If the only certainty right now is uncertainty, college football echoes it best by the absence of any central leadership. The NCAA offers little top-down guidance when it comes to football, and we’re seeing it play out in real time. The simplest solution to a lack of central leadership in […]
Author: Will Shelton
SEC Scheduling: What’s The Floor?
Back in the good old days – not just pre-pandemic, but when we still got a college football video game – this was the week the season really started feeling close. The annual mid-July release from EA Sports made college football’s approach a little more tangible. So did media days, […]
SEC Football 10 Game Schedule: A Balanced Option
With the Big Ten announcing they’re only playing conference games this fall, there’s a sense we might see all the Power Five conferences move in that direction quickly. That’s eight games for SEC teams instead of 13, so there’s an obvious sense the league might try to add one or […]
Stories of the Decade: Signature Wins in Overdrawn Seasons
In the moment, our favorite stories of the last decade all happened in the first five weeks of the 2016 season. There’s else nothing in the last ten years that even remotely compares to the spectacle of Bristol, the streak against Florida, and the final snap in Athens. If you […]
Running Back Distribution in Jim Chaney’s Offense
If you’re looking for a scenario where Tennessee upsets Oklahoma, the most straightforward one goes something like this: the Vols use their star-studded offensive line to go right at Oklahoma’s inexperienced defensive line, and Eric Gray/Ty Chandler/player to be named later do the heavy lifting for Tennessee’s offense. The Sooners […]
Tennessee needs a Power Five opponent in 2025. Who’s still available?
Tennessee’s “decade” of dominance from 1989-2001 created and sustained elite expectations in the Vols’ non-conference schedule. It started with UCLA, Notre Dame, a championship squad from Colorado, and Donovan McNabb’s Syracuse. In the early 2000’s the Vols added Miami off their national championship and Cal teams who entered the season […]
Navigating the Rhythm of Tennessee’s Schedule
Our familiar autumn rhythms will change this year, and much for the better. The Georgia game moves to the second Saturday of November, adding some much-needed balance to Tennessee’s schedule. The Vols’ three most obvious tests since divisional play began now have a month of their own: Florida in September, […]
Jim Chaney’s offenses from 2013-18
When Jim Chaney starts mashing the buttons and pulling the levers, offenses get better.
Make Them Remember You For As Long As They Live
Two weeks before my son was born in 2017, we were going through a box of old photos at my parents’ house and came across a letter. I shared this story on Twitter at the time, and it was the first thing I thought of today. I was born in […]
More on Having a Chance to Win Every Game
Last week we looked at the last 15 years of Tennessee’s SP+ data and found that the Vols’ 2020 projection in that metric would be a season most similar to 2009, 2012, and what became of 2016. The common thread in those years: you came to kickoff almost every single […]