The SEC recently relaxed its graduate transfer rule for players wishing to switch schools inside the conference after graduation. It didn’t take long for new Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt to capitalize on the rule change.
The first-year coach reached into his old stomping grounds and plucked Alabama center transfer Brandon Kennedy from the Crimson Tide. The former 4-star recruit has the potential to be a huge pickup for the Vols with two seasons left to play. He should step right in and be the favorite to win UT’s starting center gig.
Kennedy was slated to be Alabama’s backup center in 2019, but he wanted to go elsewhere and battle for a starting job. The Vols from the beginning were picked as a probable destination along with rival Auburn. Both of those programs have massive holes along the offensive front, and Kennedy saw an opportunity to make an immediate impact.
That’s hard for anybody to pass up, especially considering the NFL could come calling in a couple of years. In the end, the familiarity of Pruitt and the chance to play for known offensive line coach Will Friend gave Tennessee an advantage.
Once the Tide moved Ross Pierschbacher from left guard to center this spring, it became evident that UA coach Nick Saban had no desire to start Kennedy, so he looked to leave. Saban was against transfers within the SEC, calling it “free agency” at one time, according to SEC Country’s Marq Burnett. He also recently tried to block Kennedy from transferring to Tennessee or Auburn and was ridiculed for it. Then, he said according to SI.com’s Andy Staples:
“If we agree in the SEC in these meetings that we’re going to have free agency in our league and everybody can go wherever they want to go when they graduate and that’s what’s best for the game, then I think that’s what we should do,” Saban said. “Then Brandon Kennedy can go wherever he wants to go. But if we don’t do that, why is it on me?”
Of course, as Mike Griffith points out, Saban has benefitted in the past from “free agency” getting receivers Richard Mullaney (Oregon State) and Gehrig Dieter (Bowling Green), among others. But for all of his talk about wanting what’s best for the student-athlete, it’s smoke if it negatively affects the Crimson Tide.
No matter. His opinion means squat now. Kennedy is going to be a Vol, and that’s huge news for Tennessee, which all of a sudden has some reasons to be excited about a ’19 season that appeared dismal on the surface.
Though there remains a lot of holes, Pruitt has added quarterback Keller Chryst (Stanford), running back Madre London (Michigan State), offensive tackle Jahmir Johnson (JUCO), cornerback Kenneth George (JUCO), tight end Dominick Wood-Anderson (JUCO), outside linebacker Jordan Allen (JUCO), defensive tackle Emmit Gooden (JUCO), and late addition from high school Bryce Thompson, who could play cornerback or wide receiver.
That’s a lot of firepower to add who can step right in and play, and they are part of or in addition to a late-surging recruiting class. The Vols suddenly don’t look like pushovers, even though they still need to play better than expected to make a splash in the SEC East.
As far as the O-line goes, the Vols could surprise. Kennedy should be penciled into the starting rotation, and UT expects to get its best player back this fall if Trey Smith returns from a mysterious illness/injury that kept him out of spring practice. If he continues to progress, Smith will be a massive help. With Johnson being added to the mix along with players who could benefit from Friend’s tutelage such as Ryan Johnson, Drew Richmond, K’Rojhn Calbert, freshman Jerome Carvin, Riley Locklear, Marcus Tatum, Devante Brooks and returning oft-injured tackle Chance Hall. Among those guys, UT could piece together a strong unit, especially if Smith and Kennedy are injected as starters.
This is big news for Tennessee, and it continues to make some important moves under Pruitt. Now, if he can only put everything together, the Vols have some reasons for optimism.
The Vols have picked up another grad transfer, and this one’s a big one. VolQuest’s Austin Price is reporting that former Alabama Crimson Tide offensive lineman Brandon Kennedy has officially decided to play for Tennessee.
Kennedy is apparently already in Knoxville, and he’s expected to enroll at UT sometime this summer. He has two years of eligibility remaining and should be in the mix to start at either center or guard this fall.
According to his profile on Alabama’s roster (still up as of this writing), Kennedy is 6’3″ and 314 pounds, and he was the team’s backup center last year until a season-ending foot injury derailed his season. He played in three games last year and seven games in 2016.
As a recruit, Kennedy was a 4-star prospect in the Class of 2015, and 247Sports ranked him as the nation’s No. 19 offensive guard. His top five offers were from Clemson, Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, and Virginia Tech.
Kennedy’s name was mentioned often this past spring as the coaches and league debated the graduate transfer rules. During the spring meetings in Destin, the coaches voted to amend the rule requiring grad transfers to sit out for a year if transferring within the conference. That paved the way for Kennedy to choose between Tennessee and Auburn, and he ultimately chose the Vols.
Two 10-year-olds – Bubba and Goober – are shooting hoops. Bubba beats Goober, and both want to stay outside to practice to be ready for another game tomorrow. But the kids’ dad, Mr. Mayberry, intervenes. Bubba, as a reward for winning, can stay outside to practice, but Goober has to go to the house.
Goober wants to get better, so he’s out there practicing every single second that Bubba is, except that he is required to sit out Bubba’s extra post-win practices. Bubba gets more. Bubba gets better, Goober goes home.
