Tennessee 17, UMass 13: The Heat Is On

My seat in Section Q at Neyland Stadium today was in the shade and out of the searing Knoxville heat. That’s OK. I was fuming so much watching that game that I probably kept everybody sitting around me sweating.

Yeah, I was angry watching Tennessee sleepwalk through a 17-13 win-that-felt-like-a-loss over arguably one of the five worst Football Bowl Subdivision teams in the nation. UMass had lost to Hawaii, Coastal Carolina, Old Dominion and Temple entering Saturday’s game. Yet, there they were, trading punches with a team we expect to be competing for the SEC East in Year 5 of Butch Jones’ regime.

These Minutemen were a baaaaaaad football team. If you thought Jones’ seat was warm, you couldn’t even touch Mark Whipple’s without getting burned.

Yet, there was UMass, stymying Tennessee on drive after drive no matter who played quarterback for the Vols and with multiple opportunities to outright beat them in the fourth quarter. It was inexplicable. Baffling. Unacceptable.

But, for all the venom I could spew here that would do no good, all you need to know is this: In my 27 years of attending football games in Neyland Stadium, I’ve perhaps never seen a fan base so apathetic as I saw on Saturday. There was more anger during the Derek Dooley years, sure, but how many times have you seen a half-empty Neyland during the fourth quarter of a four-point game?

The crowd was announced at more than 95,000 (it wasn’t). By the time the Vols secured the win late in the fourth quarter, maybe 50K fans sat in their seats. It was quiet, listless, frustrated.

If I’m Jones, that’s what I’m worried about.

The Vols are 3-1, with a chance to still make plenty of noise in the SEC and secure some positivity in this season. Yes, they also could go 7-5 or 6-6. Right now, probably more fans are expecting the latter than the former. But you need butts in the seats. You need the coffers full. You need folks caring.

I didn’t see it Saturday.

This team needs a jump-start; a win over a Georgia team that looks awfully good against Mississippi State as I type this up, would be a start. A victory against Alabama ain’t happening, so — as Will wrote earlier this afternoon — this weekend’s game against the Bulldogs is in all likelihood where the two potential roads of Jones’ UT career diverge. It very well may be his Waterloo.

They may need a jump-start on the season, but against the Minutemen, the Vols needed an alarm clock. They hit the snooze button in the first half and never woke up. Let’s put it this way: We sat behind a nice couple from White House, Tennessee, who has a son in the Pride of the Southland Band. The excitement around our seats when he was playing the trumpet on the field was the best thing that happened all day.

I took my 7-year-old son to a Vols game, and a drawing party broke out. He sat most of the second half with his head buried in his drawing pad, doodling pictures of monsters. Meanwhile, I was watching the Vols and battling the ones in my head. “How do I write about this and stay respectful?” and “Is this the beginning of the end?”

Things like that raced through my brain, and they raced through yours, too. Some of those spewed out onto my Twitter, and they did on yours, too. We want to be fair, and we all want Butch to succeed. But the bottom line is right now, it doesn’t feel like he will. Again, the decisions he made on Saturday were puzzling, to say the least. Even if we all wanted to see what Jarrett Guarantano could do, was that really the best time to put him in? Do we have to run up the middle on every single first-down play? Can we target Marquez Callaway just once? These decisions — Butch’s decisions — continue to confound.

Look, we’re all mad. We all see what’s happening, and it’s bad. We as fans aren’t the problem, but we also aren’t helping. How much have you voiced your displeasure on message boards or in 140 characters or less? They are like giving in to those momentary sins; they may make you feel better in the moment, but they ultimately accomplish nothing.

The biggest voices that were heard Saturday were the ones that didn’t shout, the ones who were there at the start of the UMass game, but not the end.

I’m not condoning that, and I’m not judging it, either. I stayed until the bitter end, like I have in all but one game I attended in my life, when I drove an older friend up, and he wanted to get a head start on traffic rather than stick around. The Vols lost that night.

On Saturday morning, it felt like a loss even though a win went in the record books. Why? Because Jones lost us a little more; we’re a little further down the rabbit hole of believing a change may be needed, and while none of us want that to happen, we’re at the point of his coaching tenure where we’re pointing to one game (next week) where we’ll be an underdog at home that may define whether or not he’s got a future in Knoxville.

Say what you want about whether or not Jones is on the “hot seat.” Call it what you will. I don’t care if you say he’s “teetering on the brink,” “needing some positive vibes” or “approaching a turning point.” Whatever you want to say, if one game is a defining moment of a season or a coaching career, that’s a pretty warm predicament.

Prior to the season, I’d heard from people around the program I trust that Jones’ job was in “no danger” this year. Athletic director John Currie already came out this past week and commended the job Butch has done again. So, you can take him at his word, or you can take that as coachspeak from a savvy administrator who sees no reason to douse anything in what is — ultimately — a 3-1 team with plenty for which to play. Why would Currie say anything otherwise now? There’s no reason to.

I believe Jones and the Vols still hold this coaching staff’s future — and this season — in their hands, regardless of what happened last week or what happened Saturday. As Jones loves to say to the media, you put your resume on film. He speaks that about his players, and he dissects every day in practice and every game to make those determinations on who should be playing and who should be sitting.

After the next few weeks, Jones’ resume will be on film. He’s been a gameday liability a lot of times throughout his time at Tennessee, but he’s got some time to turn it around. If the Vols can get on a hot streak and play up to their talents and capabilities, we’ll see soon enough if Jones can be the guy to take this team to the next level. If they don’t take care of business over the next few weeks, well, that’ll tell us all we need to know, too, won’t it?

Saturday felt hopeless at times sitting there in Section Q, looking down at my little boy who’d shaken his pom-pom and sang Rocky Top and watched them run through the “T” and, then, lost interest. Most of that is because he’s 7 and just doesn’t understand the game, sure. But I looked around at the stadium, and it hadn’t been filled with 7-year-olds. It had been filled with men, women, boys and girls who came to Knoxville to watch the Vols and — at some point during a hot, disappointing morning — decided they had better things to do.

A lot of that is fairweather fans and frustration. But some of it is spending hard-earned money and free time to sit there and be angry, and some people just won’t do it, for better or worse, agree or disagree.

It’s up to Jones and the Vols to change their minds. It starts next week against Georgia. That’s where the narrative will be written, on this season, and maybe even on Jones’ regime.