramatic Game 7 in Oakland. It’s one of the greatest victories in the history of sports. The city of Cleveland captured its first championship since 1964, the “unbeatable” Warriors were vanquished, and everyone, even the most ardent LeBron hater, finally shrugged their shoulders and admitted to themselves, “Yeah, this guy is really really good. We’ll probably never see someone as spectacular as him in our lifetimes”.

Everyone, that is, except Skip Bayless.

Bayless is the sports version of Milo Yiannopolous, a troll who says intentionally inflammatory things to get a rise out of people. He’s a provocateur, a blow hard, a man with no principle.

To be fair, I don’t think Bayless is an idiot. In fact, he might be the smartest person in sports media, the perfect personality for the low information fan crowd.

Let’s be honest about this; most fans are idiotic meatheads. It’s why media members get death threats from losers when they write negative things about their team, or why the trees at Toomer’s Corner got poisoned, or why a drunk, passed out LSU fan got teabagged at a McDonalds after Alabama beat them in the BCS Title Game. This point couldn’t have been illustrated more clearly than at the Battle of Bristol, the largest gathering of drunk ignorant rednecks the world has ever seen.

Idiotic fans explain the rise of Bayless. Skip knows he can get on television, take ridiculous positions, provide little to no evidence to defend them, and provoke both the fools at home and his co-hosts to get emotionally involved and either scream back, or in the viewers case, tune in again and again to see what nutty thing he’ll say next.

Since I know what Skip is, I generally choose not to tune in. In fact, I don’t think I watched any of First Take for the last two years it was on television, solely because I thought it was terrible, non-analytical, “THIS DEBATE IS A WAR AND I JUST BEAT YOU” crappy television. Skip fancies himself a pro wrestler, and it’s evident when he literally says things like, “You’re scared to come on and sit in that chair and debate me”  Yeah Skip, that’s exactly right, people are scared to death to come on and sit in the comfort of a television studio and listen to you make stuff up for two hours. The most horrifying thing about that would be the brain injury suffered listening to you drone on about your Skipisms like, “Chosen One turned into the Frozen One”, “Clutch Gene”, “Aaron Rodgers sucks”, “I want the entire Cowboys franchise to give me a golden shower” and “TIM TEBOW”.  

Skip has long been known as the most boisterous LeBron critic, a guy who is literally incapable of giving LBJ praise for anything. James certainly hasn’t had a perfect career; his 2011 Finals choke job is still unbelievable to me (he scored 18 points total in the six fourth quarters during the series, and looked terrified at times during the series), and “The Decision”, when he chose the Heat by going on national TV and spurning the entire city of Cleveland, was one of the most tone deaf and poorly handled things a superstar has ever been involved in. But his resume is almost unparalleled: 4 League MVPs, 3 Championships, 3 Finals MVPs, 12 All Star games, 10 All NBA First Team selections, 5 First Team All Defense selections, 6 straight trips to the Finals, 2 Olympic Gold Medals… I mean, come on. He’s, by any calculation, at least one of the three best players of all time.

But that doesn’t stop Skip from dissenting. As recently as a few weeks ago, on his “new” (it’s basically First Take on FS1. Similar font and graphics, same format, similar-looking host, one loud mouth, Stephen A. Smith, replaced by another, Shannon Sharpe, etc.)  show, Undisputed, Skip was continuing to perpetuate the idea that Kyrie Irving, and not LeBron, should’ve been Finals MVP, despite the fact that James led everyone in the series in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals. He was as close to a god on the court as we’ve ever seen.

Irving had a great series, that’s undeniable, but no one in the history of the game has been asked, on a game in and game out basis, to carry as much of a load as LeBron. And it was obvious in this series; in the seven games, King James led the Cavs in scoring 5 times, rebounds 3 times, and assists 6 times, and averaged 29.7 points, 11.3 rebounds, and 8.9 assists on 49.4% shooting, compared to Kyrie’s 27.1 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 3.9 assists on 46.8% shooting. Like there’s no comparison, and no way you’d come to any other conclusion besides “LeBron is definitely the MVP” unless you were an idiot right?

And sure, Kyrie hit the championship-winning shot, but the criteria for MVP is broader than “Hit the most important shot of the series”. If it wasn’t, then Vinny Johnson, John Paxson, and Steve Kerr would’ve all had more hardware.

“But LeBron doesn’t have a clutch gene!” Skip would yell. “He stuffs the stat sheet, but they don’t win!” So incredibly lazy by Mr. Baseless. It’s easy push a false narrative and make stuff up when there’s no facts involved, right? Here’s the story of LeBron’s playoff exits throughout his career.

1.      2006. LeBron’s first appearance in the playoffs. After getting by the Wizards in the first round, Cleveland loses in the conference semifinals in seven games to the Pistons, the back-to-back defending champions in the Eastern Conference. LBJ was the best player in that series, but Detroit had the next best five (Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace, Ben Wallace).

2.      2007. Cleveland, on the back of LeBron, blows through the Eastern Conference, vanquishing the Pistons in the conference finals. LeBron plays one of the best games of his life in Game 5 of that series, as he scores the Cavaliers’ last 25 points, and 48 in all, on Detroit’s home floor. The Spurs sweep them in the Finals, but they only way Cleveland could’ve realistically won that series is if they had five LeBrons. When Boobie Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic  are playing major minutes for you in a championship round, you know it’s going to be a rough series. Merely getting to the Finals with that roster was extremely impressive, and I’m not sure how many other NBA players in the history of the league would’ve been able to drag them that far.

3.      2008. Cleveland loses a Game 7 in Boston to the eventual champion Celtics in the conference semifinals, despite LeBron’s 45 points. Boston had 4 of the 5 best players in that series (Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo), and yet, it still went seven.

4.      2009. Cleveland loses in the conference finals in six games to Orlando, despite LeBron’s game winner in Game 2 and his series averages of 38.5 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 8 assists on 48.7% shooting. James, of course, took all the blame; never mind that his best teammates were Mo Williams (who shot 37.1%), Delonte West, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Anderson Varejao, Boobie Gibson, and  the cold, decrepit corpse of former U.S. President William McKinley. Makes sense.