The college football postseason practice rules
Weird, but true. This is how Mr. Mayberry operates the college football postseason.
The NCAA rules, as you’d expect, are pretty detailed when it comes to practice time for student-athletes. The rules allow bowl teams to continue practicing until their last game, and although the NCAA is currently stressed from multiple angles due to having to defend its non-profit status while many individuals, institutions, and companies make countless millions at the expense of the actual talent (whew, pardon that unexpected mini-rant), it’s not governed by dumb people. You can’t send a team to a bowl game and tell them they can’t practice for it. So yeah, teams get to keep practicing as long as they’re still playing games. That makes sense. Good job, NCAA.
Does the extra practice really matter? Yeah, it does. A lot. For one thing, bowl practices are generally not exclusively devoted to preparation for the extra game. Most coaches treat at least a portion of the extra practice time as an extra spring camp. They use the time to develop younger players who haven’t received as much attention due to the demands of the regular season. In essence, teams devote a significant portion of the extra practice to preparing for the following season. The extra developmental time is especially valuable because it comes during a period that student-athletes are between semesters, so they can really focus on what they’re being taught on the field without additional demands and divided attention. Bottom line: It’s not just extra practice time for the current season, it’s a head start on the next.
In contrast, non-bowl teams are prohibited from engaging in the same kind of practice. They don’t have to just sit and stare at the wall, but they are limited to only eight hours per week and the only activities they’re allowed to participate in are weight-lifting, conditioning, and two hours of film study.
Being restricted to eight hours of limited activities while your rivals get advanced preparation for the following season is a major disadvantage for non-bowl teams. They’ve already lost the current season, and now they have to stand at the start line while the same teams that beat them this year sprint out of the gates early for the next race.
Look, this is football, a physically and mentally demanding game that results in winners and losers. Losers don’t become winners by complaining about the rules or the challenges they face; they do whatever they can to overcome those challenges. They don’t get to complain.
But Mr. Mayberry isn’t a participant; he’s the Gamemaker, and it’s his job is to level the playing field to create an equitably competitive environment.
Experience matters (and feeds itself)
It’s a truth that is practically self-evident: experience matters. The more you do something, the more you’re going to improve. It’s why we devote long hours to weight-lifting and film study and nutrition and recruiting and practice and a whole host of other things. It’s why playing in more games, and playing in more high-stakes games, makes a team better. All else being equal, more experienced teams will generally beat less experienced teams.
And barring some catastrophe (See, e.g., Tennessee, Nebraska, Michigan, etc.), more experienced teams enjoy a virtuous feedback loop that continues to extend their seasons (and their extra practice sessions) year after year.
Below is a table of the number of games played over the past five years for each SEC team:
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
Total
Average
Alabama
14
15
15
14
13
71
14.2
Auburn
14
13
13
13
14
67
13.4
Georgia
15
13
13
13
13
67
13.4
Mississippi State
13
13
13
13
13
65
13
Missouri
13
12
12
14
14
65
13
Texas A&M
13
13
13
13
13
65
13
South Carolina
13
13
12
13
13
64
12.8
Arkansas
12
13
13
13
12
63
12.6
LSU
13
12
12
13
13
63
12.6
Ole Miss
12
12
13
13
13
63
12.6
Tennessee
12
13
13
13
12
63
12.6
Florida
11
13
14
12
12
62
12.4
Kentucky
13
13
12
12
12
62
12.4
Vanderbilt
12
13
12
12
13
62
12.4
The regular season in college football is 12 games. If you’re good enough, you can extend your season to over a month’s worth of 20-hour weeks by qualifying for a bowl game. That would put your season total of games played to 13, 14 if you also played in your conference championship. If you’re especially good, your bowl game is part of the College Football Playoff, and you can extend your season yet one more week and your games played to 14 or even 15 games. Only one or two teams each year hit that magical six-week, 15-games postseason number. About half are stuck at the usual 12-games-in-13-weeks regular-season mold, with the other near-half getting 13 games and somewhere around an extra five weeks of postseason work.
As you can see from the table above, most SEC teams (all but Florida, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt) earned at least one postseason game more often than not over the past five years. Tennessee, Ole Miss, LSU, and Arkansas all got an extra game three out of the last five seasons. South Carolina did it four times. Texas A&M and Mississippi State each earned an extra game every season, but neither of them ever earned more than one. Missouri is a weird case in that it got to the postseason only three of five times, but got two extra games two of those three times.
And then there’s Alabama, Auburn, and Georgia. All of them made the postseason all five years. Georgia earned more than one extra game only once, but it was a six-week, 15-game season. Auburn earned more than one extra game twice, both 14-game seasons.
And Alabama earned at least two extra games four out of the past five years, and they have two six-week, 15-game seasons. Over the past five years, they’ve played four more games than anyone else in the conference, an average of almost one entire game per season. They average 1.6 games more per season than half the league.
