Author’s note: I’m going to take a look at sexual violence and college sports in this two-part column, detailing how UT and OSU took differing approaches to important sexual violence cases in the news lately. Regardless of who you root for, sexual violence on our college campuses is a growing danger. You can find more statistics, studies, and source links to cited information regarding sexual or domestic violence and college sports easily online. I’m going to *try* not to inflict all those stats on this column, so if you want more of those, I’ve compiled a huge list of statistics and sources here on my blog.

There’s been a very important timeline ongoing in late July and early August that I’ve been following closely, a timeline that sets two major universities in opposition to each other in how to handle sexual and domestic violence and athletes.

The University of Tennessee has been dealing with the repercussions of the AJ Johnson and Michael Williams rape case for four years now. The Title IX lawsuit that UT settled in 2016 for $2.48 million included the women behind those rape allegations. Both accusers were awarded significant financial remuneration in the case.

In August, 2018, both Johnson and Williams were acquitted.

Ohio State University has been dealing with allegations of abuse against assistant football coach Zach Smith for three years. Amidst a decade’s worth of allegations that Smith had committed sexual/domestic violence against his one-time wife, Courtney, OSU head coach, Urban Meyer knew about the abuse (by his own admission) and not only kept Smith on staff but promoted him…and apparently other OSU officials knew too.

In August, 2018, the Ohio State University suspended Meyer for the first three games of the season (although he’s allowed to go to practice) and also suspended athletic director Gene Smith without pay for three weeks, beginning September 1. The university’s two-week investigation into Meyer’s practices that spanned years concluded, in part, with this:

…we credit that Coach Meyer in answering reporters’ questions on July 24 was closely focused on erroneous media reports that Zach Smith had been arrested on felony charges in 2015, which coach Meyer had determined the night before not to have occurred. But his answers swept more broadly than the falsely reported arrest and Coach Meyer falsely stated that he lacked knowledge of all relevant events regarding alleged domestic violence by Zach Smith in 2015. While those denials were plainly not accurate, Coach Meyer did not, in our view, deliberately lie.

Seriously? I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to accidentally lie. Misleading people regarding your knowledge of domestic abuse is pretty much a textbook example of lying. But see, this statement is actually code. Ohio State didn’t investigate Urban Meyer. Ohio State’s “investigation” was actually a focus group searching for ways to keep their national championship-winning coach.

The way the “investigation” decided would ultimately work? Semantics, apparently.

After the acquittals of AJ Johnson and Michael Williams, I mentioned online that I was going to write a column in the trial’s aftermath. Normally, if I mention I’m going to write a column, I see a lot of “Looking forward to it” posts on my timeline.

I was surprised by the instant defensive toxicity that showed up on my Twitter feed. For some reason, there were folks who were triggered when I mentioned that we needed a frank, open conversation about sexual violence. For the most part, those folks were anonymous, hiding behind usernames and pictures of other people. These people weren’t UT fans either, but Brenda Tracy’s cyberstalkers who burst into an online conversation I was having with her. I find that really interesting. (More about Brenda Tracy here in a bit.) so terrifying about a conversation that people have to be anonymous to express their opinion? And why be so defensive — or in some cases, out and out abusive?

That’s creepy.

But that doesn’t hold a candle to what Ohio State fans have been saying, not just to me but to anyone who dares to imply that Urban Meyer did anything wrong — or that years’ worth of police reports are somehow miraculously wrong and Zach Smith never abused, choked, stalked, menaced, or threatened his wife at all. The ongoing character assassination of the alleged victim in the Smith case has been horrific and not just on social media. The mainstream media up here in Columbus has been little better, and we won’t even go into the fan forums. Now those selfsame fans are rejoicing that they get to keep their football coach, while still managing to get pissed off that they won’t have Meyer for three whole games.

Priorities.

I personally believe that one of the main reasons for the rising prevalence of sexual violence is our society’s inability to just sit down and discuss this intensifying nightmare. Considering the escalating rate of sexual violence in American universities, this conversation is one we absolutely must have if we’re ever to find a solution to the problem. That’s what makes cases like the rape allegations against former UT players AJ Johnson and Michael Williams so important. Because the accused were college athletes at a prominent university, the notoriety of their arrest, indictment, and eventual acquittal puts that frank conversation into the public eye.

In Columbus, OH, however, the power of the university works against that due process — until someone’s brave enough to break the story. Then all that notoriety is tinged with a kind of sick feeling of distaste because the comfortable position of “nobody knew” has been taken away, shot down in advance by Urban Meyer himself when he admitted he’d known about the abuse in 2009 and 2015.

For me, with my heart in Tennessee and my house in Ohio, the dichotomy between both universities’ approaches to the hot-button topic of sexual violence is baffling. In my opinion, now’s the time for us — all of us, as a community of college sports fans — to talk honestly, openly, and accurately about one of the hardest topics imaginable to discuss. But I also think the past couple of weeks have demonstrated unequivocally the difference between a school that handled its sexual violence cases right and one that’s handling it oh-so-horribly wrong.

Think of it: Johnson and Williams lost the remainder of their collegiate careers and what those years might have led to. Sure, AJ Johnson signed with the Denver Broncos during the preseason but for nowhere near the money he would have been offered had he gone through the NFL draft at the proper time.

But Urban Meyer, who makes $7.6 million dollars per year with guaranteed 6% raises annually, must sit out three games for seemingly enabling and covering up domestic violence on his staff and then lying about it.

I knew there was one person whose insight I badly wanted to begin a conversation about sexual violence — which includes domestic violence — and athletes. Brenda Tracy is the nation’s leading activist and sexual violence survivor advocate who now travels the country meeting with college and high school programs to discuss this very issue with the players. Her story of being gang raped by members of the Oregon State football team in 1998 is hard to read, but I’d advise you to check it out. You may note some similarities between Brenda’s story and the stories of so many other victims of sexual violence. Her expertise and personal journey as a survivor of rape makes her input on this topic invaluable.

The Culture

In recent years, it seems like every rape case you hear about any more deals with athletes as either the victims (Michigan State, USA gymnastics) or the perpetrators (Baylor, Minnesota, Florida State, Michigan State)and especially on the collegiate level. With big moneyed and storied programs like these having major conflagrations regarding sexual assault in the past few years, the time is long past when we, as a society, should have made greater strides in solving this problem.Outside of the sports world, however, there’s still not much attention paid to sexual assault at all. Only the big-name cases get noticed. That’s why the Johnson/Williams acquittal is so important. It’s a platform that initiates that conversation I keep talking about, and Brenda Tracy explains why:

The stories we see in sports shape the attitudes and beliefs we have about victims and perpetrators — and its an ugly one. Society has decided that all athletes are heroes and we can’t believe our heroes would disappoint us in this way. Rape accusations are also a huge inconvenience for the sports fan, who doesn’t want a rape victim ruining their game. If we believe that the athlete committed this crime then we would be obligated to do something. It’s easier to blame the victim and place the onus on them so that we don’t have to do anything — and this way we can get back to cheering for our team and our sports hero.

When the Zach Smith story exploded into the national consciousness just days after Johnson and Williams were acquitted, it immediately set off a firestorm of online fury that turns a spotlight onto some of the major contributors to our current struggles with sexual violence. Not fury against the accused; fury against the accuser. Courtney Smith, the ex-wife whose story independent journalist Brett McMurphy broke, has been vilified by anonymous posters on fan message boards who alleged that she showed up to football practice drunk multiple times, by other journalists, and even (allegedly) by her former mother-in-law (not shocking) and her own mother (not quite as shocking as you might think).

Brenda Tracy has seen this before.

The narrative around victims through the lens of sports is that they are liars and gold-diggers. Not only are survivors victims of a crime, but now they are also perpetrators who are viciously and maliciously trying to destroy a sports hero. Society loves to turn the victim into the perp and the perp into the victim. And this attitude spills over from sports into non sports related cases.

With all that in mind, it’s no wonder that after the acquittals of Johnson and Williams, some UT fans instantly progressed from “not guilty” to “the women lied”. Our society has been brainwashed into jumping right down that rabbit hole, with the perception that most assault victims are lying for some reason — causing trouble, trying to ruin the accused’s life out of spite, trying to get money out of a civil suit…

Stop me if you’ve heard this before…or recently. Tracy addresses this subject as well:

False reports make up 2–10% of reports. This also includes unfounded reports which just means it can’t be proven either way. making over 90% and probably 98% of all reports true. A common misconception that comes up when a not guilty verdict is handed down and/or the victims statements are inconsistent — people think this means the victim lied — which is absolutely untrue.