5.      2010. Cleveland loses to Boston in six games in the conference semifinals. The Celts once again had 4 of the 5 best players in the series, but LeBron did quit in Game 5 for reasons that still remain unclear. Was he pissed that his best teammates for the first seven years of his career were Mo Williams, Larry Hughes, Ilgauskas, Antawn Jamison, and a three levels beyond washed up Shaq? Or did he go into cruise control once the going got tough because he already knew he was on his way to Miami after the season? We’ll never know for sure, but what we can say is that something was off, and his no-show in Game 5 decimated Cleveland’s chance of winning.

6.      2011. His first year in Miami. The Heat advance all the way to the Finals, and for the first time in his career, LeBron is playing for the best team in every round. Despite this, they lose in 6 games to the Mavericks. I touched on this briefly before, but this is the worst defeat of the LBJ’s career. He was legitimately terrible in this series for someone who is the best player in the world: 17.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 6.8 assists, and again, only 18 points total in the 6 fourth quarters.

7.      2012. On the way to his first championship, in a win-or-go-home Game 6 in the Boston Garden, LeBron plays perhaps the best game of his career; a 48 point, 16 rebound assassination of the Celtics (No clutch gene, right?) In the Finals, Miami has more talent, and takes care of Oklahoma City in five games, giving James his first championship.

8.      2013. Miami defeats San Antonio in one of the best NBA Finals ever, 4 games to 3, thanks in large part to Ray Allen’s miracle in Game 6. But don’t forget Game 7, where LeBron was absolutely great (37 points, 12 rebounds), or that he hit the series-clinching shot. I have no way of proving this, but if you played that series 10 times, I think San Antonio wins it 6 or 7 of those times. They had it all but wrapped up in Game 6 and choked it away. The teams talent levels were at least a wash.

9.      2014. Miami makes the Finals again and loses to a better, hungrier, revenge-minded Spurs team in five games. Dwyane Wade was falling apart, Chris Bosh wasn’t up for it, and San Antonio passed the ball about as beautifully as humanly possible during the series.

10.  2015. LeBron returns to Cleveland and drags the Cavaliers to the Finals and 2 games to 1 lead against a superior Warriors team. He achieves all this, despite playing for an already inferior team that’s been decimated by injuries. Kevin Love was lost for the season in the first round, and Kyrie broke his knee in Game 1 of the Finals. LBJ, despite a horribly inefficient shooting series (he shot 39.8%), does everything and averages 35.8 points, 13.3 rebounds, and 8.8 assists on the way to an eventual 4 games to 2 loss.

11.  2016. As mentioned before, led by LeBron, the Cavaliers defeat the 73 win Warriors in seven games in the NBA Finals, capturing Cleveland’s first title in over 50 years.

So to recap, LeBron has been to the playoffs eleven times, and in his final series of each playoff run, he’s had more talent on his team twice (2011, 2012), less talent eight times (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016), and equal talent once (2013).

Those are the facts, but we can’t let those get in the way of the narrative right? After all, facts don’t matter, all that’s important is how you feel! Skip feels like LeBron is a choker, a sucker, and has vastly underperformed expectations, but the facts, statistics, and realities of the situation tell a different story; LeBron has had less help than any other superstar ever, and despite his superhuman efforts, has been betrayed time and time again by his inferior teammates on undermanned and ill-equipped teams. But Skip doesn’t care about facts, he’s really only concerned with stirring the pot, making inflammatory statements, manipulating numbers, and presenting his spin as the truth.

Bayless is a product of an ever-increasing problem in our society, which is this; your feelings are more important than the actual facts. Feelings over facts explains the rise of Black Lives Matter, a hate group that lies and ignores statistics about police shootings of unarmed black persons. I wrote extensively last week about this, and you can find that here, but two facts completely discredit their argument:

1.      A study conducted by Harvard University found that  there was no racial bias in police shootings, and in fact, that police were more likely to fire their weapons at whites than blacks without first being attacked.

2.      According to Mac Donald, cops were 18.5 times more likely to be killed by black men than an unarmed black man was to be killed by a police officer.

But BLM doesn’t care about that, all that matters is that they feel oppressed, they feel targeted, and even when it appears like a police shooting was justified, like the one that just happened in Charlotte, rioting and looting are acceptable responses to the “racism” in society. It makes a ton of sense to rally against the “racism” of the black officer who shot the guy, the black police chief, the black attorney general, and the black president.

Facts should matter, whether it’s something as trivial as sports, or as important as the debate over race relations in the United States. But they aren’t allowed to exist in a society where the only thing that matters is how you feel. 

The Ill Omens of Tennessee and Florida

It’s Florida week guys.

Or, in other words,  it’s the worst week of every Tennessean’s year for the past 11 seasons.

September 18, 2004, the last time the Vols defeated the Gators, was a really long time ago. Think about it. "Goodies" by Ciara was the number 1 song in the country, and the “immortal” Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow made the most money at the box office that weekend. Modern smart phones were non-existent, Shaq and Kobe had just broken up, Brad Pitt was still with Jennifer Aniston, George W. Bush was seeking a second term, and Michael Jackson was involved in his second child sexual assault scandal. All of the Lord of the Rings films had already come out, none of the Christopher Nolan Batman films had, the Red Sox were still under the Curse of the Bambino, Kanye West wasn’t freaking nuts yet, and people would still publicly admit to liking Nickelback.

2004 was a long time ago for me as well. Back then I was a crooked-tooth scrawny sixth grader who was immature as hell and enjoyed playing with Legos and blowing my money on 25 cent colas at Wal-Mart. Now, of course, I’m completely different, except for the immature part. That’s probably still true.

But that 2004 victory was one of the greatest moments of my entire sports’ life, an existence that’s mostly been filled with disappointment, heartbreak, the occasional tear, and now, heavy drinking and the excessive use of psychedelics mixed with horse tranquilizers.