Translating that into extra practice time, in 2013 and 2014, Alabama’s season didn’t end until the first week of January, meaning they had nearly five extra weeks of practice time available. A lot of teams got that. But from 2015-17, they also played in the national championship, so they’ve had one additional week of practice each of the past three seasons as well.
So what?
There’s nothing wrong with some teams playing more games than others in any given season. Good teams should advance into postseason play, and the best teams should advance the furthest. And if you’re playing games, you need to practice.
But allowing good teams to practice while also forcing bad teams not to does give good teams an enduring advantage in terms of experience, an advantage that not only allows them to prepare for the remaining games in the current season but also gives them a head start on the next.
College football isn’t Mario Kart, where the worst players get more of the best weapons to make the game more exciting. In competition, there must be a reward for playing well. Good teams shouldn’t be intentionally subjected to additional risk just because they’re good and we want more competitive games. It’s up to the bad teams to make that happen by getting better.
But while the Gamemaker shouldn’t make things more difficult for the best players, they also shouldn’t make things even more difficult for the worst. What rationale justifies a rule requiring bad teams not to get better?
I can think of no good reason to require teams to quit practicing at different times. They should all be allowed to practice from the beginning of the season to the final whistle of the final game played by any team in the FBS. I’d think that’d be something that even Mr. Mayberry could get behind.
Tennessee landed its second commitment in the past three days with Sunday’s pledge of Heard County (Georgia) High School athlete Aaron Beasley. It could wind up helping fortify the back end of the defense for years to come.
Or, it could help the Vols shore up running back recruiting.
That’s why Beasley’s commitment is a big deal — he can play either way. UT loves him as a hard-hitting safety or a big running back. At 6’1″, 220 pounds, Beasley is a big name even if he doesn’t have a lot of stars by his name. The 3-star prospect could wind up seeing a ratings bump, especially if his offer sheet is any indication.
Beasley chose the Vols over Florida State, Auburn, Florida, Miami, Nebraska and others. He did tell GoVols247’s Ryan Callahan that he’s a Georgia fan, so if the Bulldogs wind up offering the Franklin, Georgia, native, it may be tough to hang onto him. But he loves the Vols, and it’s been that way for some time.
Beasley was recruited by UT safeties coach Charles Kelly, who recruited him since his days back at Florida State, too. Kelly may wind up having a monstrous weekend as the Vols also got Anthony Harris back on Friday. Though Harris is just 180 pounds, he has the frame to easily pack on 20 pounds and be a hard-hitting safety. Truth be told, Beasley could move up another level if he keeps growing and be a linebacker.
His size actually may be a deterrent in coverage; he looks like a typical in-the-box safety who can come up and be a force in the run game, but he’s never going to have the wiggle to be exceptional in coverage.
In his recruiting commitment stories, Beasley mentions former Seminoles safeties Derwin James and Jalen Ramsey a lot, so that sounds like at least he thinks it’s going to be a safety. That would be fine with the Vols, who still need several cornerback commitments, but safety is looking like a solid spot.
Aaron Beasley’s high school highlight reel; Tennessee’s new commit knows how to deliver punishing hits from the secondary https://t.co/9ApMYj0UbP
It may not be a stretch to see his ultimate destination in the offensive backfield. UT coach Jeremy Pruitt loves big backs from his days at Alabama, and it’s obvious that’s what he wants to employ at Tennessee, especially after a commitment from Jeremy Banks in the 2018 cycle and a transfer from big-bodied Michigan State runner Madre London, who has one season left to play.
Much like a lot of the other players the Vols have taken under Pruitt, Beasley has options and positional flexibility.
If you like stars, you may snarl your nose at Beasley, but that would be ridiculous. He’s an excellent prospect who had plenty of options, and he’s the kind of guy that either Kelly or running backs coach Chris Weinke would love to have and be able to mold.
UT is now up to 16th in the recruiting rankings for the 2019 class, according to the 247Sports composite ratings.
This also means Tennessee continues to be a force in Georgia. This makes 6. Offensive lineman Wanya Morris, JUCO linebacker Lakia Henry, receiver Ramel Keyton, tight ends Jackson Lowe and Sean Brown, and now Beasley hail from the Peach State, which is fertile enough to outfit many of the top programs in the country with star players.
After a slow start, the Vols remain hot on the recruiting trail. It’s still going to be interesting to see how this class shapes up at several positions, including quarterback, running back and cornerback. Those are major needs, and while the Vols have a ton of options, there aren’t any guarantees right now.
Everybody also wants to know if UT can close the deal on the nation’s top two players in offensive tackle Darnell Wright and running back Quavarius Crouch. Those two things are perhaps the biggest storylines in the cycle.
But Pruitt was known as a formidable recruiter at Alabama, Georgia and Florida State, and he’s doing that at UT.
247Sports ranks Harris as the nation’s 11th-best safety and the nation’s 171st-best player overall. He chose the Vols over offers from the following schools:
Clemson
Coastal Carolina
East Carolina
N.C. State
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Southern Miss
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest
Harris brings Tennessee’s the number of commitment for the Class of 2019 to nine, and, according to 247Sports, Harris is the second-best player in the UT’s class behind 5-star offensive tackle Wanya Morris. The Vols currently rank 19th in the nation and eighth in the SEC. Their current blue-chip ratio is 67%.