Research I’ve done independently corroborates Brenda’s assertion. In fact, the percentage of false sexual assault claims has landed very consistently between 2% and 10% since these records started to be kept in 1929 by the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report. Studies by major universities like Stanford, by advocacy groups like the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and independent psychological and clinical research like the study conducted by Lisak, Gardinier, Nicksa, & Cote for Sage Journals: Violence Against Women in 2010, Recent studies have the number averaging right about 6%. And there’s much more to the story — and the numbers — than just that.

Blaming The Victim

Meanwhile, up in Columbus…

Vitriol against the alleged victim was rising to fever pitch after Urban Meyer was implicated as enabling Zach Smith’s abuse. There are actually callers to radio shows in central Ohio who are convinced that Alabama or Clemson or Michigan paid Ms. Smith to accuse her husband of domestic abuse in order to wreck the football season.

I kid you not.

Never mind that there are police incident reports in both Florida, where Smith worked under Meyer in 2008–09, and in Ohio. Never mind that there have been nine different incidents in 2018 alone, from criminal trespassing to stalking/menacing. Never mind that Urban Meyer, now on paid administrative leave after initially denying at B1G Media Days that he knew of any abuse allegations and implying that McMurphy made the story up, admitted in a press release on his Twitter account that he knew in 2009 there was abuse ongoing — and counseled the couple to get counseling — but also that he was aware about incidents in 2015 as well.

But here’s where the Ohio State situation takes an ominous — and telling — turn.

After Meyer learned of the abuse in 2015, he not only retained Zach Smith — who is a grandson of OSU legend Earle Bruce — on his staff, but promoted him to Recruiting Coordinator. The university also gave Zach Smith raises in 2016 and 2017. What makes this ominous for OSU is two-fold and can be found in Meyer’s statement:

While at the University of Florida, and now at The Ohio State University, I have always followed proper reporting protocols and procedures when I have learned of an incident involving a student-athlete, coach or member of our staff by elevating the issues to the proper channels. And, I did so regarding the Zach Smith incident in 2015. I take that responsibility very seriously and any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.

So what Meyer is saying is that he, like another famously toppled football legend Joe Paterno at rival Penn State, told the university about the abuse allegations and the university failed to take action against Zach Smith. So not only did Meyer know about the abuse, but so did athletic director Gene Smith, and apparently so did other members of the administration.

This seems to be corroborated by Zach Smith himself in an interview with ESPN where he stated that OSU AD Gene Smith called him back to Columbus from an October 2015 recruiting trip and informed him personally that the Powell, OH police department was investigating him for domestic violence.

Wait…what?

How in the world did the athletic director know about Courtney Smith going to the police before Zach Smith did? Seems pretty obvious to me that someone in the police department called the AD and gave him a heads’ up. That sounds familiar. Kind of like Baylor in Waco, TX for example — or Butch Jones and UT with the Johnson/Williams allegations.

So let’s make a few facts crystal clear here. The head coach and the athletic director at Ohio State University knew about domestic violence charges ongoing against Zach Smith in 2015 and still kept him on staff, still promoted him, and still gave him raises. The Portland police were actively investigating Zach Smith based upon his wife’s allegations but mysteriously never actively pursued the charges against him, even to the extent of correcting the arrest report three years later to indicate he was never arrested. As a result, it’s clear at first look that no one in the OSU chain of command can claim ignorance of what was going on.

And yet, no one knew.

Heck, not even in receiving or at the receptionist’s desk in the football office at the Woody Hayes Center can anyone claim not to have known something about Zach Smith was off-kilter, seeing as sex toys were delivered to him at work, he took pictures of sexual acts with an OSU staffer, and took pictures of his genitals when the Buckeyes went to the White House to meet the President of the United States after their national championship in 2014 — selfies with his genitalia displayed in front of towels in the bathroom with the seal of the POTUS on it.

Classy guy, and yet no one knew.

And then at B1G Media Days in 2018, Urban Meyer tries to spin the entire story as having been made up by a journalist with a bone to pick.

At the very least, this designates absolutely what Ohio State’s priorities are…and aren’t. If Ohio State chose to ignore the situation and rewarded the alleged perpetrator afterwards, there’s a serious problem in Columbus. those problems were exacerbated by the press conference on Wednesday night, when OSU announced the Meyer and Gene Smith suspensions:

Although Coach Meyer and Athletic Director Smith failed to adhere to the precise requirements of their contracts when they concluded that they needed to await a law enforcement determination to file charges before they reported the otherwise disputed claims of spousal abuse against Zach Smith, they did so based upon a good faith belief that they did not have sufficient information to trigger a reporting obligation or initiate disciplinary action in the absence of law enforcement action. Other than their misunderstanding of the requirements triggering reporting obligations, neither Coach Meyer nor Athletic Director Smith violated any policy, rules, law or contractual obligation in connection with the alleged domestic abuse claims against Zach Smith.

Bolding is mine.

Meyer’s comments at the press conference announcing his suspension were, I thought, very revealing as well.

I want to apologize to the Buckeye Nation. I followed my heart and not my head.

… At each juncture I gave Zach the benefit of the doubt…

I appreciate the opportunity to learn from a mistake…

There were red flags. I wish I did a better job knowing things and finding out things. I wish people told me more things. . . . I wish I had known more.

Bolding also mine.

Think of what that says about Urban Meyer. First off, he apologizes to Ohio State fans. Not one word did he address to Courtney Smith or the Smith children, who were on the receiving end of all the trauma from the abuse to the investigation. Not once did he say “I should have done better for Courtney/protected Courtney/recognized her danger”. Even when a reporter asked him straight out, “What is your message to Courtney Smith?” Urban’s reply was very telling:

I have a message for everyone in this: I’m sorry we are in this situation I have a message for everyone in this: I’m sorry we are in this situation.

Yeah, we can tell. WE means Meyer, Zach Smith, and Gene Smith, and THIS SITUATION means getting caught. His subsequent additional apology, issued the day after the press conference to announce the suspensions, was directed to Mrs. Smith and her children and sounded like an apology some kid’s parents made him make after getting busted stealing another kid’s lunch money on the playground.

Brad Koffel — Zach Smith’s attorney — with the approval of his client, chimed in with the following thoroughly classless statement to the media:

Zach Smith married a woman he should not have married. Vengeance against her ex-husband regrettably resulted in collateral damage to Urban Meyer, Gene Smith & the Ohio State University. Trying cases in the media is a dangerous precedent for every other coach in America.

Apparently, trying the victim in the media is a far safer prospect.

And then finally, the OSU “investigation” (word used loosely) report includes this little gem:

We learned Coach Meyer has sometimes had significant memory issues in other situations where he had prior extensive knowledge of events. He has also periodically taken medicine that can negatively impair his memory, concentration & focus.

So Meyer went from heart palpitations to avoid being caught in the collapsing house of cards in Gainesville, when he bailed on Florida and moved to Columbus. Meyer must have started house hunting the moment he heard Jim Tressel was in trouble. Makes you want to check if he’s got a house in another prime retirement destination like…oh, I don’t know…Oregon just in case those memory issues force him to retire again.

But through all of the events in the past couple of weeks both in Knoxville and Columbus, a major breach became glaringly obvious in how both schools handled scandals involving sexual violence. In my next column, we’ll take a look at how the Ohio State disaster could have been avoided if the powers that be in Columbus had taken a closer look at events in Knoxville and a page from the UT book.

We’ll also discuss OSU’s tendency to “not know” about the previous scandals in its coaches’ history despite the careful and thorough vetting they give each and every one of them. And I think, also, we’ll take a few minutes to discuss the media’s role in the Zach Smith scandal, and how a few of the holier than thou members of the national sports media might have benefited from a little crisis management themselves.

As we claw our way out of the abyss of despair known as the offseason for college football, Vol Nation always finds its early attention focused on one date — the third Saturday in September. Not to be confused with the formal granddaddy of all UT rivalries, the Third Saturday of October (which, because it is Alabama, merits the capitalization of every word that’s not a conjunction), that particular September date is reserved for one of the Vols’ most universally loathed foes.

The Florida Gators, who are the only Divison-1 Power 5 program to schedule two FCS opponents in 2018.

