If you missed any of the Field Level series, here’s a tweet with links to all of them. When you start watching them, you’ll begin to see why recruits are beginning to take Tennessee more seriously.
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%.
Tennessee Vols coach Jeremy Pruitt downplays change to 3-4 defense from 4-3 defense, via 247Sports
Tennessee Vols coach Jeremy Pruitt: Summer 7-on-7 important for player development, via 247Sports
Former Vols kicker James Wilhoit mentoring next generation, include Bama commit, via Gridiron Now
Bill Connelly’s West Virginia preview, via SB Nation
SEC Announces 2019 Men’s Hoops League Opponents – University of Tennessee, via UTSports. Pertinent info:
The Vols’ home slate features games against Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina and Vanderbilt.
Tennessee hits the road for contests at Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.
So in addition to its three “permanent” SEC opponents—Kentucky, South Carolina and Vanderbilt—Tennessee also will meet Florida and Missouri twice this coming season.
Behind the paywalls
Tennessee Vols football recruiting: Elite safety Jaylen McCollough set to return to Tennessee, via 247Sports
Tennessee Vols football recruiting: Elite Class of 2020 QB Harrison Bailey schedules Tennessee visit, via 247Sports
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.
Quarterback JT Shrout could be diamond in rough of Vols 2018 recruiting class, via Gridiron Now.
Jeremy Pruitt thinks position change will allow Jonathan Kongbo to flourish, via Gridiron Now.
Phillip Fulmer has great response to Alabama fans yelling, “Roll Tide”, via 247Sports. (He just rattles off his personal record against them.)
Andy Katz’s Power 36: A look ahead to the 2018-19 season post-NBA draft early-entry withdrawal deadline, via NCAA.com. Vols are at No. 4.
Tennessee Vols football: Ranking the toughest games on 2018 schedule, via 247Sports. This is pretty much what you think it would be, but it’s a good read.
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.