I used to play this game with my kids when we were traveling. Like most kids relegated to the back seat for long car trips, they would inevitably ask, “Are we there yet?” When my patience waned, I would get creative just for my own sanity.
“I have bad news, kids. We’re not going to get there today. In fact, we will never get there. Because as soon as we get there, it won’t be there anymore. It’ll be here.”
That bought me at least another five minutes of peace while they processed the message. Hey, you take whatever amusement you can get on a 16-hour drive from the Tri-Cities to the frozen tundra of Minnesota.
What’s that have to do with Tennessee football? I’ll let you figure that out for yourself. It’s a long summer.
“Best meaningless games”
A couple of weeks ago, SI.com published an article entitled The Best Meaningless Games of the 2017 College Football Season. The piece caught my eye, of course, because Tennessee’s season-opener against Georgia Tech made the list, but I found it especially interesting for another reason entirely.
The use of the two-word phrase “best meaningless” presupposes two kinds of games: (1) those that are “meaningful” in that they in some way impact the race for a championship, and (2) those that don’t and yet have some value anyway.
Categorizing football games like that suggests that there are two primary things we’re watching and hoping for when the season kicks off: The Race and The Moments. One, however, is threatening to eat the other.
The Race
The ultimate goal of every team’s season, of course, is to win it all. We enter the season hoping our team will become the national champion. Failing that, a conference or divisional championship makes a nice consolation prize. We root for our team to not only win the games it plays but also to finish the season ahead of everyone else in the standings.
This is The Race. It’s awesome (if memory serves), because every game matters, and not just your own. Win any given Saturday, and on Sunday you’re checking your stride, your pace, your standing with respect to everyone else still in the hunt for the championship. Lose, and you start rooting for those ahead of you in the standings to stumble as well so that you can catch up. Each week, the pack of contenders thins out until there is only one remaining on the podium hoisting the trophy.
The Race adds a layer of excitement to the college football season. Unfortunately, it is reserved for the elites, those teams with some degree of reasonable expectation that they can contend with the others for the crown.
The Moments
There are other reasons to watch college football as well, and they can be either in addition to The Race or entirely independent of it. The college football season provides each team an opportunity to create Moments that make watching worthwhile.
Take Rivalry Week, for instance. The last week of the regular season each year is one of the best of the entire fall because it features games that matter for reasons that might be completely independent of The Race: Alabama-Auburn, Georgia-Georgia Tech, Clemson-South Carolina, Oregon-Oregon State, Washington-Washington State, Arizona-Arizona State, BYU-Utah, Florida-Florida State, Kentucky-Louisville, Michigan-Ohio State, just to name a few. Some of those games will impact The Race, but many will not, and they are all important to their respective fan bases. These kinds of games provide Moments worth watching even for teams no longer in contention for a championship.
Moments worth watching can arise out of other contexts as well. Close, dramatic games usually make the networks’ evening highlight reels for a reason, namely because they make for good stories to tell. That’s the reason last year’s Tennessee-Georgia Tech game made SI.com’s list of “best meaningless games” of the 2017 season. It was a back-and-forth event that was sent to overtime by a blocked field goal attempt and was ultimately decided by a single play in double overtime. Dramatic games make shorten your life expectancy, but they make for good Moments.
Moments worth watching can also occur in non-rivalry, non-dramatic games that don’t impact The Race. These include individual highlights in the form of athletic, acrobatic, ESPN Top 10-type plays that make you glad you saw them live.
The Impact of The Race on The Moments
Fans of teams that are actively engaged in The Race have it easy. They have legitimate expectations of competing for the crown, and, in addition, they’ll have the extra benefit of some memorable Moments along the way.
Fans of teams not in contention for The Race only have the Moments, but first they must decide how to process the irrelevancy of The Race.
The over/under for the Vols this fall is 5.5, meaning the experts think the team should win between five and six games. If correct, that win total will keep Tennessee out of contention for any kind of championship, whether it be national, conference, or divisional. It will make The Race irrelevant.
And it will likely do so swiftly. According to one source, the Vols are currently a 9.5-point underdog to season-opening opponent West Virginia. If that’s accurate, they’ll suffer a loss right out of the gate, and wins against ETSU and UTEP the following weeks will gain them no ground. Then comes a stretch of games against Florida, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, and South Carolina that will likely result in a record of between 2-6 and 4-4, not exactly a championship resume. The Race will be run, but the Vols won’t be in contention.
For Tennessee fans interested only in The Race, their college football season will be over the day it begins.
Ugh. That doesn’t sound fun at all, but what’s the alternative?
There’s a Ted Talk from a guy named Matt Killingsworth that stands for the proposition that people who live in the moment are happier than those who don’t. He conducted a survey through an app that randomly pinged users to ask them a series of questions: How are they feeling at that moment? What were they doing at that moment? Were they thinking about something else at that moment? And if yes to the last question, was the thing they were thinking about pleasant, unpleasant, or neither?