The Vols were lucky to escape that day victorious. After UT kicker James Wilhoit missed what would’ve been the game-tying extra point in the fourth quarter, Florida had the ball and was attempting to run out the clock and escape with a 28-27 victory. The Gators gained one first down, but were stopped short on their next third down attempt and were forced to send out the punt team with less than a minute remaining and the clock running. Incredibly though, as this was happening, Tennessee defensive back Johnathan Wade slapped Florida receiver Dallas Baker, causing him to swing back and strike Wade. Even though the official was standing right in front of both of them, and saw the entire sequence play out, he chose only to flag Baker for unsportsmanlike conduct, backing UF up 15 yards and stopping the clock. The Vols got the ball back and quickly moved to the Gator 33 yard line, giving Wilhoit a chance to redeem himself from 50 yards away with six seconds remaining. We all know how that turned out; Wilhoit buried it, the fan base went nuts, and Tennessee hasn’t won this game since.

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Whenever you root for a team, it’s inevitable that they’re going to break your heart. In fact, they’re going to destroy you more times than they’ll make you happy. I mean seriously, those of you who are around my age (I’m 23), how many times has Tennessee football made you feel terrible, and how many times has it brought you great satisfaction?

I was only five when the Vols won the national title, and I barely remember that season, considering I was in kindergarten and was probably too busy pretending I was a superhero the entire time. In fact, my loving mother actually sent me to bed during the ’99 Fiesta Bowl because it was past my bedtime…. Thanks mom! There’s not been much joy since then. Basically, all my Tennessee memories involve either gut punch losses, blowouts, or Derek Dooley.

Rooting for the Vols this century is like being in a relationship serial cheater, only you can’t leave because you keep insisting things like “He/she is going to change! Plus I love him/her!”. So you keep going back, and the cycle repeats itself over and over again. They keep cheating, and Tennessee keeps losing in the most excruciating ways possible.

I wrote about the string of devastating post-Fulmer losses after UT lost by five to Alabama last season. Here’s a quick recap:

·         2009: Alabama 12, Tennessee 10 - Terrence Cody blocks Daniel Lincoln’s field goal attempt on the last play of the game.

·         2010: LSU 16, Tennessee 14 - 13 men on the field gives LSU another chance to punch in the game-winnnig touchdown, which they did.

·         2010: North Carolina 30, Tennessee 27 (OT) - Spike?

·         2011: Georgia 20, Tennessee 12 - Caused me to mutter about a million times afterwards “Man, we suck….”

·         2011: Kentucky 10, Tennessee 7 - The ‘Cats end Tennessee’s 26 game winning streak starting a wide receiver at quarterback who completed 4 of 6 passes. FOUR PASS COMPLETIONS??!! FOUR!!! AND A WIDE RECEIVER??? AWESOME!! CLASSIC DOOLEY!!!

·         2012: Florida 37, Tennessee 20 – more on this in a moment.

·         2012: Georgia 51, Tennessee 44 - After scoring at will all day, Tyler Bray ends back-to-back potential game-tying drives with turnovers.

·         2012: South Carolina 38, Tennessee 35 - After holding Jadeveon Clowney in check all day, he bursts through the line on the Vols’ final drive, stripping Bray of the football to secure the Gamecocks’ 3 point lead.

·         2012: Vanderbilt 41, Tennessee 18 - This one wasn’t close. And that’s a huge problem when you’re playing Vandy.

·         2013: Florida 31, Tennessee 17 - The Nathan Peterman game. (more on this in a moment).

·         2013: Georgia 34, Tennessee 31 (OT) - Pig Howard fumbles through the side of the end zone as he attempts to dive for the go ahead touchdown.

·         2014: Georgia 35, Tennessee 32 - Vols upset bid spoiled by Justin Worley’s elbow injury which caused him to miss three crucial possessions in the second half. His replacement on those drives? Nathan Peterman…. Need I say more? (Also, how the hell did Peterman, the starter at Pittsburgh, turn half decent? The Panthers were 8-5 last season with him under center. Where was this bizarro Peterman when he was in Knoxville? And why is Tennessee so unlucky? AAAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!)

·         2014: Florida 10, Tennessee 9 – more on this one in a moment.

·         2015: Oklahoma 31, Tennessee 24 - Still unbelievable. Tennessee dominated for 45 minutes, led by 14 entering the 4th quarter, got tight down the stretch (a common theme), and lost. You haven’t forgot this one yet, and you never will.

·         2015: Florida 28, Tennessee 27 – more on this in a moment.

·         2015: Arkansas 24, Tennessee 20 - Vols jump out to early 14-0 lead, before the offense went into the tank and scored a paltry 6 points in the final three quarters.

·         2015: Alabama 19, Tennessee 14 - The Tide dropped three potential interceptions, had more than a few drive-killing penalties, forced only one turnover, and still found a way to win. Of course, it’s not all that shocking when you remember that Vol kicker Aaron Medley missed all three of his field goal attempts, or the fact that the ‘Bama receivers won every jump ball and converted on almost every big play.

I mean seriously, has there ever been a team in the history of sports that’s had this many screw-ups/gut punches/”how the f*** did we just lose?” games in that short of a time? Aren’t we as Vol fans owed a break from the football gods after all of this? If Auburn can have The Prayer at Jordan Hare and the Kick Six in the same season, can’t Tennessee beat Florida once? Is that too much to ask?

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I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse about a Tennessee game in my entire life. Sure, there’s been games I went into thinking, “Yeah, they don’t have a legitimate shot to win today”, but this one is different, because on paper, they should win. Tennessee has a ton of defensive injuries (Cam Sutton, Quart’e Sapp, and Darrin Kirkland are all out), but they’re a more experienced team playing at home against a new quarterback for the Gators, graduate transfer Austin Appleby, who has a 1-5 road record as a starter.

But think about these two ill omens that have arisen in the past few days for the Volunteers:      

1. ESPN’s College Gameday will be in Knoxville on Saturday.

The last time Gameday came to Knoxvegas was in 2012, for, you guessed it, the Florida game. Tennessee was fresh off a blowout win over N.C. State and had achieved their first top 25 ranking since 2007. The Vols played extremely well for the first forty minutes, and actually took a seven point lead in the third quarter on an A.J. Johnson touchdown run. That would be the last Vol highlight of the night, as they collapsed almost immediately after that and allowed the Gators to go on a 24-0 run over the last 20 minutes, turning a 7 point advantage into a 17 point beatdown. Ouch.