Are there any words of sufficient detestation yet invented to adequately describe the Gators? No, probably not. Fortunately, this year provides some unusual elements that make this match-up very interesting. Both schools have first-year coaches with past measures of success. Both schools had horrible seasons last year with only four wins each. But because this opponent is from Gainesville, there’s also very specific ammunition for Tennessee’s annual war with the lizards on the southern coast — so specific, in fact, that Florida gets a category of analysis no other UT foe has earned…

OFFSEASON DISTRACTIONS: FLORIDA WILL FLORIDA

Some things you can always count on. You can always count on at least one of your neighbors keeping Christmas lights up on their house all year. You can count on being trapped between a slow semi and a tailgater when you’re stuck in rush hour traffic. And you can count on Florida football players getting into bizarre trouble with the law.

This year was no exception. Coming off a year in which nine Florida players were implicated in a credit card fraud scheme where they allegedly misused $15,000 of school funds — misused being legal-speak for stole— Mullen’s inaugural roster, not to be outdone, has encountered plenty of troubles of their own.

Freshman four-star WR Justin Watkins was arrested in July — twice — and has since been removed from the team. Eight players were alleged to be in a confrontation with a local gambler, who is now claiming he gave discounts to Gators players at the Enterprise Rental Car where he works, which could potentially turn into NCAA violations. During that confrontation with “Tay-Bang” the gambler, UF players allegedly pulled airsoft guns that looked disturbingly like the real thing along with, the Gator piece de resistance, a frying pan. Don’t believe me?

Here’s the video of the alleged incident:

Weapons seem to be irresistible to Florida players because wide receiver Kardarius Toney was pulled over for a seatbelt violation only for police to find a loaded AR-15 in the backseat of his car. Mullen’s understanding of the gravity of his players’ possession of weapons seems to be…erm…crystal clear too.

You can try to decipher that policy here. Let me know if you can figure it out because I’m not smart enough to understand this hot mess.

One would think that Mullen, the one-time UF offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer, and his return to Florida as head coach would give the Gators a clean slate for 2018 and get things on the right track. Usually a first-year head coach gets a pass for their inaugural season, especially if the previous year’s team went 4–7 and the last head coach was basically fired for rambling during press conferences about death threats allegedly made against him that couldn’t be proven to have happened and allegations from opposing fans of strange fishing trip mementos.

Safe to say that Florida broke Jim McElwain. After he jumped the shark — some say literally — his days were numbered. McElwain, who’d seemingly accomplished miracles with perennial Mountain West doormat Colorado State, was hired to correct the offensive woes Florida endured under his predecessor, Will Muschamp. Now four years later, the Florida offense is still in extremely rough shape.

Enter Dan Mullen. Mullen probably hit the ceiling with what Mississippi State could achieve, considering the talent level on other SEC West teams and the subsequent difficulty of the schedule and recruiting. On paper, the SEC East should be an easier road for him to hoist the SEC and national championship trophies. But Dan Mullen had preseason problems to face, the same problems that Steve Spurrier, Ron Zook, Urban Meyer, Will Muschamp, and Jim McElwain had to face before him and in Gainesvile (spelling intentional), that problem usually involves the police.

So there are no clean slates for Mullen, who has a history of not-entirely-adequate discipline at Mississippi State following him to the Swamp. Unfortunately for Mullen, he’s been failing in spectacular fashion on the recruiting trail as well. In a state jam-packed with talent, the current 2019 UF recruiting class is ranked fortieth — a ranking so low as to be incomprehensible. Mullen needs a big season to jump start that sluggish class. But if he fails, especially to win the big rivalry games, that vision of a top recruiting year will be a mirage.

Gosh, making fun of Florida is fun. But we need to concentrate on what they’re bringing to the game for the moment. We’ll make fun of them again later.

OFFENSE

Let’s be blunt. The offense the Gators have fielded in recent years has been abysmal.

Last year’s squad averaged 335 yards per game, almost evenly split between passing (179.5 ypg) and rushing (156.4 ypg) and ranked 109th out of 130 teams in FBS. Florida got no help from a volatile quarterback situation, in which three men shared the signal-calling responsibilities throughout the season. Feleipe Franks was the most productive with 9 touchdowns and 8 interceptions. Now that Dan Mullen, widely considered a “quarterback whisperer” thanks to his success with players like Dak Prescott and Nick Fitzgerald at MSST and (as OC) Florida’s famously weepy legend Tim Tebow, we can expect quarterback production to go up.

Kind of hard for it not to, to be honest.

Unfortunately for the Gators, Franks appears to be the guy at the moment. While on paper he has the talent to excel, he’s not demonstrated that talent so far in his collegiate career. Getting sacked 29 times last year behind a woeful offensive line didn’t help. (That entire woeful o-line returns, by the way.)

There are other QB options like sophomore Kyle Trask, who missed last season with injury, and highly-touted freshman Emory Jones, but with a decent amount of experience already under his belt, I’d expect Franks to get the nod.

Whoever the QB ends up being, he has a lot of offensive weapons around him. RB Justin Scarlett had a solid 2017 and could have an excellent 2018 season as well…maybe even stretching to a 1,000 yard campaign. The WR corps at Florida is stacked with ridiculous talent but that unit hasn’t performed up to expectation the past few years — mostly because there’s been no one to get them the ball. Junior Tyree Cleveland is the top returning wideout. He hauled in 406 yards receiving in 2017, second to Brandon Powell’s 410 yards With Powell in Detroit as an undrafted free agent, the closest WR numbers to Cleveland’s are junior Josh Hammond’s 246 yards.

So while the talent around the QB is there, none of that talent has really stepped up in their previous seasons. If Franks doesn’t pull his act together fast, Mullen may take a look to the freshman Jones, who is more the type of QB Mullen prefers, but that will be like using him as chum for SEC defenses.

Either way, look for an offensive squad with potential — if the line actually holds and if there’s a QB who can complete more than the anemic 55% completions that Franks managed last year. If things don’t gel for Mullen in the passing game, then look to Florida’s stout stable of running backs, led by Scarlett who’s coming off an 889-yard season, to try to carry the burden all by themselves.

Again.

DEFENSE

Last year’s statistics won’t help us out much here. The Gators defense had a nasty habit of collapsing late in games, but that wasn’t their fault. There’s a finite number of 3-and-outs from the offense before any defense gets to the point where they couldn’t stop an offense comprised of their opponent’s cheerleaders and dance team. Unfortunately for the Gators, that finite number was pretty small to begin with. Last year, Florida coughed up 45 points to Georgia and 42 to Missouri in back-to-back games and then let Florida State score 38 on them two weeks later to close out the season. That’s uncharacteristic of the Gators’ defense, which has been carrying the dead weight of the offense for about ten years now. In 2017, that finally caught up with them and the Gators’ D wasn’t ranked in the top 15 for the first time in years.

But make no mistake — the Florida defense is still the heart, the backbone, and the workhorse of this squad. New defensive coordinator Todd Grantham runs a fast, vicious 3–4 scheme and the Gators definitely have the talent to excel in that system. The secondary will be particularly brutal, with Chauncey Gardiner spearheading a pass rush with Marco Wilson, CJ Henderson, and Jeawon Taylor having greater opportunities to wreak havoc on opposing offenses.

Cece Jefferson at defensive end will anchor a front seven that is probably seeking a little redemption after last year, and that should be a scary thought to any team playing the Gators. Jefferson is a mean football player, which is one of the highest compliments I give to any athlete. What remains to be seen is how well Jefferson is recovered from a shoulder injury and whether the rest of the defense can meet his meanness and match it.

In a lot of ways, this Florida defense is stacked with question marks for the first time in a decade at least. How they respond to those questions will more than likely be a determining factor in how their season goes. If teams crack the Gators’ code early, all the lofty predictions could fall faster than the dominoes in a Rube-Goldberg machine.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Well, Florida’s not going to stun the world this year. Last year’s kicking duo including kicker Eddy Pineiro and Johnny Townsend, who led the nation in punting, are gone. The Gators aren’t quite to the point of announcing kicker walk-on tryouts in the school of dentistry like they did a few years ago. Johnny’s little brother, Tommy, will be joined by true freshman Evan McPherson, who was the nation’s top-rated kicking prospect in the 2018 class.

With a passel of speedy backs to bolster the return game, Kadarius Toney and Adarius Lemons will more than likely get the nod most of the time. Last year the duo put up respectable numbers but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. The kicking game is a huge mystery, but then that’s nothing new in Gainesville.

KEYS TO THE GAME

Here’s the thing, folks. I really dug deep pulling together a general sense of this year’s Florida Gators. Some sports outlets have Florida ranked in the top 25; others have adopted a wait and see attitude. Phil Steele has the Gators ranked at 17; Lindy’s at 28. But here’s my questions:

How in the world is Florida going to pull an 8-win season off without a strong quarterback?

