portal gonna mess up some good team chemistry situations imo. I don’t like it. Already setting a bad example regarding patience and overcoming obstacles, mental and physical, imo.
It surely will but this whole portal thing cannot be 1 sided. The team/university/coaches cannot bear all the risk. Best case scenario is players AND teams end up in best position…and none of it is due to dishonesty. Merrill is gone too because of WR rumors. Hopefully there will be an equilibrium point and some type of balance. But it’s going to be hard to hang on to top talent if you don’t surround them with top talent. Top talent wants to compete for championships. I hate the lack of loyalties but players can leave for a better NIL too. Or for more PT. I guess as a coach it’s a tough balance. Your livelihood is dependent on winning with kids that won’t necessarily stick around to develop or wait their turn. But you need a culture that values your players.
I remember being at school during the last half of the Dooley years and it being widely known on campus that if you were one of the better players under Dooley you could get away with skipping off season workouts, class, smoking weed ect. My freshman year I had two classes with Da'Rick Rogers where he showed up maybe 5 times total combined in both classes. JJ famously failed like 8 weed tests before Tennessee finally gave him the boot. CP notoriously never went to class too. He knew he was there to play football one season before bouncing to the NFL. That mentality fostered under Dooley was a big reason why we almost lost bowl eligibilty for Academic purposes imo.
Before the last sentence I was gonna ask how the hell they got away with that, I’d forgotten about the APR issues. I don’t know if it was common at the time (2011-2015) or how schools monitor it now but when I was in school they had class checkers who would stand outside classrooms to make sure football players went to class. Can’t remember for sure but I think it might have started with Gus Malzahn in 2013.
For the life of me as someone who had a lot of classes with football players around that time frame-especially when I was a freshman only taking random Gen Ed classes-I don't remember ever observing someone affiliated with the football program swing by ensuring football players were present. Star football players always had a very low attendance % in those Geology 103, Poli Sci 110, ect classes I attended with them. The lesser/walkon type football players never seemed to miss a class however. Only our starting lineup lol
Also, as much as I despise all things Butch, him demanding a culture of guys actually taking school seriously upon his arrival that resulted ultimately in us narrowly being saved from negative APR consequences was one of the rare good things accomplished throughout his tenure on the Hill.
Funny enough the only really vivid memory I have of it was from an into to philosophy class. I remember it because it was a small class and until I saw the class checker I didn’t know we had a football player in the class. Not a super highly recruited guy and as a freshman he didn’t really look like an SEC player. He’s in the NFL now though lol.
Ah, those freshman/sophomore year philosophy classes you took to satisfy your gen ed credit requirements. I can still smell the 100 year old buildings on the Hill where those classes took place and feel the discomfort of those wooden microscopic right-hand friendly only after school detention-like desks now. My favorite memory involving going to school with football players was being grouped up with Antonio freaking Richardson for a presentation. That guy could not have been more pleasant to deal with. Which was a relief to find out considering how terrifying his size was. Most freakishly big human being I've ever been around. Damn shame his knees just could not support his freak of nature body in the long run.
We are very fortunate to have gotten the bowl opponent we did. Had the Vols just beaten Tulane or something, there could be a narrative that the Vols fell off at the end of the year or were somehow fluky, or had "taken a step" but were not really there. I think with capping off beating Clemson by 3 scores, one can't claim the Vols fell off and one can't claim the success in the season was a fluke. This is real.
Look at this way: The defense was Tennessee's weakness but they slapped Clemson around Tennessee's Biletnikoff winning All American receiver opted out, his replacement was the leading receiver Tennessee's Heisman contender qb was hurt, his replacement was the MVP of the bowl game. For all that Tennessee is losing, the replacements stepped up and beat a top 10 team.
Banks didn't play and Beasley filled the stat sheet up too. This team is primed to not drop off. It's exciting
Heup beat more top 10 teams in year 2 than UT had beaten since 2007. Actually UT was 0-37 until this year. We know the type of season Heup can give us and how close to even better so I hope when things dip a little he is given some leeway.
Plus Clemson is a serious recruiting competitor and have taken our lunch money the last several years. This was a critical game to start changing the narrative and evening up the playing field.
Pretty sure there is no way Hyatt would have caught that one long ball that White caught. He turned on the burners to catch up to that ball.