2.  Backup and inexperienced Florida QB’s have destroyed Tennessee in this series.

For the fourth straight season, UF will play this game with a different quarterback than the one who started for them on the opening Saturday of that season. In 2013, Jeff Driskel broke his leg against Tennessee and was replaced by senior Tyler Murphy, who made a few nice throws and guided the Gators to a 14 point victory. This was the game when Butch inexplicably thought that Nathan Peterman was a capable SEC starter, and decided that it would be a good idea to stick with him throughout the first two quarters, allowing him to put together the worst half of quarterback play in Tennessee history: 4 of 11 passing for five yards and 2 interceptions, and no points. By the time he replaced him with Justin Worley at the start of the third quarter, it was too late.

In 2014, Driskel was replaced by Treon Harris after he threw three interceptions and produced zero points through three quarters. Luckily for them, Tennessee was absolutely abysmal on offense all day, blowing multiple opportunities and chances to drive a stake through the Gators, as they managed just 9 points themselves. Harris led a touchdown drive on the first possession of the fourth quarter, and then another one that ended with a field goal that gave the Gators a 10-9 lead, and eventually, a victory against the Vols for the 10^th straight year.

In 2015, Will Grier didn’t start the year but Florida, but took over for Harris a few weeks before the Tennessee game. In this heartbreaker, Tennessee led 26-14 with 10:19 to go after a Jalen Hurd rushing touchdown. However, Butch inexplicably decided to not go for two after Hurd’s TD, which would’ve given the Vols a 14 point lead, and instead opted to kick the extra point. So stupid. What did he think, the Gators were going to have time for three scoring possessions in 10 minutes? Being up 13 in that situation is no better than being up 12, because Florida realistically only had time for two possessions. So you have to go for two and try and take a 14 point lead, because that way, if UF does manage to score two touchdowns, they’d only be tied instead of ahead by one. But nah, screw it, let’s kick it! Florida scored a TD with a little more than 4 minutes left, and then, with under two minutes to go, converted a 4^th and 13 to Antonio Callaway that turned into an absolutely back-breaking 63 yard touchdown, which gave the Gators a 28-27 lead. Tennessee drove down the field quickly, but Vol kicker Aaron Medley missed a 55 yard field goal by a foot and a half as time expired, ensuring another Gator victory. I literally think this game took five years off my life. My chest and brain hurt afterwards.

This season, Florida will trot out Appleby, a guy making his first SEC road start, after former starting quarterback Luke Del Rio suffered a knee injury on a low hit last week against North Texas. Under normal circumstances, Tennessee fans should feel great, but with their track record against Florida backup QB’s, this actually might be the worst news of all time.

But Matt! TENNESSEE IS WEARING THE SMOKEY GREYS ON SATURDAY! THEY’RE DOING EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO BREAK THE CURSE!!!

Look, unless the Smokey Greys (crafted by Butch Jones himself in the Smokies) are enchanted with Native American shaman magic, which magically fixes all the ills on this team (terrible offensive line play, inaccurate passing from Josh Dobbs, and a zillion defensive injuries), I don’t think it actually matters. If the Vols couldn’t consistently block Appalachian State and Ohio, what makes you think they’ll be able to do it against the quick, physical, and explosive front seven that Florida will be trotting out? The Gators haven't allowed more than 187 yards in a game this season, and they held North Texas to just 53 last week. Make no mistake, the trenches is where this game will be won, just like it has been the last 11 years. In those meetings, UF has outrushed the Vols by an average of 179.5 to 68. If that’s the case again on Saturday, Tennessee won’t break the streak. Dobbs has proven he’s not a reliable and consistent passing threat; they won’t be able to win on the strength of his arm. Hurd needs to play great, but he can only do so if he has holes to run through. And when Dobbs does pass, he needs time. Can the O-line hold up? I have my doubts.

And if they do lose, what are the long term implications? Is Butch on the hot seat? Does the season spiral out of control? Don’t forget about this; Tennessee’s next three games are at Georgia, at Texas A&M, and Alabama in Knoxville. Yikes. I always felt like the Florida game would be the truth serum game for this iteration of the Vols. We’ll know by 7:30 on Saturday if the Vols are actually back, or if they’re just posers again.

My gut says posers. I hope I’m wrong.

Colin Kaepernick, "Racism", and the Continuing of National Anthem Protests

Yesterday, the first Sunday of the NFL season, and the fifteenth anniversary of September 11^th attacks, was once again riddled with various “protests” by football players all across the league about “racism”. We all know how this started; Colin Kaepernick, a black person who was taken in and raised by white parents, and who made $19 million last season to be legitimately terrible at football, on the backs of a mostly white fan base throwing their hard earned dollars behind him, sat down during the national anthem a few weeks ago because he was upset about there being “bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder”.

Geez. That’s a pretty heinous accusation, particularly without any evidence or specifics right? And it brings to light a larger problem in the “racism” debate in this country, which is, “I don’t need to name a person, an institution, or a law. I’ll just cry “institutional racism”, it will make me feel better, and everyone will pat me on the back because that’s an approved viewpoint. Forget actual solutions, let’s just scream buzzwords!”.

Institutional racism is silly, and it’s what Kaepernick and those across the NFL are espousing. It’s a nonsense phrase, and it doesn’t identify any problems that we as a society can actually fix. I think racism is evil and terrible and vile, but where is the actual evidence of this vast racist plot in American society? The police have been getting battered recently, painted as anti-black murderers (by people like Kaepernick), but a recent study by Harvard University actually found that there was no evidence of the police shooting blacks at higher rates than whites.

