Mike Griffith on Finebaum now, being the mouthpiece for Butch. Hes already dropped the OPs line since talking to him, hes talked about 3 games in 13 days at least 6 times and no I am not exaggerating. Paul's starting to hammer on him a little and its quite funny actually.
Plus the other 43 have PTSD from the last visit. No way the HC can be expected to overcome those challenges.
OK this may be the crack in his image. This seems to have rubbed people the wrong way who normally defend whatever he says or does. He better win Saturday. I think the base has shifted and the excuses won't fly. He needs to start owning the program, people are waking up to his constant hard luck belly aching in year 5. Just win.
It's bullshot in my opinion, the NCAA keeps doing this to Tennessee. All these young kids just keep leaving after 3 or 4 years. Why don't other colleges have to deal with that? You don't see kids in Alabama leave after 4 years.
Trying to think who those 27 are. Lots of juniors and seniors along the OL. Dormady. John and Todd Kelly. Abernathy. Mosely. Medley. McDowell and Jumper have been here a good while. Khalil and Shy Tuttle I'm pretty sure. Trevor Daniel. Ethan Wolf. Evan Berry. Josh Smith, who is evidently the most important player on the team. I'd say the majority of our contributors have made the perilous trek to Gainesville.
Swain was on here in Nashville. Said they played 3 in 13 back in '05 with the LSU situation. Didn't even realize it until someone pointed it out to him a few weeks ago.
We have reached the point where my disdain for Butch is larger than desire to want to see Tennessee win. That's a bad place to be.
Apparently McElwain didn't mention Irma as any type of distraction or excuse for the Gators in his press conference today. Guy has a full clip of excuse ammunition and won't pull the trigger.
It will be mentioned in the post game, win or lose. "These guys had a tragic event and played through it for the win" Or "We didn't play focused like we should have due to Irma"
I'm not big on excuses, but this is kind of a legit one. McElwain didn't have to hire a research assistant or statistician for this one. Supposedly McElwain looked exhausted. With the suspensions and the hurricane, this should be a rout. They are just downtrodden.
I don't have a problem with mentioning it after the fact. It's a disservice to the team to be making excuses ahead of time. To be overdramatic, it is a dereliction of duty for a coach to be figuring out why his team could lose instead of how they can win.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Florida come out quickly then fade by the 2nd quarter and the route is on