Culture of Tennessee Football

I agree, you can't really be expected to be a violent psychopath for 20 hours during the week and 3 hours on Saturday and a choirboy the rest of the time.

 

I largely believe that is why the defensive players put up with sunseri's verbal "abuse". They know he knows what he is doing.

 

Jay Graham gave an awesome pregame speech as the players were about to leave the tunnel

 

Counzo has the glare when things piss him off, Dooley hops up and down and throws headsets. I think that says a lot about their approach to coaching

 

Is there a "culture of Tennessee football" at all right now? All I see is a bunch of guys doing what they can to look out for themselves in a chaotic, anarchic situation. It's basically Full Metal Jacket up there these days. There isn't enough order for there to really be a culture.

One coach and you're there. We aren't there.

 

You've described Central African culture pretty accurately. All it takes are repeated behaviors over time.

 

Did you hear it first hand? Or is this somewhere online that I can hear?

 

Alabama tried a few "more with less" hires before realizing what it would take to jolt the program back to life.

Until the folks on The Hill do the same, we're little more than a breeding ground for apologists of the mediocre, where 8-4 (+/-2) is is not only the expected norm, but celebrated.

 

As some have said on here before, Dave Hart has seen what a top notch coach does for an athletic program. With Tennessee's money and resources, it won't take long to be back to where we should be (consistently winning 10+ games a season).

 

I was 50 rows up and could hear him

 

IMO the "culture" is Dooley's biggest problem. He allowed the previous state of the program to temper his performance expectations. When your head coach has an excuse a week, it makes it a lot easier to take plays off here and there.

 

Exactly. Excuses are like cancer. They will destroy the 'body' (team) and can spread like wildfire. Dools has more excuses than Carter's has liver pills.

 

The culture of the football team has reflected the culture of the Men's Athletic Department as a whole over the past several years--that of an unmitigated cluster[uck fay]. I don't agree with kpt's interpretation of all of the examples in his op, but the message is spot on; the football program has been in absolute disarray for somewhere around a decade, and there has been no mechanism in place to array it. It hasn't been alone, either, as I'd put the basketball program and, from what little I know about it, the baseball program in the same category.

I don't know Dave Hart, and I don't know how the oversight and support from the broader University works at the moment, but I do attribute the fall of a once proud athletic program into a blooper video for sportcenter to a complete lack of competent people doing their jobs well starting at the upper levels of the school and trickling down into the teams.

We do have some nice buildings.

 

I don't think we can underestimate how bad of an athletic director that Mike Hamilton was.

 

I may have thrown a few things in tere that stand apart and are in reality isolated instances that don't reflect on the overall culture. However, it still seems like the feel the last decade has been one of living the privileged athlete life, facing minimal, if any, consequences for transgressions, and if you win some games, that's nice too. Seems akin to Vanderbilt encouraging their guys to behave like Miami in their heyday.

 

Something else that would help is if a group of upper-classmen said they were tired of being mediocre and didn't allow it.

I realize there probably aren't 25 Al Wilson's in the world, but if there is even a couple of guys that are tier 2 personalities like him on this team, it would help immensely. Wanting it jokes aside, Nick Reviez would not let that 2010 team fold. Kid was a leader. Other people were willing to help fight for the cause. This team as best as I can tell has no strong leaders.

 

Wow