Truthfully, the black community has a lot bigger problems than the police, like the extremely high murder rate (Blacks committed 52% of the murders in the United States from 1980-2008, despite being 13% of the population, and 93% of blacks were killed by other blacks), single motherhood (72% of blacks are raised by one parent), failure to graduate high school (only 69% of blacks graduated high school, as opposed to 86% of whites), the astronomical abortion rate (between 2007 and 2010, 36% of abortion deaths were black babies), the unemployment rate (during the third quarter of 2015, the black unemployment rate was 9.5%, as opposed to 4.5% of whites), and the high crime rate (25% of black adults have a felony, as opposed 6.8% of non-black adults). All of these problems have nothing to do with the police shooting unarmed black men, and they have a significantly larger impact on the day to day lives of those in the black community. But to hear Kaepernick tell it, the police are murdering blacks because they enjoy it, and then all of society makes sure they cover it up so they can continue the carnage. It’s an absolutely ridiculous position, one that isn’t based in fact.

 Is racism the reason the single motherhood rate is so high? Is racism the reason blacks are graduating high school at significantly lower rates than whites? Is racism making blacks murder each other? No, of course not. The culture in the black community needs to change, and destroying and slandering the police won’t do anything to solve that. It starts at home, with fathers choosing to stick around and be good dads, and an enormous part of that is guiding your children through life and helping to morph and mold them into productive citizens . You encourage them to be respectful, care about their neighbors, value the right things in life, and make something of themselves. So many black kids have their legs cut out from under them from the start because they have a poor foundation at home. Mom and Dad are not united in the raising of the child, oftentimes because dad didn’t bother to stick around. That simple decision to be present in the life of the family would do wonders to help fix the black community. Families led by a black single mother on average made 36% as much money as two parent black families. That’s an incredible statistic that also makes this huge point; dad sticking around is the number one way to lift the black family out of poverty. But no one says that because you get painted as a racist if you actually suggest ways to improve the black community, instead of just blaming white people for all the problems black people have.

And the protests themselves are silly, and do nothing to actually solve the “problem” that Kaepernick is attempting to fix. How does kneeling during the national anthem stop the police from  “getting away with murder”? It…. doesn’t.

“Oh, but Matt, it’s starting the conversation about it!” So we need to have a conversation, one that’s not based in fact, about how Kaepernick and others across the league feel oppressed, despite there being no evidence of it? Makes sense.

I’m not anti-protest, but what I am against are dumb protests. Kneeling during the anthem because you feel like blacks are being unfairly murdered by the police does nothing. This is not the lunch counter protests from the Civil Rights Movement, when the United States government was literally actively participating in racism against African-Americans. We aren’t living in the Jim Crow South anymore, when there were laws on the books that were designed to oppress blacks. It’s actually incredible that Kaepernick and others are protesting their existence in society, considering 2016 America is literally the best place in the history of the world for black people to live.

Here’s an example of a good, worthwhile protest, and one that actually involves racism. Back in March of 2015, a video surfaced of members of the University of Oklahoma’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chanting about how they’d never allow a “nigger” in their frat, and talked about they’d hang them from a tree. Gross stuff, right?. Oklahoma’s football team, a group that is majority African-American, was of course pissed, and basically said, “If this group is still on campus come the start of the football season, we won’t play”. Perfectly reasonable. They identified a specific organization that was racist, and their protest was a legitimate one that put pressure on those in charge to respond to what was happening. They weren’t interested in having a “conversation” about feelings, they had evidence of racism and acted in a way that would actually make a difference and solve the problem, because again, racism is evil, and unacceptable in American society. I don’t have a problem with Kaepernick, Doug Baldwin, Arian Foster, Denver’s Brandon Marshall, or whoever else kneeling during the anthem, but I’m also allowed to say, “That protest is dumb, and does nothing to actually solve any problems”.  Kaepernick, unlike the Oklahoma football team, doesn’t have any evidence of racism, he just feels oppressed. I’m sorry, but your subjective feelings aren’t a good enough reason for me to jump behind your cause. Just because I feel something doesn’t mean it’s true, valuable, or helpful. For example, I might feel like I have superpowers, but if I didn’t have any evidence of that, you’d rightly say, “Hey Matt, you’re crazy, you don’t”. If I had a mental illness, and I felt like the radio was talking to me, would it be better for society to say, “Yes Matt, you’re right, the radio is talking to you”? No, of course not, they should say, “Hey man, that’s crazy, let’s get you some help”. Making black people feel like their victims does nothing to help them, it just continues to perpetuate the false narrative of a racist America that will do everything to keep them down.

Why isn’t Kaepernick protesting the real problems in the black community, like the single motherhood rate? Why isn’t he using his platform to encourage fathers to stick around? Why isn’t he pleading with black America to value life and education? Because those aren’t media approved positions to hold, and if you say anything about those problems, you’re a racist.

And think about this: what if Kaepernick kneeled because he was upset about America legalizing gay marriage, or the continued assault on the unborn through abortion? Would the media be on his side then, holding him up as the moral intelligent all-knowing God-King? Or would they be denouncing him as a bigoted homophobe woman-hater, and demanding the NFL suspend him? I think we know the answer. The problem is, deep down, we as Americans really only believe that speech we agree with should be protected. Heck, Paul Finebaum of ESPN was basically forced to apologize because he said he didn’t think blacks were oppressed in American society. So it’s now an indisputable fact that blacks are oppressed? Based on what? Because feelings? Come on.

One more thing: the worst response to Kaepernick has been this; “Well if you don’t like America, you can leave”. I hate that line of argument, because complaining about America and the government and our society is the most American thing possible. It’s what allows our democracy to exist. Imagine if Trump just stood up there and said, “Yeah, everything’s great here, and Hillary and I agree on everything. However, you should vote for me because I can stand outside on a warm day without having a medical event”. That would be ridiculous right?  Disagreement is what enables democracy to flourish and exist. But if you want everyone to fall in line and never disagree, I’ve got just the place for you! It’s called Soviet Russia. And we all know how that turned out, with millions either being murdered by the government or sent to Siberia. People who say, “If you don’t like it, leave” have definitely complained about American society before. Would they think,  “Well you can leave” was a valid argument if it was used against them? Of course not. So just don’t.