After 650,000 responses, what he found was that our minds tend to wander from the moment 47% of the time, and when they did, participants were less happy than if they remained in the moment.
It wasn’t just that folks also tended to think about unpleasant things when they lived outside the moment, although that was true. The results were more surprising than that. Participants were unhappier even when they were already unhappy in the moment and daydreaming of something pleasant. In other words, what they thought about while mind-wandering mattered – thinking unpleasant things made them much unhappier than thinking about pleasant things – but mind-wandering always resulted in an unhappier state when compared to living in the moment. Killingsworth likened it to playing a slot machine where you could lose $50, $25, or $1. You’d never play that game.
Mind-wandering and college football
How might this apply to the context of college football? Might it be true that we spend half our time foregoing the moment and mind-wandering to The Race? Is it making us happier? Alabama fans might not even notice. In keeping with the slot machine illustration, they may be losing only $1. But Tennessee fans? Dwelling on The Race could be costing us 50 bucks a pop.
The same phenomenon that occurs within the context of an entire season may also happen within the context of any given game. Does thinking we know the outcome of the game before it starts negatively impact our ability to enjoy it? Do we think we’ll win? Know we’ll lose? Do these thoughts cause us to miss Moments?
No doubt, fans have a legitimate reason to be presently unhappy about a bad play, a bad loss, or a bad season. But if Killingsworth is right, entertaining unpleasant thoughts about the future impact of those things only makes it worse.
There is a time for considering and planning for the future, and there is a time for living in the moment. But the slot machine apparently costs either $1 or $50. We should probably figure out which, and only then decide whether playing is worth the cost.
We’re all daydreaming of the day that Jeremy Pruitt and Phillip Fulmer get the Vols back to running, and winning, The Race.
We don’t know when that moment will arrive, but we do know that it is sometime in the future.
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we’re never going to get there. Because as soon as we get there, we’ll be here.
After a month of May that predictably yielded a handful of bigtime commitments, Tennessee enters an important month of June with recruiting momentum and a 2019 class 8-deep in commitments and ranked #11 nationally in average stars. At the same time, there are a relatively limited amount of space in its 2019 class and some real questions to answer heading into the dead period at the end of the month.
Because of the premium that Coach Jeremy Pruitt and his staff put on competition and seeing prospects in person, they’ve taken the approach with all but a small handful of recruits that they want them to camp before they receive a commitable offer. With the aforementioned tight numbers in this class, the staff is going to be particularly picky in how it fills out the rest of its spots. Tennessee will host camps starting on June 10th and including a high school prospect camp; two 7-on-7 tournaments; and two OL/DL camps. The Vols will also be well-represented at the Mega Camp in Memphis on June 10th that will feature quite a few prospects the Vols will be looking to evaluate in person. Therefore, who shows up at these camps and how they perform will go a long way towards what both Tennessee’s commitment list and overall recruiting board look like coming out of the summer.
Relatedly, it’s been discussed ad nauseum that Pruitt feels differently than the recruiting services when it comes to this year’s instate class. That is, although there are quite a few highly ranked players from the Volunteer State, there are only a handful Tennessee would take right now without them camping in Knoxville.
At this point, a pretty clearly a delineation has being created between instate kids who want to earn committable offers from UT and those that are less interested in doing so:
Camping this June
WR Trey Knox DL Kristian Williams
DL Tymon Mitchell DL Zion Logue
WR Gyasi Mattison
CB Adonis Otey CB Wesley Walker QB Stone Norton
The above are ranked in order of likelihood of earning an offer at camp. I think Knox, Williams, and Mitchell in particular have a great shot of doing so, and all three appear to have the Vols near the top already. Mattison was a spring camp star who according to Volquest.com could potentially be the best WR in the state. Given the fact that Lance Wilhoitte might not camp (more on that below) Mattison could have a real chance to earn an offer. Logue is a really intriguing prospect who was on campus back in March for a Junior Day. He’s been listed at 6’4, 245 but this past weekend he camped at Ole Miss and measured at 6’6, 288 while running a 5.1 forty. He had named top-5 of UVA, Memphis, Louisville, Nebraska, and Purdue, but he earned a Black Bear offer and seems to have opened things up. Otey is a former Vol commitment with a nice offer list and the kind of size Pruitt likes in CBs, and Walker is coming off a fairly serious injury and will need to prove he’s back to his underclassman form. Norton might actually have a shot at an offer despite his currently light offer list simply because the Vols are taking an interesting tack towards QB recruiting at the moment.
(Currently) Not Camping
DL Bill Norton
CB Maurice Hampton
CB Woodi Washington
WR Lance Wilhoitte
Unfortunately, all of these players appear to be near the top of UT’s instate prospect list, but Memphis-area prospects Hampton and Norton are committed to LSU and UGA, respectively, while Washington and Wilhoitte still seem to fall into the “need to camp”…camp. Neither of Washington/Wilhoitte have completely shut down the idea of camping in Knoxville, so hopefully they will decide that earning a committable offer from the flagship school is worth it. As for Norton and Hampton, Pruitt and Co. have made it clear to both of them that the Vols will continue to recruit them until they sign scholarship papers elsewhere, and there is some hope that Hampton in particular will at least make it to campus (if not camp) this month.
