How to enjoy a meaningless season

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.

Where will our minds be?

 

Vols stuff worth reading 6.6.18

If you read only one Vols-related thing today . . .

. . . make it this post from DylanVols: June Camps Will be Big for the 2019 Class, Particularly with Instate Prospects

Other Vols stuff worth reading

  • 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.
  • Tickets for the Belk College Kickoff are now available.
  • SEC Releases 2019-21 Women’s Hoops Schedule Rotation – University of Tennessee, via UTSports.

Behind the paywalls

  • Tennessee Vols football recruiting: Five-star OL Darnell Wright gives mother first look at Tennessee, via 247Sports.
  • Tennessee Vols football recruiting: Elite DE/LB Khris Bogle high on Vols, ‘going to Tennessee again’, via 247Sports.

June Camps Will be Big for the 2019 Class, Particularly with Instate Prospects

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.

Vols stuff worth watching 6.5.18

The hype machine for Vols hoops this fall is cranking up early and often:


Two words: Eric. Berry.


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Vols stuff worth reading 6.5.18

If you only read one thing about the Vols today . . .

. . . make it this, from 247Sports:  Jarrett Guarantano happy to help Joshua Dobbs for youth camp

Other Vols stuff worth reading today

  • Three Former Vols Named to 2019 College Football Hall of Fame Ballot – University of Tennessee, via UTSports. Bobby Majors, Larry Seivers, and Al Wilson.
  • Second-Year Surge: Tennessee cornerback Terrell Bailey, via 247Sports

Behind the paywalls

  • Tennessee Vols football: LB signee JJ Peterson joining the Vols, via 247Sports. It’s looking like he’ll be here by the second summer session.
  • Roundtable: Elite expectations for Tennessee Vols Basketball, via 247Sports
  • Tennessee Vols football recruiting: Vols DT commit LeDarrius Cox gets offer from Auburn, still ‘listening’, via 247Sports. He does say that he’s still committed to Tennessee, for what it’s worth.

Vols stuff worth watching 6.4.18

VFL Josh Dobbs had his annual football camp in Knoxville this weekend, which triggered several interviews worth your time. First up is Josh himself:

The camp also gave local reporters the opportunity to talk to current players, including Todd Kelly, Jr.:


. . . and other former players like Brett Kendrick:


There are a ton of guys in the football program that operate almost exclusively behind the scenes. I’d not heard of this video guy, but from the looks of the blog’s Twitter timeline, everybody in the program love him and are sorry to see him move on:


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Vols stuff worth reading 6.4.18

If you only read two things about the Vols today . . .

. . . make it these:

Other Vols stuff worth reading today

  • Nation’s top OL Darnell Wright reviews family trip to Rocky Top, via VolQuest.
  • Tennessee signee Brant Lawless yet to report, future uncertain, via VolQuest.
  • Jarrett Guarantano: New Tennessee staff making me more confident, via 247Sports.
  • Charles Kelly starting ‘from the ground’ with Tennessee safeties, via 247Sports.
  • Jeremy Pruitt says Weight-room upgrades show Tennessee Vols will ‘invest’ in players, via 247Sports. Love this quote:

“One of the first things I told them is when you want to figure out who your opponent is, just go look in the mirror and that’s who it is.”

  • Khwan Fore headed to Louisville, not Tennessee, via the Courier-Journal.
  • Vols football has created a subscribable Twitter list of all of the football coaches.
  • Not Vols, but . . . Legalized betting is coming to college football, and the SEC is bracing for impact, via CBSSports. Interesting observation: Pro leagues have a sort of built-in immunity to shenanigans resulting from sports betting, as players are already making so much money that they can’t be financially incentivized by bettors. Not so with college athletes.

Good stuff behind paywalls

  • Recruiting Stock Report, via 247Sports.
  • Vols ‘very high’ among favorites for Georgia CB Warren Burrell, via 247Sports.
  • Elite 2020 WR Porter Rooks enjoys ‘great visit’ to Tennessee, via 247Sports.

Tennessee’s QB Recruiting Strategy is Interesting, to Say the Least

Although the prevailing opinion is that the 2019 QB class is relatively weak, Tennessee absolutely has a huge need at the position.  The Vols head into the 2018 season with four scholarship QBs, one of which (Keller Chryst) will definitely be gone after this season; at least one of which (Jarrett Guarantano, Will McBride) quite possibly could leave if he doesn’t win the job this year; and the fourth of which (JT Shrout) is a true freshman and a bit of a project.

That said, the staff doesn’t appear to have a huge sense of urgency, and their QB board is both relatively unknown and at the same time almost surely absent of bigtime names.  At this point, we can only definitively say they like Lance Legendre (a Kansas commit from Louisiana) and Brendon Clark (Wake Forest commit from VA).  Others they’ve expressed interest in are Zach Calvada (Buford, GA); Jarod Hoyer (JUCO EE who took an unofficial visit for the Orange & White Game; Peter Parrish (Alabama); and Stone Norton (Nashville).

One can’t help but think that while in general the Tennessee staff’s insistence that prospects camp – and in the case of QBs come throw on campus – in order to earn commitable offers is understandable and even impressive, with QBs it could really backfire on them.  Tennessee of course famously passed on 4-star QB Sam Howell, who has committed to FSU after having very strong interest in the Vols and has continued to have a strong spring.  Yet from the group above, Parrish and Norton (the most lightly recruited of the group) are the only ones currently scheduled to camp at UT this month, and of course Legendre and Clark are committed elsewhere.  At the same time, both Calvada and Parrish continue to see their respective recruitments heat up with increasing offers/interest from bigtime programs.  In fact, Calvada showed out yesterday on the first day of the Elite 11 Finals, a performance that is sure to kickstart his recruitment even more which would certainly make it harder for the Vols to land him should they choose to pursue him strongly.

Tennessee appears to be the frontrunner for Harrison Bailey, the #2 Pro-Style QB in the 2020 class, and the staff’s calculation could very easily – and understandably – be that they need to “clear the deck” for Bailey.  Therefore they could be taking the approach that for 2019 they are going to be both very picky and at the same time willing to take a lesser-rated player.  At the same time, no one knows what Guarantano and McBride are thinking, and what kind of prospect Shrout is, better than Pruitt and the staff.  So if they think that they can win in 2019 with the current QB situation plus whoever they land in 2019 – even if it’s not a bigtimer – I am not going to argue.  But I think it’s fair to at least question their strategy of both passing on Howell and at the same time seemingly slow-playing some other really good looking prospects while other schools appear to be recruiting them harder.  It could play out a number of ways, and could absolutely end up with the Vols signing a bigtime QB, but right now Tennessee’s strategy is interesting to say the least and potentially a big gamble.

Vols stuff worth watching 6.2.18

I’m loving the Field Level series, as it really shows just how focused this entire coaching staff is on teaching the guys what they need to know to be successful. I mean, I know that’s supposed to be the goal of every coach, but . . . you know.


Tennessee has put some work into creating a ton of Vols-related GIFs. I’ll always love this one:

via GIPHY