How is it possible to justify high rankings for a Gators squad that went 4–7 last year?

And how does anyone expect this team with a brand new coach and brand new schemes to excel in a surging SEC?

The schedule is favorable. Florida sees more cupcakes each fall than most bakeries. Plus I find it difficult to overlook the fact that there are two FCS opponents on that schedule. I have no doubts that playing West Virginia will prepare the Vols for Florida better than Charleston Southern will prepare the Gators for Tennessee. Plus, this game will be played at Neyland and there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to be a night game.

Two rivals who loathe each other, both coming off 4-win seasons, both with first-year head coaches, both with big questions on both sides of the ball. Normally, a game like this is determined by intangibles — special teams, turnovers, coaching…and fall camp, when a roster is pulled into shape and competition between players sharpens the team’s reactions and instincts. There’s a decent chance both teams come into this game undefeated.

This is one of the more tantalizing matchups in the SEC in 2018. Whoever wins this matchup will take the initiative in becoming the opponent that will challenge Georgia and South Carolina for the SEC East title in the next couple of years. Whoever wins will be the team that surges ahead in what should be a clean slate with a pass year for both.

And yet…

And yet, I look at what the coaching changes have resulted in at both schools and I believe that’s the intangible that will make the biggest difference on this third Saturday in September. Jeremy Pruitt and his staff have pulled together a squad coming off a disastrous 2017 season, amped up the strength and conditioning, and focused on discipline and flexibility heading into camp.

Dan Mullen, on the other hand, has brought…well, the same old, same old. Players arrested. Incomprehensible “explanations” at press conferences. No real starter at quarterback. The comfortable and familiar feel of a Florida squad on the brink of collapse before the first down of football is played.

I don’t think Florida is a top twenty-five team. I don’t think Tennessee is either. When the Gators come to Neyland, that really doesn’t matter. With both programs beginning a season in which they desperately need to change from the roads they’ve traveled in the last few years, I’m going to give the nod to a team that appears to have actually changed. At the rate things are currently going in Gainesville, sometime soon a picture’s going to go viral with Dan Mullen grinning on top of a flounder.

Because ‘flounder’ is definitely the term I’d use to describe the state of the Florida football program right now.

On the third Saturday in September, the Gators will jump from the frying pan into the fire and I personally cannot wait.

Every time I think I have my book about Tennessee fans and the Rocky Top Revolution finished, something else happens that just HAS to be added. And yesterday, the wacky world of college football gave my book an ending no one could have foreseen.

Urban Meyer is apparently plummeting from his lofty perch atop perennial playoff contender Ohio State, for having knowledge of and not reporting the alleged longstanding and ongoing domestic violence one of his assistant coaches, Zach Smith, heaped upon his one-time wife, Courtney, since 2009. In this new era of awareness around domestic and sexual violence, that kind of behavior doesn’t fly…and cannot fly in big name (and money) collegiate athletics.

Especially since Urban Meyer’s newest contract apparently stipulates that Meyer can be terminated with cause for failure to report sexual misconduct, including domestic violence and stalking. That clause could cost Meyer in the neighborhood of $38 million.

Whoops.

But what fired up Vol Twitter to an all-time high was the fact that Ohio State, which “vetted Greg Schiano thoroughly” didn’t name the Associate Head Coach, Meyer’s #1 in Star Trek parlance, as the interim head coach in his absence. Evidently, his association with the past “scandals”, as Ohio State beat writer Ari Wasserman put it, wasn’t enough to prohibit him from the Tennessee head coach position but barred him from heading up the Buckeyes in what just yesterday looked to be a fantastic year for them on the field.

Funny how life works.

So that put a whole bunch of national sports media pundits into an odd position. How were they going to spin Schiano being passed over by Ohio State when they all assured the world last November that he was one of the best coaching prospects in America and Tennessee fans were ignorant, uneducated, lynch mobs with, as Ohio State beat writer Ari Wasserman put it, “no hope”, for rising up against the Schiano hire? In fact, the prospect was so daunting that ESPN, the holy city of sports omniscience, didn’t even report the Meyer situation for four hours after it was initially published.

Well, that might have had some to do with the fact that Brett McMurphy, who was laid off by ESPN, was the journalist who broke the story…on his Facebook page. Which, if you think about it, is hilarious. In fact, McMurphy’s Tweet regarding ESPN earlier was hysterical for that reason.

That being said, there was nothing funny about the bare bones of the story — the pictures displaying injuries to Courtney Smith allegedly inflicted by her ex-husband, the threatening text messages she received from him after they split up, and the heart-wrenching text conversations she had with other Ohio State coaches’ wives, including Shelley Meyer who is reportedly an instructor in nursing at OSU. The depth and number of those conversations seem to preclude any reasonable doubt that the coaches and support staff at Ohio State didn’t know of what Zach Smith was doing to his young wife.

It appears that Urban Meyer, along with others, flippantly looked the other way while the alleged abuse occurred, and it’s likely to cost Meyer his job.

But I have to wonder…what about the national media? What happens to them as a result of this outrageous development in the Schiano saga? What happens to Dan Wolken of USA Today, who (admittedly) has been (justifiably) tortured by Vol Twitter for months now? Or Pat Forde of Yahoo, who’s seen his fair share of Schiano-related punishment? What about the prophets of the religion known as the ESPN? What about Kirk Herbstreit or Stephen A. Smith? What do they have to say today?

Andrea Adelson is not a well-known ESPN college football pundit, but she’s got the quotes of the day in her column for the ESPN website:

Perhaps Meyer learned from those mistakes as it relates to player behavior. During his tenure at Ohio State, only a handful of players have gotten into legal trouble. The most notable was running back Carlos Hyde, who was suspended for three games in 2013 after police began investigating him for allegedly assaulting a woman.

But it was a different story among the staff. Meyer brought on Smith, a man Meyer knew had been alleged to abuse his pregnant wife. He brought on former Indiana coach Kevin Wilson, who resigned after he was accused of mistreating his players. He stuck by Greg Schiano after a deposition came to light alleging that Schiano knew about Jerry Sandusky’s child abuse at Penn State, allegations Schiano denies.

Did Ohio State administrators even bother questioning those moves? Or Meyer’s past at Florida?

Bolding mine.

Well, Ms Adelson, Tennessee fans were assured that Ohio State vetted Schiano thoroughly when they hired him. And yet…

Funny, isn’t it? Greg Schiano’s name right in the middle of that quote?

The fact of the matter is that last November, Vol Nation was right to fight against a Greg Schiano hire. Local sports media was right. Former players and alumni were right. Vol Twitter, God love them in all their savage glory, was right.

Nothing demonstrates how right the SchiaNO protests and the Rocky Top ReVOLution actually were more than Greg Schiano not being named the interim Ohio State head coach. The national media, therefore, was wrong in how they portrayed the uprising in Knoxville and online. All of them were absolutely dead wrong. So is there a bias in the national media against the University of Tennessee?

You decide, but it sure feels that way sometimes. If you’re old enough to remember the Sugar Vols in their 1985 Sugar Bowl appearance against the Miami Hurricanes, then you know what I’m talking about. You know that not one single major media outlet gave the Volunteers a chance. You know that all the coverage leading up to that Sugar Bowl was about Miami winning the national championship after their predicted destruction of Tennessee. You know that the arrogance of the Canes going into that game was fueled my the media frenzy around them, which ultimately worked in the Vols’ favor.

Vinny Testaverde’s famous boast about how the Vols wouldn’t be able to sack him culminated in a very long, painful night for the Miami quarterback. He was sacked seven times, fumbled three times (losing one), and was intercepted three times and his backup quarterback once. Thanks, sports media, for helping the Sugar Vols out so much prior to the game.

That’s really what we’re talking about here, you know. Individuals becoming the stories instead of the game. Zach Smith allegedly beat his wife. It looks like Urban Meyer knew and did nothing. Dan Wolken provided PR help to a desperate AD for a Schiano hire at UT because the AD knew the fan base wouldn’t like it. Pat Forde insults all of Tennessee with impunity, as does Tim Brando, who preemptively blocks any prominent Vol Twitter account — including mine, although I never Tweeted the man. Booger McFarland asks, “Who the hell does Tennessee think they are?”

I spent a little time cruising the Ohio State message boards this morning to see how the waters were, and they were agitated to say the least. Instead of understanding why Urban Meyer was suspended, a sizable portion of Buckeye fanatics were focused on Courtney Smith, who is “trying to destroy Ohio State football.” Hopefully Columbus police are monitoring her house because there were actually threats against her safety.