Camping Plans Unclear
LB Kane Patterson
CB Jashon Watkins
RB Eric Gray
Three solid instate players who will likely need to camp in order to earn a commitable offer from the Vols, though Patterson might not have to given that he has legit offers from Alabama, OSU and other power programs.
As it gets closer to the actual camps and more attendees become known, there will be some further clarity about who is serious about the Vols and vice versa. We’ll likely see plenty of out of state prospects in as well, and there are some prospects like ATH Aaron Beasley (and, potentially, CBs Jaydon Hill and Tyus Fields) who could make decisions in June. By the end of the month when the dead period begins I expect Tennessee to have earned another few commitments and also unearthed some new names to add to the board.
“Worst” is subjective, of course. When we did this eight years ago at Rocky Top Talk, “most heartbreaking” was the language we chose. As I wrote Wednesday, turns out heartbreak is also subjective. It doesn’t feel right to tag the toughest losses of the last decade with heartbreak, because that’s typically reserved for stakes bigger than the Vols have played for since 2007. We’ll just go with worst; I’m taking into consideration both how it felt at the time and how it feels today. Here are my picks for the ten worst losses during Tennessee’s decade-long struggle:
10. 2017 Florida
When Tyrie Cleveland caught that pass, I laughed. I don’t think I’ve ever had that reaction to a Tennessee loss before, especially not one on the final play of the game. But this game felt like the summation of everything the Vols had struggled with under Butch Jones: overly infatuated with a close game, an inability to create a successful offensive snap in a crucial situation despite multiple chances, Florida snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. There are more colorful examples of all three further up the list. The ending here felt both unexpected and appropriate. And ultimately, as the 2017 season faded into 4-8 infamy, this loss didn’t matter as much. It wasn’t the difference between success and failure, or Jones keeping his job. It hurt plenty in the moment, but was simply the first chapter of a story we were already dreading.
9. 2008 UCLA
When you wait all summer for college football and your team is coming off an SEC East title, it hurts real bad to lose on opening night. Especially when the other team throws four interceptions in the first half. No one needs to hear me talk about the Clawfense any more; the numbers from this box score (Crompton 19-of-41, Foster & Hardesty 162 yards on only 25 carries) are burned in my brain. The beginning of the end.
8. 2014 Florida
Josh Dobbs is the reason this game doesn’t rank higher for me. He changed the narrative of the 2014 season and the trajectory of the program against South Carolina later that year, one of the most endearing and enduring victories of these last ten seasons. But on this day, Tennessee had seven snaps inside the Florida 20 in the third quarter, and none of them gained a single yard. Two field goals and an interception later, a 3-0 lead was only 9-0, and as we all remember, that wasn’t enough.
7. 2016 South Carolina
This season is still exhausting to think about. The range of emotions from the end of the Georgia game, through the end of the Texas A&M game (the kind of game that definitely makes the list when the Vols are consistently good around it), through getting decimated by Alabama…to this loss. From “team of destiny!” to a defeat that was actually encouraging against A&M, to chalking it up to injuries and Alabama while still having tangible success in front of you…and then it was simply all gone at South Carolina. A steep fall indeed, one Jones wouldn’t recover from.
6. 2015 Oklahoma
Despite the frustrating loss to Florida in 2014, the program was trending in the right direction and Oklahoma was the golden opportunity for Tennessee to announce its return to the national landscape. And man, it felt like that was happening at halftime. But in the third quarter, Tennessee had four drives featuring a 1st-and-10 at their own 44 or better. And those four sequences featured no gains greater than one yard. One missed field goal, three punts, and some heroics from Baker Mayfield later, and the Sooners stole the victory as the Vols blew a three-possession lead for the first time in almost 30 years.
5. 2010 LSU
4. 2010 North Carolina
Remember when these two happened and we thought they would represent the worst things would get for a long time? Eight years later, I think the North Carolina one is worse. Not only did we think we had won for a longer period of time, the LSU screw-up was our fault for having a billion men on the field. The UNC loss can still be blamed in part on the referee not standing over the ball while the Tar Heels substituted, and now college football has the Derek Dooley rule to prevent such a thing from happening again. The unique experience of celebrating a victory before ultimately losing twice in one season is enough to keep these two in the top five.
3. 2011 Kentucky
I can excuse 2008 Wyoming for a number of reasons, and losses like 2017 Georgia or plenty to Alabama can be chalked up to, “They were a lot better than us.” But this one, to me, still stands out. 4-7 Kentucky with a wide receiver playing quarterback and 217 yards of offense broke a 26-year winning streak for Tennessee in this series, costing the Vols bowl eligibility and Derek Dooley almost all the goodwill he had left.
