A community of reasonable fanatics.
It’s still wild to me, and quite a pleasure, to be typing “Orange Bowl Preview” into that box up there. The incredible ride of this football season makes its final approach tomorrow night, already secure in our hearts, ready to bridge the gap into next year. For an encore, the […]
The week between Christmas and New Year’s has been light on anticipation in years past, but not now: while the football team prepares for the Orange Bowl on Friday, the basketball Vols tip-off SEC play at Ole Miss tonight (watch out, that’s a 5:00 PM eastern tip-off on the SEC […]
Tennessee’s 75-70 loss at Arizona capped a terrific day of college basketball, one that will set the landscape as the sport moves to conference play. In the power six conferences, only three teams remain unbeaten: Purdue, UConn, and the surprising year one surge from Chris Jans and Mississippi State. The […]
Who’s the best team Tennessee will play this year? If the answer ended up being Kansas, we’d certainly take it. The Jayhawks rebounded from their loss to the Big Orange in Atlantis by dropping bombs on Seton Hall (91-65) and our previously-unbeaten brethren from Missouri, in CoMo, 95-67. I know […]
When your guys don’t win or make the podium for these national awards despite compelling and obvious arguments, you learn to look elsewhere for validation. And while I can’t promise all of my 25-year-old thoughts on the Heisman Trophy are entirely healthy, I do think it’s the better option overall. […]
Congrats to longtime friend of the blog birdjam, who takes home our regular season pick ’em prize by a healthy margin. His 2,181 confidence points earned first place by 54 points over PAVolFan in a hotly contested battle for second place. Also, shout out to birdjam, cnyvol, spartans100, and aaron217, […]
The most important work this season is already done: the Vols are back in the championship chase, and would be preparing for round one as we speak in a 12-team playoff, soon to become the clear answer to a season’s success. A job well done earns additional rewards: this team […]
The web browser marks the changing seasons: my most-visited sites were once SP+ and SportSource Analytics, and most recently every bowl projection I can find, to try to understand this Rose Bowl madness. But already, winter’s champions emerge once more: KenPom, the Bracket Matrix, and Bart Torvik. In KenPom, the […]
When Tennessee beat LSU, we wrote this about the week to come: You can think whatever you want about “back”; that’s a question we already learned we can’t really even answer until the entire story of this season has been written. This team has skipped so many steps in this […]
Over at Bart Torvik’s predictive bracketology, the Vols would be well acquainted with their current neighbors on the one line: Texas, first in KenPom and second in defensive efficiency, comes to Thompson-Boling Arena on January 28 Tennessee, third in KenPom and first in defensive efficiency Arizona, ninth in KenPom and […]