I’m interested to see how long these protests will go on. Even if they lasted the entire season, the “problem” won’t be solved, probably because kneeling on the sidelines literally does nothing.

Should LSU Pull the Plug on the Les Miles Era?

LSU’s less than stellar opening weekend performance up at Lambeau Field against Wisconsin was probably the worst thing that could’ve happened to their embattled and eccentric head coach, Les Miles. Miles, who is famous for such strange acts like eating grass, or clapping his hands like this, came into the 2016 campaign on a seat so hot it would make Satan sweat, despite the fact that he has averaged 10 victories a year at LSU and won a national title.

Despite all the success, the fans in the Bayou have always wanted more from him and the program. It doesn’t help that he’s spent the last decade in the same division with arguably the greatest coach in college football history, Nick Saban, and that the fans see the Crimson Tide’s wild success and expect the same at their school. The Tigers have been the second best program in the SEC West during that span, but that hasn’t been enough for the LSU diehards.

Firing a coach is difficult, especially when you’re considering pulling the plug on someone as successful as Miles. In general, it takes a lot of screw ups for me to become a, “This guy should be fired” person, because it’s oftentimes a lazy, not thoroughly thought out point of view perpetuated by “RUN THIS JAMOAK OUT OF TOWN!!!!” guy, who is also the same person that calls Paul Finebaum’s radio show like three times a week and incoherently babbles about nonsense before angrily hanging up the phone.

About two years ago, I created four rules to help everyone determine when it was appropriate to fire your head coach. They are, as follows:

1.      They suffer from a severe case of Wade Phillips Syndrome (meaning they look lost and completely out of control of everything that’s happening involving the football team. Basically, to quote Colin Cowherd, if your coach looks like a marshmallow in a headset, it’s probably time to make a change).

2.      The players are starting to tune out both the coach and his message.

3.      The program/organization needs a culture change.

4.      The teams’ record  was significantly worse than the level of talent of the field.

I suppose I could’ve included things like “Coach is a drunk” (The Steve Sarkisian Corollary); “Coach freebases cocaine” (The Ron Washington Rule); “Coach loves strippers and prostitutes” (The Mike Price Amendment); “Coach lies to NCAA about hosting a barbecue for recruits at his house” (The Bruce Pearl Anomaly) or “Coach wrecks motorcycle, revealing he had his mistress on the payroll” (The Bobby Petrino Exception) and about a zillion other personal issues that have afflicted coaches, but those aren’t really relevant to Miles, unless he’s doing something like drinking blood in his basement while sacrificing goats to the gods of Germanic Paganism.

So let’s run through the checklist and see where Les comes up short:

1.      Wade Phillips Syndrome- Miles has plenty of personality quirks, none of which manifest themselves in any way  similar to the way Wade Phillips looked when he was “coaching” Dallas during the late ‘00s. Phillips looked completely clueless and over his skis as the head man for the Cowboys, and he’s much better suited at being an assistant, like a defensive coordinator, something he’s actually quite good at. In the coaching profession, some guys are 1’s, meaning head coaching material (think Belichick, Saban, Popovich, etc.), some guys are 2’s, meaning capable upper level assistants (think Phillips), and some guys are 3’s, meaning they should be coaching wide receivers somewhere and staying completely out of sight, for fear that their presence could negatively affect everything going on and absolutely torpedo a season (I’m looking at you Derek Dooley).

2.      The players have tuned him out- This one is hard to say. It’s much harder for a coach to wear down and cause negative reactions within a college team  with his  personality/message than it is for him to do it with a pro team, because his players are only with him for three or four years before they graduate/get drafted. So if they do get tired of him, it won't matter, because they're gone, and there's a whole new team to take their place. I haven’t read any stories or heard any reports about the players disliking Miles, probably because he’s one of the most lovable guys to ever coach in the SEC. He’s a great soundbite, he does ridiculous of-the-wall things, he’s got a great sense of humor, and from what I can tell, is a good, decent human being who cares about the well-being of his players. I pretty much hate everyone and everything in the SEC that doesn’t involve Tennessee, but even I have a hard time working up any resentment towards him. He’s just a likable guy, a good ole boy, along the same lines as someone like a Charles Barkley, where the only thing you can do is roll your eyes, shrug your shoulders, and say, “That’s just Les being Les”.

3.      The program/organization needs a culture change- In order to say that the culture needs to be changed, we first need to define what the culture in Baton Rouge under Miles has been. The Tigers, since he took over, have been heavily layered with super physical athletes who play great defense and incorporate a smash-mouth, aggressive style of football. Tiger Stadium, particularly at night, has been a nightmarish location for many a challenger, and Les’s propensity to shoot from the hip has made the Tigers one of the most difficult programs to play year after year in the sport.

However, just because the players like Miles, it doesn’t mean the boosters, higher ups in the athletic department, the media, and the fans haven’t grown tired of his antics. Miles’s unpredictability is charming when LSU was winning, but when your coach is freaking nuts and the losses start to pile up, those who have been around him for years start to get tired of it. I think the Les hot seat talk has a ton to do with the Tigers’ on-field slippage, but I think it would be naïve to dismiss the “We need a more stoic, steady figure in charge of things” segment that has bubbled up as a result of the decreased level of excellence on the field. 

When Rex Ryan first arrived in New York, he became one of the most braggadocios set of swinging balls to ever pass through the NFL. People loved him because he took shots at the Patriots, talked trash to them, and acted like he was a heavyweight boxer at a pre-fight press conference who was ready to absolutely pummel his opponent. And for a while, it worked. The Jets made back-to-back AFC Championship Games (eliminating New England in 2010) on the strength of a great defense and an undeniable swagger that they drew from their head coach. But eventually, as the team started to take a turn for the worse in the following seasons, Ryan’s routine became tiresome. He began to be negatively compared to Belichick, a guy who is more mysterious with the media than an episode of Stranger Things. Belichick was seen as a smooth sailor, someone who never rocked the boat and did everything to keep the press from creating controversy on his football team. Ryan did the opposite; he embraced the madness, and turned the Jets into a reality TV show. Eventually, it just became too much to handle, and a change had to be made. Les isn’t Rex, but he certainly isn’t Belichick either. 