In fact, the difference between the Tennessee fan base and Ohio State’s couldn’t be more marked right now. Vol Nation came together to protect their university from a coaching hire where the coach didn’t adequately live up to the standards Tennessee fans demand from their coaches.

Much of Ohio State’s fan base has come together to whine about how unfair Urban Meyer’s suspension is, how wrong OSU was to take the word of an ex-wife over his, how the pictures are consistent with self-abuse, how the wife is looking for an easy payday from Ohio State, how Zach Smith’s wife must be working for Saban or Dabo to wreck OSU’s season before it starts, how Urban Meyer had no duty to protect or report the abuse to anyone…

And yet, Vol Nation was the ignorant lynch mob.

You’ll note that none of the aforementioned journalists have written stories about the threats or accusations being leveled against a victim of prolonged domestic violence and sexual abuse because she came forward with her story and appears to have brought down OSU’s house of cards.

No, indeed. Instead, you have John Currie’s PR guru, Dan Wolken, spewing forth a literary flight of fancy like this:

For Meyer, the trophies, the massive paychecks and the adulation are part of a larger mission. In Meyer’s world, he and he alone serves as the creator of leaders and virtuous citizens, the benevolent giver of second chances, the all-knowing arbiter of right and wrong. And anyone who has had the temerity to challenge the authenticity of his intentions when those decisions blew up in his face is typically cast aside not just as a critic, but a genuinely bad person.

While this might be a fair description of Meyer’s disgusting persona, tell me…does that not sound a little familiar? Does that sound like anyone else you know, Dan? Like, maybe yourself?

Wolken has attributed traits to Urban Meyer that the national sports media displayed in November and are still displaying now — the sanctimony of assigning second chances to failed football coaches with moral issues or scandals in their past, the inability to endure challenges to their know-it-all authority, the discarding of people with alternate points of view — all of these attributes were at the forefront of the media response to the uprising on Rocky Top and the fans who fueled it. The irony of this column from Wolken is the hypocrisy with which he condemns Urban Meyer for traits that he himself is guilty of.

And he hasn’t learned his lesson yet either.

Well…no, Dan. Tennessee fans aren’t embarrassing themselves in the slightest, just like they didn’t in November. The truth of the matter is that you were wrong. You were wrong to put your integrity as a journalist on the line just to get a scoop from John Currie. You were wrong to portray an entire fan base the way you did just because they disagreed with your point of view. And you were definitely wrong to regurgitate your own hypocrisy in a response yesterday to a Tennessee fan who was asking you a question and wasn’t being rude at all.

If you’re going to condemn Urban Meyer for his traits, perhaps a little more self-reflection will help you to understand that the only person embarrassing himself in this Vol Twitter vs Dan Wolken social media war is you.

So yeah, Tennessee fans have been strutting a bit over the past twenty-four hours because history has come down on their side. For all the blathering and posturing from national pundits, Vol Nation was vindicated at the moment Ohio State passed over Greg Schiano, who was the Associate Head Coach of the Buckeyes, in favor of Ryan Day as interim head coach.

And then, they turn on Urban Meyer like he’s the only villain in this story of horrors. So while the media focuses on destroying Urban Meyer’s career, I’ve been focusing on the media and how eagerly they’re all jumping forward to throw more logs on the fire as they burn Meyer at the stake.

You know, just last week sexual violence survivor advocate Brenda Tracy (who I interviewed for an upcoming column) was at Ohio State, invited by the university to address their football and men’s basketball teams. The Zach Smith story, in an odd coincidence, broke the same week. Brenda had this to say regarding Urban Meyer’s response to the Smith allegations at the time:

What I will say is that Urban Meyer’s comments and the rhetoric are really indicative of a huge misunderstanding of the dynamics of domestic violence. There’s some education that needs to happen there and I think that it would be good for people to educate themselves; reach out to people like me, reach out to advocates in your community. If anything, I think his comments really showed a lack of understanding and I think that’s really commonplace in this nation.

I agree. Coaches at major football programs are turned into celebrities by the media, national and local alike. The media jumps on board if the coach’s team starts to make a run. And when those feet of clay start to crumble, the media is right there to tear down the coaches that they initially built up.

Seems to me the media should be held accountable for that too, this outlet included if these mistakes are ever made. There’s no moral superiority involved in writing click bait articles or insulting fan bases or joining the feeding frenzy when someone’s misdeeds come to light. The holier than thou newspaper columnists of the world need to be held accountable for what they write, what they say on social media, and how they interact not only with the sports figures they write about but the people they interact with online.

Just because those clay feet are hidden under their computer desk doesn’t mean they aren’t as likely to crumble if they make mistakes.

Best thing to do, whether you’re Urban Meyer or Dan Wolken is to come out and say, “You know what? I made a mistake, and I regret it.”

Otherwise the torture will continue. The media will continue to dig into Meyer’s tenure at Ohio State and Vol Twitter will continue to torment journalists online and way back there…back in the shadows at the edge of the room, the real story is being ignored. Courtney Smith’s story isn’t as important today as Urban Meyer or the journalists covering him.

No matter how you look at it, that’s the real tragedy here. Talk about sanctimony.

Sad.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the major players on the opposite sideline for the Tennessee Volunteers in 2018–2019. While UT is one of the more intriguing and mysterious teams in Division 1 football, some of their opponents are just as hard to predict. At the top of the list of hard-to-pin down programs is the Vols’ first opponent, West Virginia.

Why, you may ask? For one thing, this is the first time the Volunteers and the Mountaineers have met. Despite this, there are elements of the game that will be familiar — namely WVU QB Will Grier, whose career at Florida ended after a poorly timed accidental purchase at GNC (or something like that). The failed drug test right before the UT game wasn’t enough for then-Coach Jim McElwain to discipline Grier. He waited until after the Gators played UT in 2015, and Grier subsequently bailed on a declining Florida program.

But Grier landed on his feet with West Virginia, and in a year when the pass-happy Big 12 has seen a lot of turnover at the quarterback position he’s getting Heisman mentions if head coach Dana Holgorsen can pull out a huge season for him. Admittedly, Grier’s 2017 stats were ridiculous. But while the offense is designed to excel in the Big 12, the defense of the Mountaineers has been a bit of an afterthought…like pretty much every Big 12 team ever. This season in particular, the defense present a glaring opportunity for opponents to spike WVU’s title hopes.

But the Mountaineers aren’t playing a Big 12 opponent to start the season. They’re playing an SEC foe that’s hungry to prove last year was an aberration. So let’s take a look at West Virginia’s program, and see what we can learn about Tennessee’s first opponent.

OFFENSE

WVU’S main storyline at the end of 2017 was Will Grier’s finger. Not like Rashaan Gaulden’s finger but more like Joe Theisman’s leg. After a fairly nasty fracture, Grier was sidelined for the rest of the season and WVU’s offense immediately tanked. But before you start thinking that trend is going to continue, remember that Grier threw for 34 touchdowns and 3500 yards by mid-November last year. That’s insane. West Virginia has four starters coming back on an extremely effective offensive line, plus a lot of depth and talent in the receiving corps. One potential weak spot comes at running back, where WVU has to replace 1,000+ yard rusher Justin Crawford.

But make no mistake — the run game is secondary to the Mountaineer flying circus. This is an offense that can move the ball fast and consistently through the air. Grier is also a fairly mobile quarterback who can turn a potential disaster into a positive play with either his feet or his arm. Since WVU only had 460 rushing attempts in 2017, the offensive game plan is glaringly obvious.

If — and that’s a big if — the running game hasn’t come together by September 1, a good defense can exploit that lapse. Grier airs out the ball so much, he’s prone to interceptions and is easily rattled under pressure. For those 34 TDs, he had 12 interceptions last year.

Regardless, though, this is an offense that averaged 459 yards and 34.5 points a game in 2017 and it will put up a lot of points and yards this year, as well. There are a lot of positives heading into 2018 for Holgorsen’s offense.

DEFENSE

With any Big 12 team (with the possible exception of Gary Patterson’s TCU Horned Frogs), the offense is the star and that’s particularly true at West Virginia. Also with any Big 12 team (with the possible exception of Lincoln Riley’s Oklahoma), WVU’s defense is the red-headed stepchild Holgorsen forces to hide under the front porch when company comes and especially this year. How bad were they, you ask?

Last year, WVU gave up 446 yards per game, allowing opponents to score an average of 32 points. More specifically, the run defense was abysmal, giving up an average of 204 yards per game on the ground. In the Big 12, that’s not a big deal. After all, no one has a really stout defense in a league where the order of the day is dueling offenses set to the rhythm of Dueling Banjos.