2. 2012 Florida
Perhaps not one you think of right away when going back through the last ten years. But if I’m thinking back to the way I felt at the end of the game? There’s been little worse than this: all the Fulmer-Kiffin-Dooley stuff, back in the Top 25 for the first time since the slide began, and more than anything, the fragile hope that the 2012 team could actually get us back. Midway through the third quarter, it felt like it was going to happen. And then: 80-yard touchdown, interception, 45-yard gain, 23-yard touchdown, Florida up 27-20, and a few drives later a 75-yard touchdown was added on for good measure. Walking out of that stadium I remember very clearly thinking two things: this team won’t be the one to get us back, and now we’re going to have to wait at least three more years to try. I haven’t written after terrible losses because of my grandmother’s death (2016 South Carolina) or our son’s birth (2017 Georgia). But this is the only loss I remember not writing anything for because it simply felt like there was nothing to say except, “We’re going to have to wait another three years.”
1 2015 Florida
We’ll talk in a moment about where this game goes on a list of most heartbreaking losses beyond these last ten years. But within the last ten years, this one, by far, is at the top for me. Beyond the streak and the individual madness of 4th-and-14 are the failures on both sides of the ball. You’ve got multiple fourth down conversions allowed, infamously not going for two, and a final drive after 4th-and-14 when Tennessee had two timeouts and 1:26 but somehow ran only five plays before settling for a 55-yard field goal attempt. And of all the losses on this list, this one was by far the most costly. 2016 South Carolina might have cost the Vols the East. But we know this one did, in a year when Tennessee took two playoff teams to the wire. If any one of a dozen things goes differently in this game, Tennessee breaks the streak a year early, and Josh Dobbs and company get their rings and another shot at Alabama. But alas.
Where would we put any of these on a longer list? Using our 2010 list of the worst losses from 1990-2009, I’d add only one to that Top 10. But I would put 2015 Florida way up there:
Worst Losses 1990-2017
2001 LSU (SEC Championship)
1990 Alabama
2015 Florida
2001 Georgia
1999 Arkansas
2000 Florida
1993 Alabama (tied)
1996 Memphis
2007 LSU (SEC Championship)
1995 Florida
Three years later, I think 2015 Florida is worse than the Hobnailed Boot. This is mostly because the Hobnailed Boot didn’t hurt us in the end: if not for the number one game on that list, the Vols are playing for the BCS Championship despite the loss to Georgia.
When it became clear that 4-star athlete Bryce Thompson wasn’t going to be a part of Will Muschamp’s class, Tennessee swept in and tried to get him to come to Knoxville. Even after national signing day, things weren’t clear about his potential future with the Gamecocks, to whom he was pledged.
Louisville, Marshall and others stayed hard after him. In the end, he enrolled at UT this week and will be a part of the Vols’ class. South Carolina filled its last possible spot when Texas A&M defensive back Nick Harvey chose the Cocks over the Vols.
That wound up being huge news for Tennessee.
I said way back during the recruiting cycle before the Vols were in the picture that I thought Thompson was the best player in Muschamp’s class. I still think he has elite potential.
He is ranked the No. 301 overall player and the 12th-rated athlete in the class according to the 247Sports composite. Thompson told reporters on Wednesday that he wants to start out on offense for the Vols where he’s expected to play in the slot. But he isn’t opposed to moving to defense if the need arises.
The guess here is that the need will, indeed, arise. UT hasn’t had a ton of success yet recruiting defensive backs in the short tenure of Jeremy Pruitt, though that’s expected to change with a lot of top targets liking the Vols in ’19. But we’re talking about a major need right away — as in 2018. That’s why Pruitt moved freshman wide receiver Alontae Taylor to defense, and he thrived at cornerback over the last couple of weeks of spring, though he’s raw.
Thompson has that potential, too. He’s 6’0″, 180 pounds, so he has the size to play the position and be a force in press-man coverage under Pruitt as a cornerback. But he also could be dynamic with the ball in his hands, too. He wants to play the slot, and the Vols really don’t have anybody with his skill set on that side of the ball unless it’s Latrell Williams. UT has receivers, though, and the Vols simply don’t have a lot of depth or quality at corner.
It’s not hard to see Thompson being one of the key pieces of the present and the future on defense. But he also can do a lot of things on offense, and that’s where he thrived for Dutch Fork High School in Irmo, South Carolina, right outside of Columbia.
The best thing about this pledge is Thompson can make an impact a lot of places with his versatility. The Vols have a lot of needs — really all over the field — and to be able to get an instant-impact player at this point of the cycle (really, the cycle is long over) is a major coup. It’s unclear why Thompson wasn’t part of Carolina’s class, but it had nothing to do with his ability. If he has some off-the-field issues, he’s the type of player you take a chance on and try to rehabilitate him and hope he matures. Yes, he’s that good, and every single team has players who needed a second chance. I’m not suggesting that, and I also don’t know about his academic status, but he’s at UT enrolled now, so whatever the case, the Vols, Phillip Fulmer and Pruitt got him there.