4.      The teams’ record was significantly worse than the level of talent on the field- This is the potential nail in the coffin for Miles, depending on how you look at it. On the one hand, they’ve spent the last decade competing in what might be the toughest conference in the history of college football. Two conference championships, a national title, a bowl game every year, and 10 wins a season is pretty impressive, and would make him the second best coach in the conference over the last decade. I know as a Tennessee fan I’d kill to have that level of success over the last ten years, but some LSU fans act like Les’s tenure has been about as painful as forced fingernail removal.

So what’s not to like? Ask any Tiger fan what their biggest gripe during the Miles era has been, and I’d be shocked if they said anything besides the offense. That side of the ball has vacillated from “average” to “what the hell are we doing?” to “do we have a four year old calling plays for us?” during the entire time Les has manned the sidelines, oftentimes changing  wildly from game to game or possession to possession. Part of the problem has been Miles’s inability to either recruit a blue-chip, capable SEC level quarterback, or his ineptness at “coaching them up” once they arrive in Baton Rouge. You may have forgotten the names, but that doesn’t mean jokers like Jarrett Lee, Jordan Jefferson, Anthony Jennings, and Brandon Harris haven’t stood under center and taken important snaps in many SEC games over the years.

In case you were curious, here’s the Tigers conference rankings in total passing yards, along with their completion percentage, since 2005, Miles’s first season:

2015: 12^th, 2,165 yards on 53.6% completions

2014: 14^th, 2,118 yards on 50% completions

2013: 6^th, 3,263 yards on 62.9% completions (this was Zach Mettenberger’s second season, but even with his NFL talent,  LSU was an average passing team)

2012: 11^th, 2,607 yards on 58.4% completions

2011: 9^th, 2,135 yards on 62% completions

2010: 11^th, 2,023 yards on 57.5% completions

2009: 9^th, 2,363 yards on 58.9% completions

2008: 6^th, 2,617 yards on 54.7% completions

2007: 4^th, 3,154 yards on 57.9% completions

2006: 4^th, 3,272 yards on 66.6% completions (this was Jamarcus Russell’s last season, and he ended up being the number one overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft. Whoops!)

2005: 3^rd, 2,192 yards on 60% completions

Sheesh. Talk about abysmal. Some of those numbers, particularly the last two seasons, are an absolutely brutal snapshot of the Tiger offense under Miles. Yes, I realize Les has never been a guy that likes to drop back and throw 40 times a game, but even when they had a talent like Mettenberger under center, the offense wasn’t anywhere close to being elite. Things aren’t likely to get better this season either, as LSU is still short on quarterback options and will inevitably being trotting out Brandon Harris (or worse) for the rest of this season. Harris’s interception at the end of the Wisconsin game was one of the worst passes I’ve ever seen in my life. It literally looked like he was aiming for the defensive back. If I was a team, I’d put 9 guys in the box every single time to stop Leonard Fournette, and beg Harris to beat me through the air, knowing he’s completely incapable of doing so. I don’t see the Tigers being able to score enough points all season to do better than 8-4.

Then again, despite all the inefficiencies on the offensive side of the ball, it’s hard to say Les’s teams have underperformed. 7 of his 11 seasons ended with at least 10 wins, they’ve made a bowl game every year, finished in the Top 25 nine times, and the top 10 five times.

Then again, they’ve lost to Alabama four straight times, and came apart at the end of the season two straight years as the offense began to betray them. Of course, the easy counter is, “Yeah, but everybody struggles with Alabama”, and in regards to the collapses, I think you have to weigh those against the nine previous seasons, when, again, LSU won more than 10 games seven times.

There aren’t many coaches who can step to what Les has done at LSU. The talent has always been off the charts. If the critique is, “Yeah, but look at Alabama!” then Miles is shot. I don’t blame fans for having high expectations (frankly I wish Tennessee fans had higher expectations for the program. It’s a joke that so many of them would make excuses for the team after they barely squeaked by and should’ve lost to Appalachian State in Knoxville. Come on guys), I just wonder if those expectations are realistic.

If you want to fire Les because you’re tired of his personality and quirkiness, and frustrated by the lack of offensive explosion and fire power, I understand it. It’s been 11 years, and in his twelfth, it again looks like the offense is going to be backed up worse than a toilet after an “All You Can Eat” hot wing night. Just don’t expect that you’ll be able to hire someone that steps in and wins at the same level he did.

Think about this; this century, how many times has a college football coach been hired, and everyone instantly thought, “Oh my gosh, that guys is going to be a roaring success. Like, there’s no way his program doesn’t take off”? I’d say three times: Nick Saban at Alabama, Urban Meyer at Ohio State, and Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. Every other coach hiring at every other school has involved an varying degrees of mystery. Jim McElwain may end up being excellent at Florida, but we don’t know. Mark Richt had a lot of success at Georgia, but hiring him was still a toss up when it happened. The same with Bob Stoops at Oklahoma and, frankly, Les at LSU. Those guys ended up being really good to great coaches, but for every Stoops or Miles, there’s a trillion guys like Derek Dooley, Brady Hoke, Ron Zook, Charlie Weis, Mike Shula, Rich Rodriguez, and Steve Sarkisian.

Fans have the illusion that just because they have a job opening, it somehow means that the coach they hire will be a wild upgrade over the guy they had before. Sometimes? For example, I understand you can’t have Sarkisian, a guy with alcohol problems, being in charge of more than a hundred 18-22 year olds, but is Clay Helton, (a guy with a bit of Wade Phillips Syndrome potential)  really that much of improvement at USC? And was Sarkisian really an enormous upgrade over Lane Kiffin when he was hired to replace him? I know Kiffin wore out his welcome quicker than your racist uncle at Thanksgiving, but Sarkisian did go a paltry 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 7-6, and 8-4 in his five years at Washington, winning one bowl game while never finishing inside the Top 25. Compare that to Kiffin, who went 8-5, 10-2, 7-6, and 3-2 in three and a half seasons as the head man of the Trojans. Lane was 28-15 (65%) at USC, and Sark was 34-29 (54%) at Washington. Great. Then again, I guess when you have the opportunity to hire someone with a worse winning percentage at their school than the guy you just fired, you have to do it.