Attrition hasn’t helped the Mountaineers either. WVU lost its leading tackler from last year — in fact, WVU lost five of their top seven tacklers. They are bringing in some outstanding transfers in Jabril Robinson who comes from Clemson and Kenny Bigelow, who played for USC. The Mountaineers are counting on both players making an instant impact on the defense, but Bigelow will need to be healthy this year after a history of knee injuries. Unfortunately, WVU doesn’t have a lot of depth on its defense

In the end, the new blood coming into defensive coordinator Tony Gibson’s unit is going to have to be extraordinary if the Mountaineers are going to compete with some of the teams on their schedule. Gibson runs a 3–3–5 scheme, but lost three of his five backs to graduation. I’m not sure how effective this defense will be against competent offenses. West Virginia’s greatest vulnerability defensively is hard to peg, but it’s difficult to overlook that 204 yards per game on the ground.

Especially when you consider this statistic: in 2017, Kansas rushed 50 times for 367 yards. Yes, that Kansas. The 1–11 Kansas Jayhawks rushed for 367 yards and racked up 564 yards of total offense in a 52–34 loss.

SPECIAL TEAMS

The kicking game is kind of hard to peg down. Last year, WVU only attempted 15 field goals, making 11 of them. But the primary WVU kicker graduated, so now the kicking responsibility falls on sophomore Evan Staley, while the punts will be handled by rising senior Billy Kinney, who averaged 40.9 yards per boot last year. The Mountaineers do have a serious returning threat in the dangerous WR Marcus Simms, who had a great 2017 with 819 yards on 31 returns.

The good news is that Simms is back.

The bad news is that last year’s squad was ranked 90th in field goal efficiency, 90th in punt efficiency, and 119th in kickoff efficiency and there’s no reason to think that will improve all that much.

KEYS TO THE GAME

So, the real question about the Tennessee-West Virginia game is an elemental one: how will the Mountaineers stand up against a legitimate SEC foe?

Will Grier knows what it’s like to play in the SEC. As long as he doesn’t make any thoughtless vitamin purchases in Morgantown, Tennessee will be facing the top returning QB in the Big 12 and a Heisman candidate.

The key to this matchup is simple: out of conference opponents like Tennessee don’t want to be forced to play the Mountaineers’ game. West Virginia is designed to shoot it out with the rest of the Big 12. They are focused on scoring big and scoring fast. Their defense comes across as an afterthought because it is one. The Mountaineers are counting so much on the offense to produce more points than the other team. A team with a strong run game should be able to rush at will, slowing the pace of the game down and keeping that high octane offense off the field.

Defensively, the keys to the game are two-fold. Cover those big receivers downfield and get pressure on Will Grier. Grier gets rattled when the pass rush gets too close and makes mistakes. A couple of interceptions could change the mindset of the offense, leaving the door open for their opponents to score.

At the end of the day, I can’t get past the fact that Kansas ran the ball down this 3–3–5 defense’s throat last season. And while what happened last year shouldn’t be held against either team (God knows), that weakness on the run defense seems to be an inherent flaw in Gibson’s defensive scheme. If the Mountaineers want to live up to all the hype, they have to field a defense that can compete with any team in the country. And with serious depth issues everywhere but safety, any loss due to injury quickly becomes catastrophic.

But there’s another fact that is inescapable. Since the 2012 Orange Bowl, WVU has been fairly pedestrian. They’ve never finished higher than third in the Big 12, and have gone 1–4 in bowl games. Against P5 foes they’ve been woeful, with losses to Utah, Miami, Alabama, Texas A&M, and Maryland. Their marquis P5 win was against a 4–8 Mizzou in 2016.

This game reminds me a lot of the Battle of Bristol against Virginia Tech. In order to keep the 2018 hype train going, the Mountaineers need a statement win early. They need to match up against Tennessee and prove that they can hang with a squad stuffed with SEC talent that fields both an offense and a defense. The quickest way to derail West Virginia’s best shot at a Big 12 crown and a Heisman candidate QB’s season would be to lose in Charlotte on September 1.

But the quickest way to jump start Jeremy Pruitt’s tenure on Rocky Top is with a statement win over a Big 12 opponent. On September 1, we’ll find out which team can overcome the recent past and start to forge a new path for their program and who’ll show up — vintage West Virginia or a resurrected Tennessee.

Okay, so the GOOD news is that football season is almost here. Coach Jeremy Pruitt referenced that this morning at SEC Media Days when he remarked that he could smell the grass on the air outside and knew it was football time. He also confirmed that 4-star linebacker JJ Peterson is expected to be on campus in August and that freshman All-American OL Trey Smith has been cleared to play and will be in camp next month.

Huge news for UT on both counts. And I can smell the grass too, Coach. My husband needs to take care of the wild onion problem in our front yard, though.

But the past two days have seen a flurry of activity regarding UT’s new coach, with a pair of former UGA players who are now associated with the media throwing serious shade at Jeremy Pruitt.

Former UGA QB and current CBS analyst (after a bust NFL career) Aaron Murray said on Tuesday that:

“When he (Pruitt) was at Georgia, the way he acted, the way he treated Coach Richt, I thought was poor. He wasn’t as respectful as I thought a defensive coordinator should be to a head coach. That’s my thing, with authority. When he’s dealing with the athletic director, when he’s dealing with the president, when he’s dealing with a booster who has given millions of dollars, you can’t go tell him to screw off. You have to take the meeting. You have to sit with them. Yeah, I know you want to be game planning and getting ready for the game, but you’re a head coach now. You have to do these other things.”

Okay. Stern stuff from a guy who has never been coached by Pruitt and wasn’t at UGA when Pruitt joined the program. Apparently, Murray didn’t stop to think about the fact that the Tennessee Athletic Director is Coach Phillip Fulmer, who hired Pruitt in the first place, who deals with the UT President on a regular basis, who deals with boosters daily.

Does he really think that Jeremy Pruitt is stranded on an island called Rocky Top and hasn’t been mentored in some form or fashion by Fulmer since day one? As Pruitt said during his SEC Media Days presser:

“If I could choose who the AD would be, I’d pick Phil Fulmer. If I’ve got any questions, I got a guy 30 feet down the hall I can lean on.”

Jeremy Pruitt has worked with Jimbo Fisher, Mark Richt, and Nick Saban as a defensive coordinator and now he is working for Phillip Fulmer as his athletic director.

Yeah, I think he’s good, Aaron. That’s one heck of a mentoring resume, don’t you think?

Then SEC Network analyst and former UGA linebacker (after a bust NFL career) David Pollack had this to say after Pruitt’s trip to the podium in Atlanta:

“To address Aaron’s (Murray) comment — because I think it needs to be addressed a little bit — the stories that I have heard and some of y’all have heard that came out of Athens — that are true, (from) coaches that were on the staff, some of the things Jeremy Pruitt did to Mark Richt, some coaches would tell you are the most disrespectful, most crazy things they heard. So, I’ll be curious to watch Jeremy Pruitt as he evolves with this relationship with Phillip Fulmer because Jeremy Pruitt did a good job when he was with Nick Saban — because he knew where he stood. He did a good job with Jimbo Fisher — they let you know where you stand. The hierarchy was very clear. How does he evolve as a head coach? He put on a good show (at the main podium at SEC Media Days), he definitely showed you what he has. I want to see if he continues to treat people in the correct manner, if he respects authority, because to be honest, the stories we’ve heard — we’ve all heard the same stories, it was pretty bad. It was disrespectful, so that’s what I’m interested to see.”

I’ve thought about this most of the day and at first I was a little mad. First off, it’s vastly unprofessional to cast aspersions upon someone’s character on national TV without getting into specifics, don’t you think? There were a lot of reports when Pruitt was at UGA that there was tension between then head coach Mark Richt and Pruitt, but that seemed to be more of a personality and coaching style issue than actual toxicity. And let’s be frank — if Pruitt was that disrespectful, why wasn’t he fired?

UGA didn’t have a problem firing Mark Richt because he could only win ten games a year. I’m sure that punting a toxic DC wouldn’t have caused their boosters or AD to flicker an eyelash.

And let’s not forget — Richt apparently wanted Pruitt to join him at Miami when he returned to his alma mater, according to Pruitt’s brother Luke.

