The Devils You Know

Discussion in 'Vols Football' started by GahLee, Sep 17, 2015.

  1. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    http://grantland.com/the-triangle/volunteer-work-tennessee-football-and-the-devils-you-know/

    “I told them,” said Jones on Saturday night, “‘Don’t ever lose this feeling. When there’s a day you don’t feel like coming to practice or you don’t feel like working hard, think about how you feel right now.’”

    It’s advice the staff would do well to absorb. We speak and think of players and coaches both as institutions. They’re set up by their schools, their fans, and the media as avatars of the program, until it’s almost cognitively dissonant to see them act like people. They’re praised or pilloried in the abstract, to a point where it’s easy to forget that, no, there’s no such thing as just deciding not to be affected by adverse circumstances. But the team won’t believe it’s out of the well dug by late-stage Phillip Fulmer, Lane Kiffin, and [ddiapos] until it’s in full daylight. To do that, it needs to get wins. To do that, some boldness will be called for. And it’d help if they had some luck.
     
  2. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    This is a lot of what has been most concerning to me - Butch's seeming inability to take criticism, responsibility, and frankly, to learn his lessons.

    His only coming in for a 5-minute post-game presser, but then sending his players out to face the lights and that music, instead and alone, is a tremendous red-flag, for me. To say that I, and many others, saw this as chicken shit, is to do a disservice to things made of chicken shit. That doesn't seem to be the act of a responsibly mature person, and flies in the face of his oft-mentioned value on character, dealing with adversity, etc.

    Worst of all, I genuinely doubt his honesty at this point, and believe it impossible that any reasonable person could fail to do the same, given his "4-5 hours of analytics" explanation of the 4th and 1 call, Hurd's absence in that moment, the intention of his post-game comments to Striker, etc.

    Now, almost every coach at this level is full-blown neurotic and full of shit, but Jones now seems particularly untrustworthy, even amongst that group of bullshitters, and frankly, the man strikes me as being particularly fragile, emotionally.

    And when you look at the whole of it all, it lends some credence to the long-standing and widely held fears that he has been hired above his station, is in over his head, and neither has the ability nor clarity of vision to do what he needs to do to overcome his own deficiencies, and most likely, because he's either too prideful or too ignorant to admit that such is even necessary.

    Simply, I fear that he's starting to believe his own bullshit, there's no one around him who will speak the truth to him, and that these most recent incidents are just the very early and fissured cracks in his armor, and which belies a multiude of much larger, and perhaps more severe, problems with the man, his leadership and his tenure here.
     
  3. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    Much has been said on whether the talent could overcome his actual ability to coach. Could he be our Les Miles? I'm afraid after Saturday that is no longer his ceiling, Les is many things, chickenshit isn't one of them. That man has brass balls, he proves that by rolling the dice on four down and in his epic post-game presser ("it'd be so ****ing easy", is the one I'm referring to).

    Jones looks like a guy who'd fold pocket kings in fear that someone had aces in the hole. To further the point using cards as an analogy, he's been reluctant to go all-in, despite the lack of winning hands the players at the table have shown. Now the blinds are getting higher and higher and he's on the verge of being ran dry by them. Nothing worse than being short-stacked and forced to play a hand you'd otherwise fold just to stay alive, he's almost there, Florida represents the next blind, the stakes have never been higher, he'd better rake in some chips off that hand or be prepared to cash out of the game altogether.
     
  4. CardinalVol

    CardinalVol Uncultured, non-diverse mod

    I've yet to figure out the point she was trying to make.
     
  5. justingroves

    justingroves supermod

    She's a pretty shitty writer
     
  6. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    I never look for much from her, I thought a few of her points were pretty valid.
     
  7. justingroves

    justingroves supermod

    Your card analogy works well

    In Butch's mind, year 4 was the year he thought the fans would judge. I have no doubt he thought he could get 3 easy years before nut cutting time in year 4.

    He was wrong and now he's feeling the pressure.

    And Les? LSU players would kill for him because they know he's got 100% confidence in their abilities
     
  8. justingroves

    justingroves supermod

    This particular article wasn't bad, but it rambles. I usually can't make it through her stuff due to misplaced pop culture references and general cluelessness on the topic
     
  9. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    I don't think anyone really expected a bunch from his first two squads, rightfully so, this year is different, they've recruited too well not to be successful. You can't trot out as many NFL players as we are and lay an egg on a week to week basis.
     
  10. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    Yeah, just because GrantLand pushes pop culture and long form writing doesn't give the writer free reign to just go ape shit with it. Sometimes less, is more.
     
  11. justingroves

    justingroves supermod

    You can't keep harping on youth and inexperience either.
     
  12. Savage Orange

    Savage Orange I need ammunition, not a ride. -V Zelensky.

    This, in a nutshell, is why I am no longer able to be emotionally invested in this program any more. It's gotten to the point that even if they DO start winning games that matter again, I won't be able to trust that it is anything other than a fluke. That's something I never thought I'd say about Tennessee because in my 50 years on this vale of tears even when the Vols weren't that good there was always the hope that they were going to BE good in the near future... That hope is gone now and Botch is going to do just enough to keep his job for the foreseeable future. 7-8 wins is his absolute ceiling and Hart/Cheek will be perfectly content to let him hang around and bullshit his way around the truth. It has become glaringly evident that the power structure at UT is only about raising money and their apparent belief is that Neyland at 75% capacity is still a cash cow. I'd rather Tennessee just completely suck (to the tune of 2-3 wins a season) rather than this mediocre bullshit show we've been saddled with the past 15 years. Even at that, there would be enough VN types who would show up for games to keep the almighty dollars coming in to fund Cheeks "Harvard of the South" delusion....
     
  13. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    He needs to abandon that shit yesterday.
     
  14. Savage Orange

    Savage Orange I need ammunition, not a ride. -V Zelensky.

    Mark Richt has made a pretty good living for himself doing just that.
     
  15. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    UGA is scared to death that they'll become us. Anytime his job security is in question, you'll hear the name Phillip Fulmer and look what happened to Tennessee. I shit you not, it's the default answer you'll hear on Atlanta sports radio.
     
  16. RockyHill

    RockyHill Loves Auburn more than Tennessee.

    We make fun of Mark Richt a lot but even as UGA has fallen off a bit they're a consistent 9 game winner. Granted it may be a weak east but Butch could never do that.
     
  17. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    And a consistent 9 game winner is like being the 8th seed in the NBA playoffs. You're there but only to get tuned by a much better team.
     
  18. RockyHill

    RockyHill Loves Auburn more than Tennessee.

    No, not really.
     
  19. GahLee

    GahLee Director of Conspiracy Theories, 8th Maxim

    Ok
     
  20. justingroves

    justingroves supermod

    I mean, 8 or 9 wins a year knowing your coach isn't able to do better while filling up NFL rosters sucks. I don't know if it would be better than losing 6 games a year.

    UGA hasn't won the SEC in ten years and they've been stacked.
     

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