That’s a major recruiting win for Tennessee, who has added 3-star JUCO cornerback Kenneth George, former 4-star graduate transfer quarterback Keller Chryst, former 3-star graduate transfer running back Madre London and hopes to add former 4-star offensive lineman graduate transfer Brandon Kennedy if they can get over the SEC transfer hurdles. That’s a lot of instant-impact ability to go along with players like JUCO OT Jahmir Johnson, JUCO TE Dominick Wood-Anderson and JUCO DT Emmit Gooden. It’s evident Pruitt isn’t worried about “rebuilding,” even though a lot of that can’t be helped. He wants to do everything he can to win now.
Pruitt knows recruiting, and he knows prospects want to see improvement on the field. If the Vols can impress this season, it’ll bode well for the next few recruiting classes. Thompson is a major win right now. It’s not every day you get a kid who could be an impact player on both sides of the ball. With him and Taylor now, and safety Trevon Flowers, cornerback Brandon Davis coming soon, UT could patch together a good corps of young defensive backs. That is Pruitt’s forte, if you recall.
Or, Thompson could step right in and be a difference-maker with the ball in his hands on offense.
Options are fun and nice to have. That’s what Thompson provides the Vols.
In the quiet of the early summer, we’ve often spent time with Tennessee’s history. Way back in the summer of 2009 at Rocky Top Talk, we counted down the 50 Best Games of the Fulmer Era. The following year we looked at Tennessee’s 20 Most Heartbreaking Losses from 1990-2009. I’ve been going back through the latter this week, comparing some of our toughest losses in the nine years since to see where they might rank. We’ll do that exercise in full later this week, but I want to start with one game in particular.
I was a history major; even as an idiot optimist, I believe there is value in examining our toughest defeats. But what qualifies a game for that list can and will change, specifically based on the quality and quantity of victory surrounding it.
Case in point: how do you feel about this game, nine years later?
So it’s still no fun to watch, of course. But how do you think of it in the context of the last ten years?
When we did our original list of the 20 most heartbreaking losses from 1990-2009, we ranked this game #11, and almost apologized for having it that low. Recency bias was a factor, even with Lane Kiffin out and Derek Dooley in when we did the original list. But in the summer of 2010, we placed it above heart-breakers like the 1990 tie with Auburn and four Florida losses (1996, 1997, 1999, 2002).
This week, when I was putting together my list of the ten worst losses of the last ten years, it didn’t even make the cut.
To be fair, there are more losses to choose from in the last ten years than in the 20 preceding them. That’s literally true, by the way: from 1989-2007 the Vols lost 54 times, plus their first six of the 1988 season. From 2008-2017, the Vols lost 63 times.
But here too, it’s both quantity and quality that count. Tennessee has not had much opportunity for the kind of heartbreak that dominated our old list. How we experience defeat has changed. Our worst losses used to make us mourn what we gave away. Now they make us wonder if we’ll ever get it back.
In 2009, that loss to #1 Alabama was heartbreaking. But it’s not just the sequence of events, the ranking, or the rival. In 2009, we were still attached to the idea of who Tennessee had been for all those years prior. Lane Kiffin’s 45-19 win over Georgia two weeks earlier helped us do that. And the loss to Alabama didn’t take it away; even at 7-6 at the end of the season, fans were very optimistic Kiffin could get the Vols where we wanted to go. Two losses to the number one team in the country, two others by four points each, and a bowl loss to a Virginia Tech team that finished the year fourth in S&P+. We rioted, in part, because we believed in what was happening up until the very moment it was over. And today we enjoy comparing the makeup of Jeremy Pruitt’s staff to Kiffin’s.
In the moment, the 2009 Alabama loss belongs on a list of painful near misses from a championship-caliber Tennessee program. But nine years later, 2009 isn’t the bridge between Fulmer and Kiffin on the straight and narrow road of victory. It’s Exit 2A into the ditch, and there aren’t even any good gas stations.
The program’s inability to sustain success over a decade cut a hard tie from the past, and instead created an era of its own. Viewed through the lens of 2009, the loss to Alabama is heartbreaking. Viewed through the lens of the last decade, it’s a near-miss moral victory akin to 2013 Georgia. The Vols played an equally competitive game with an equally good Alabama squad in Tuscaloosa in 2015, and I don’t think any of us would put it on a list of the ten worst losses of the last ten years either.
Losing always hurts. But it’s not just that the stakes have been lower for most of the last ten years. It’s that this ditch is long and muddy, and you need really good vision to still see the shiny objects in our rear view. At some point it became normal, and our definitions of great wins and bad losses changed based on our surroundings.
The funny thing here isn’t really funny, because we’re putting enough hope in it to take it very seriously: we asked Phillip Fulmer to get out of the car when it was teetering on the edge. Opinions still vary over how many tires were in the ditch back then. And now, after trying and failing in unique and messy ways over the course of almost a decade, Fulmer has the keys again and got to pick the driver. And when in doubt at any point over the last six months, it’s Fulmer’s presence – a shiny object out of the rear view and riding shotgun – that gives me the most hope.
There’s some mud and messiness left, no doubt. Jeremy Pruitt will chase forward progress, with wins and losses along the way this year and beyond. I hope he gets us to a point when losing to #1 Alabama by two points hurts just as much nine years later as the day it happened. And I hope for wins with an even longer memory.