So let’s just kick that ‘disrespectful’ commentary to the curb, shall we? The whole conference knew that Georgia needed a massive shakeup to their program if they were going to be competitive at the level they wanted. Let us instead consider why it is that former SEC players now in the media felt it necessary to trash the Tennessee coach before he’s seen one snap as an SEC head coach. As UT alum and newly re-contracted ESPN and SEC analyst Paul Finebaum said this morning:

“I know Aaron, he’s a nice guy, but I don’t give two rips about what he thinks about Jeremy Pruitt. First of all, he wasn’t on (Pruitt’s) side of the ball. Second of all, he’s loyal to Mark Richt. I had a guy tell me yesterday that Jeremy Pruitt is part of the reason that Kirby Smart … was able to turn the corner because he toughened that program; he insisted that they get the indoor facility that’s named after the Payne’s.”.

Last fall when the UT fans and local media stood up to the world and said, “SchiaNO!” the media demonized the fans. ESPN, like many others, carried a long-running diatribe of disapproval against Vol Nation and anyone/anything associated with it. This type of behavior by Murray and Pollack is just another exhibition of that narrative. Anyone who’s watched ESPN over the past decade knows how attached they are to their narratives. They live for them. They die on those mountains long after the rest of the world considers those stories relevant because it might bring them ratings.

For the past few months, the media has been fairly quiet about Tennessee. Off-season, so nothing to report. But this week is SEC Media Days. That means, as Pruitt said, football time is nearly here. This week, the opening salvos were fired by the media, which means the war isn’t over yet. It’s continuing, and Vol Nation can expect this to go on through the season and probably escalate, as well. ESPN is going to ESPN. They’re going to drag this out and make it the story unless…unless something significant happens to change the narrative.

If Pruitt’s Vols exceed expectations, if they win a game or two they aren’t expected to win, all of a sudden the current media narrative will dissipate. Instead of questioning Pruitt’s character or whether his personality is suited to a “CEO” position, the media will spend their time trying to figure out how he did it. Remember, too, that these are the same guys talking about how UT “has no talent” this year, which is a patently idiotic claim to make.

Just imagine…Jauan and Marquez on the perimeter, Eli dropped into the backfield, and Brandon spinning as the wild card wideout…

Oh my.

No talent? This team certainly isn’t Alabama quite yet but give me a break.

Stop and think about it. What would happen if the Vols came out in game one and upset West Virginia? What would the narrative be then? Do you think Murray and Pollack will be as interested in Pruitt’s personality then?

Of course not.

This week’s running commentary by former Georgia players turned analysts is just a bunch of noise to distract fans and the media from the fact that outside of Vol Nation, Pruitt’s arrival in Knoxville wasn’t welcome news. Make no mistake, folks, when prominent alumni from a division rival start looking for reasons to trash talk a first-time head coach it’s because they’re shook.

Pruitt’s off-season moves have been outstanding, luring multiple impact grad transfers to the program, improving the strength and conditioning of players, and making inroads into recruiting. Right now, the Tennessee 2019 recruiting class is in the top twenty, sitting comfortably at number eighteen and in the running for multiple top recruits.

And let’s not forget what Nick Saban had to say about Jeremy Pruitt on Wednesday afternoon:

“I can only speak about the experience I have with Jeremy Pruitt. I wasn’t with him at Georgia so I can’t make any comment about that. He did a fantastic job for us. He was always very respectful, very loyal, hard-working. He did a fantastic job with our players. Our players have a tremendous amount of respect for him. He was always fair and honest in how he did things. I have never seen that style. It’s really surprising to hear people say that because I’ve never seen it. That’s not to say it didn’t happen, but I don’t know that. I can only judge people on how they do the job they do for us. Jeremy Pruitt did a fantastic job for us.”

I don’t know about you guys, but I consider Saban’s comments to be more relevant than anything a former UGA quarterback has to say.

Frankly, Pruitt’s performance at SEC Media Days was a win. He looked relaxed, he spoke well, he handled the questions with ease, and he was every inch a head coach. He even responded to Murray’s criticism with a zinger of his own:

“Fifteen years ago I was a kindergarten teacher and now I’m the head coach at Tennessee. You probably don’t make that ascension without knowing how to treat people.”

Exactly, Coach.

In fact, as I’m writing this article Marcus Spears and Paul Finebaum are still talking about Jeremy Pruitt…even though Saban was there today as well. That’s nothing but a win right there.

At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t matter what anyone says at SEC Media Days about Jeremy Pruitt and the Tennessee Volunteers. With fall camp right around the corner and a massive opening day game with West Virginia looming, today’s performance will soon be forgotten in the excitement and intensity of the 2018–2019 season. Coach Pruitt has a Tennessee attitude. The reason Vols fans like him is because he feels familiar, like the kinds of coaches Tennessee was accustomed to before the schism that destroyed the program.

Pruitt is the kind of guy who will do most of his talking on the field. That’s the way we like it on Rocky Top. And while Vol Twitter is united, digging into Aaron Murray and David Pollack’s previous Tweets about Pruitt and dogging them online, in a few weeks everyone will have moved on to real news.

Even former players from Georgia, who apparently spend a great deal of time looking over their shoulders and worrying about the fact that Tennessee football is beginning to feel like Tennessee football again. Worrying that Jeremy Pruitt, whose Bama defense schooled Georgia in the CFP championship game, could put a spike in Kirby Smart’s perceived dominance of the SEC East. Worrying that the combination of UT AD Phillip Fulmer, one of the greatest closers in SEC recruiting history, and Jeremy Pruitt, who’s been making the right moves, is going to catapult UT back into the upper stratosphere of college football.

As Finebaum said, finishing off Murray with another devastating zinger:

“(Pruitt) rubbed everyone the wrong way because the culture at Georgia was laissez-faire. ‘We lost a game, what kind of wine do you guys want?’ So, Aaron Murray, go do whatever you’re doing right now, I don’t care. Your voice is not relevant when it comes to Jeremy Pruitt.”

Exactly, Paul. Let them squawk. Let them whine and complain and make vague accusations. Vol Nation can take a page from Pruitt’s book and deal with this media narrative the same way he will.

We’ll do our talking on the field. Bring it.

Looking at you, Mountaineers.

I spent all of today in my office. I’ve had to revamp my book on the Rocky Top Revolution so often that I’ve probably written four full-length novels by now. But today I added more fan interviews, more media interviews — all the stuff you need to write a book about an unprecedented event. Little did I know that when I emerged from my office — internet and phone are off when I’m working — that I would walk right into another.

The news of John Ward’s death kind of hit me out of left field. For some reason, I was blindsided. That doesn’t make sense, does it? After all, Mr. Ward was elderly. He’d been retired for years and years. When we saw him last on November 25, he looked frailer than we’d ever seen him. He stood in the middle of Shields-Watkins Field, being honored by the university he’d given all his years to, tears in his eyes as the Vols put up the worst season in school history.

For some of us, that hurt worse than the actual game did. I mentioned that in my column “The Night the Lights Went Out In Neyland” after the last game of the season…the loss to Vanderbilt.

To John Ward, we are sorry that as you cried tears of joy at the honor you received from Tennessee fans, the seeds were already sown for you to witness the ultimate destruction of the program you love. We did not do our best for you.

But interestingly enough, today I was working on a chapter that focused heavily on John Ward…a chapter where I was discussing the differences between the fans of today and the fans of my generation, who grew up listening to John Ward call every single game. One of the things I wrote about in this chapter was my first memory of UT football — the afternoon that made me a Tennessee fan — at age four. Seems uncanny now that I was penning these words as John Ward breathed his last:

What I thought was weird is that they were all staring at the radio. Even back in the 1970s radios were pretty boring. Not much to see. But the man’s voice coming over the radio snared my attention. I didn’t know it then, of course, but the man’s name was John Ward and for the first time, I was listening to the voice of the Vol Network.

For a few minutes, I just stood there listening. Ward would speak on the radio, and then my dad or one of my uncles would make a comment. Two or three others would say something — my dad had eight brothers and sisters so there were a lot of people in that tiny Tennessee farmhouse — and then they’d all go silent again when the man on the radio started to speak.

All of a sudden, Ward’s voice got excited. “Thirty…twenty-five…twenty…”

When he got down to ten, he was getting into numbers that were familiar territory for me.

“Five…four…three…two…touchdown Tennessee!”

Generations of Tennessee kids grew up with similar experiences. We didn’t grow up with the cluster club of ESPN viewing opportunities. We saw maybe two games a year on television outside of Knoxville. So we all listened to the games on the radio, even though we were at the height of the television age. When the games were on TV, we’d turn down the volume and listen to the radio call anyway. When we went to Neyland Stadium for a game, which was a huge luxury for us in the 1970s and 1980s, we took our transistor radio with us so we could listen to Ward call the game.