If I were the Tigers, I’d be mindful of this: Going from Saban to Miles or Bobby Bowden to Jimbo Fisher is rare. Oftentimes, you might hire several Ron Zook or Brady Hoke types before you end up landing the right guy again. It could be 3 years, 7 years, or even a decade before you end up with the coach you want. Heck, look at Tennessee. I was in favor of firing Fulmer in 2008 when it happened, but we’re now 8 years and three coaches later and we’re still not sure if we’ve found the right coach or not. If you keep Miles, you know what you’re getting: a great defensive team that can compete for an SEC title every season despite middling quarterback play. If you deviate from that, who knows? Where’s the Saban/Meyer/Harbaugh home run this off-season? I don’t think there is one. It’s a gamble, and one I’d think about for a long time before I made it. 

What the Hell Just Happened?

Uh oh.

On Thursday night Tennessee participated in the second most frustrating, “what the eff are you guys doing?” bad game I’ve ever witnessed them play.

The winner? The 2011 Kentucky slog fest, when the Wildcats started a wide receiver at quarterback, threw only six passes all game, and somehow defeated what should’ve been an extremely motivated Vol team (Tennessee needed to win that contest to go to bowl game) 10-7, snapping Tennessee’s 26 game winning streak in the series. That’s not the worst loss I’ve ever experienced, but it’s certainly the most flabbergasted I’ve been after a UT game.

Whenever I can adequately compare something to that game, or I’m reminded of that ill-fated day time and time again as I watch Tennessee, it’s obviously a bad thing.

So where did it all go wrong? I thought Tennessee was supposed to just blow through everyone this season? After all, when you release a zillion hype videos in the off-season AND have smoke blown up your ass all summer by the media (despite not having actually won a single game that really mattered since 2007), that instantly means you should just automatically win everything without struggling at all, right?

Wrong! This is still appears to be an extremely flawed team, one that doesn’t respond well to adversity, while at the same time being a squad that shoots themselves in the foot at the most inopportune times.

This probably goes without saying, but Tennessee was extremely lucky to win this game. They recovered two of their own fumbles in crucial situations, and the defense, despite losing Jalen Reeves-Maybin, performed about as well as realistically possible. Their second half shut out of the Mountaineers was the lone bright spot in an otherwise unimpressive night.

I think Tennessee expected they’d be able to show up, wipe the floor with Appy State, dust their hands off, and move on to Bristol next weekend with relative ease. This team was certainly very chesty for a group that hasn’t accomplished much, and it actually makes sense when you consider they’ve been pumped up by everyone around them for the last eight months, simply because they won six straight games to end last season against the “gauntlet” of Kentucky (a joke of a football program every year), South Carolina (a team that basically quit on the season once Coach Spurrier retired mid-year), North Texas (they’re called “The Mean Green”…. That’s all I really have to say about that), Missouri (a team in a mutiny against pretty much everything because of the perceived “racism” on campus), Vanderbilt (the same as Kentucky), and Northwestern (a program that once went more than 60 years between bowl wins).

However, I don't think the absence of being ready to play will ultimately be as big of a problem as some of the other issues facing this iteration of Vols. This scare could certainly be a wake-up call, and light a much needed spark under the team, a fire they gradually started playing with the later and later it went into the night, as the prospect of losing to Appalachian State and ruining the entire season became more and more likely.

The real concerns facing this team are the actual parts and makeup of “Team 120”.  The offensive line, which has been a problem for what seems like an eternity, was atrocious once again. That supposed “experienced” unit was whipped all night by the Mountaineer front four, despite having an average of 4 inches and fifty freaking pounds over them. Josh Dobbs never had any time to throw, and Jalen Hurd rarely had a hole bigger than one fit for a donut. It’s hard to criticize the passing game when we really have no idea what it really looks like, considering Dobbs had defenders in his face like two seconds after every snap. But even when he did have time, it wasn’t like the passing attack was flourishing. Williams was active early, but I think he must’ve wondered off back into the locker room with Reeves-Maybin because I don’t remember seeing him after the first quarter. Josh Malone made the biggest play of the game, the long TD in the fourth that tied the game, but even he was virtually non-existent on every other possession. Dobbs missed a ton of throws, and his interception late in the first half could’ve been pulled straight off a Brett Favre highlight reel. Sprinting to your right, and deciding it’s a good idea to loft up one of those late-career Peyton Manning wounded ducks across your body all the way down the field is perhaps the worst decision you can make as a quarterback.

So how do they solve this? I’m not sure there’s a way to fix their offensive line issues, unless Butch decides to strangle every single one of them himself, and then turn around and hire the Monstars to steal some NFL O-Line talent. And as much as I like Dobbs, we’re now four years into this experiment; don’t we owe it to ourselves to come to grips with the fact that this guy is never going to be a passing game wizard? He just doesn’t have it in him. The best thing about Dobbs is his ability to use his legs as a weapon against the defense. Having him stand in the pocket and read the defense and make throws into tight windows aren’t anywhere close to his most valuable football attributes. I know they didn’t want him to taking more body blows than a heavyweight boxer in a prize fight in this game, but the offense is so much more dangerous when the opposition has to constantly be concerned about the threat of him taking off at any time. He finished this contest with 9 carries for -4 yards, but virtually all of those attempts were the results of sacks, where he either had no time to throw, or stood in the pocket for hours waiting for receivers to get open, something that rarely happened all night. I think his only true carries came in the overtime period. One went for a crucial first down, and the other resulted in the game winning TD when he fumbled the ball forward into the endzone thanks to a crushing hit to the sternum.

We may be headed for some troubling times on Rocky Top. I don’t foresee a lack of being ready to play being a problem again this season, but regardless if they’re serious about all their opponents for the rest of the season, it won’t matter if they can’t consistently check off some of the most basic tenets of playing winning football.

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.