It was unthinkable to watch a full game of football without hearing his voice. No one says the word “Tennessee” like John Ward.

John Ward was as much a part of our game day experience as the orange and white, Smokey, Rocky Top, running through the T, checkerboards and touchdowns. No matter where any of us were, when that whiskey-and-honey-smooth voice crackled over the airwaves, we were instantly transported to Neyland Stadium whether we’d ever been there or not. He could be talking about a car dealership or a PSA about Tennessee trash, and with the first syllable of his voice you always heard the same things.

Give him six.

Touchdown, Tennessee!

Wherever you listen throughout the world…it’s football time in Tennessee —

There was something about his voice that spoke to all of us — a father, a favorite uncle, the cool older guy who lived on the corner — all the older gentlemen in our lives that we never wanted to disappoint. You could tell, too, that the players felt the same way. No one wanted to disappoint John Ward. Especially not John Ward.

Especially not us.

I think we all knew how to do Ward imitations of his iconic calls. Heck, John Ward clips served as my ringtones for several years. I never lose my phone in Ohio. No one up here understands that when they hear my phone go off, they’re listening to one of the grand old traditions of the South. This isn’t some plastic Woody Hayes-driven Hang on Sloopy northern crap.

This is John Ward, and he is everything every broadcaster wanted to be and nothing like the sterile sports world up here.

We like our broadcasters to have a little color and a lot of personality.

John Ward and Bill Anderson played off each other so well for over three decades that we had a lot of color and an overdose of personality. Every game call you heard was a gift, wrapped up in John Ward’s voice and presented to every UT fan that couldn’t be on Rocky Top for the game that afternoon.

In my lifetime, there have been a few passings (outside my family) that have impacted me really hard. The hardest loss for me was Coach Summitt. To a little girl raised in the town where Wilma Rudolph had lived and run on her way to being the first female athlete to win three individual Olympic gold medals in the same games, Pat Head was my athletic idol. I met her after she returned from her silver medal trip to the Montreal Olympics, and our families knew each other. Her death almost two years ago was the hardest for me personally.

John Ward’s death is almost as hard. Everyone who wanted to grow up and work in sports journalism knew his name and his voice. When my high school football coach asked me to call the games at the stadium, John Ward’s face was the first one to flash across my mind.

Could I do it?

What would Mr. Ward say if I asked his opinion about a girl doing the play by play?

I never got the chance to find out. Never got to ask him what he thought of a girl calling games. Never got to learn if his advice when I told my journalism advisor I wanted to go into sports broadcasting would have been different, if maybe I should have stayed the course. I think his advice would have been different.

John Ward was the kind of man who never wanted the expected, who never dashed a dream if he could help it, who never believed in the word ‘impossible’.

John Ward was unabashedly a fan of the sports he covered and the school he loved. We got excited over our radios at home when he got that sudden charge in his voice, that split-second where electricity zipped through the airwaves and shocked us right in our seats. After that, you weren’t just listening to the game. You were seeing the game through his eyes, from arguably the best seat in the house. You watched field goals go wide, or interceptions coming back. You watched the long, perfect spiral of a Peyton Manning pass just like you’d watched Condredge Holloway scampering down the field as the Artful Dodger scored again.

You felt the heartbreak and the joy, the anguish and the shock, the losses and the wins because to your mind, those memories are always underscored with John Ward’s voice. And you watched the Tennessee Volunteers get to the promised land, reiterating to Vols faithful that UT was a storied program, in one of the greatest cathedrals to Saturday afternoon devotion and Sunday morning poll releases, and that on the hallowed field of Neyland Stadium only the greatest were worthy of the checkerboards.

And every single trip to the checkerboards, every field goal, every goal line stand was narrated by John Ward. Every game was a gift, and John Ward was part of that gift.

I have three grandsons now, who will grow up being able to watch any football or basketball game they want to. Tragically, their only connection to the great John Ward will be my stories and some YouTube links that preserve the images and that iconic voice.

But they will know what John Ward means to the University of Tennessee, because it’s both my obligation and my joy to teach them that. When they’re old enough to understand what I’m talking about, those lessons will be accompanied by the soundtrack that was John Ward.

It’s hard to imagine John Ward is gone, but his passing isn’t something unnatural or tragic. As The Byrds put it:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together…

For decades, Vol Nation knew that John Ward ushered in the season that is Rocky Top. His voice built us up for the excitement of the game, and broke the game down so we’d understand what had just happened. His voice danced with joy when the unexpected happened, and mourned when that unexpected thing didn’t turn out in our favor.

And now, once again in the steamy days at the end of June, it is now a time to mourn. But we don’t mourn for John Ward; we mourn for ourselves. We mourn that his voice lives on mostly in our memories or in the few calls you can find online. We mourn that our current and future players won’t have the connection to John Ward that we do. We mourn that one of the strongest links to the UT teams of our childhood has faded from the here and now.

That happens to all men, in time, but as long as there’s football and basketball at UT, John Ward’s wild as a mink, sweet as soda pop love for the university will reverberate in his legacy for generations to come. So while this is the season to mourn our loss of John Ward, it’s also the season to find ourselves once again united as Vol Nation.

John Ward gave us so many iconic moments, Tennessee. Time now to give him one. Time to send him home on a checkerboard wave of love and respect, with our thoughts fixed on one of those iconic moments — whichever one is your favorite. There are so many, but they’ll all do. For me, it’s the 1986 Sugar Vols and the sixty-yard touchdown run by Jeff Powell. If I could bottle John Ward and Bill Anderson’s call of that game, I would.

Then I’d uncork it and play it for every Miami fan I met. The two and a half hour game call was John Ward’s gift to me, as a member of Vol Nation. I know for a fact that if you listened to any of his game calls, he gave you a gift as well.

God bless and Godspeed, John Ward. In heaven, it’s always football time in Tennessee.

A turn of the century whitewashed red brick house stands at 2111 Terrace Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Terrace Avenue is a nondescript street, tucked in close to the University of Tennessee campus and lined with older houses, most of them either nearing or just passing a century of existing. Terrace Avenue is the kind of neighborhood that in the past you would have expected to see kids playing in the front yard or riding their bikes down the street, and then in twenty years or so you expect to see the children of the first batch of kids doing the same thing.

Pure Americana with a Tennessee tang.

That’s the American dream, right? Well, not so fast…

Never underestimate UT’s ability to trample all over the dreams of the people whose hard-earned money subsidizes its every move. Now-a-days, Terrace is occupied mostly by students living in the aforementioned antique homes and there are also a few structures owned and operated by UT itself.

And while the street and the houses on it are really nothing special and typical of late nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture, the 2111 Terrace Avenue house is much, much more than that.

The first residents of the house were General Robert Neyland and his family. Their son, Robert Neyland Jr., was born while they lived on Terrace Avenue. And during that three-year span between 1927 and 1929 when the Neylands called the house their home, the Tennessee football team didn’t lose a single football game.

Not one.

But even after the Neylands left, the house remained an remarkable dwelling tucked into a neighborhood where everything seemed on the surface to be totally unremarkable. Russell Briscoe, a local businessman, historian, and artist lived and worked in the home for years. Briscoe began painting in 1957, and continued to paint in the residence until 1965, when he sold the house to UT. That may not mean much to you, but bear with me for a minute.

Russell Briscoe used his historical research skills to create 75 known works as a folk artist, painting in the style now identified as American Primitive. And Russell Briscoe’s chosen subjects were almost entirely from East Tennessee. As the East Tennessee Historical Society said:

Briscoe’s paintings capture the spirit of times long past. They are visual history that spans 189 years of life in Knoxville and East Tennessee. The collected works depict landmarks and events, both public and private, from Smoky Mountains to Gay Street, from battlegrounds to churchyards, from trolleys to trains. Minute details, meticulously drawn, show a draftsman’s hand. Painstaking brushstrokes, applied in vivid colors, reveal a heart deeply connected to home and heritage.

Take a look for yourself at one of Briscoe’s works. You can see more of his paintings here.

So let’s think about this dilemma, all right? UT owns the building where its most legendary head football coach lived and where later a renowned regional artist whose work epitomizes East Tennessee first began to paint and where some of his greatest paintings were created. We’re talking about a house that’s a landmark here, right? After all, UT is a land grant university, and as such has an obligation to not only the state of Tennessee, but the region in which the university exists. UT’s purpose here should be to preserve the unique history of 2111 Terrace Avenue.

But it’s not.

UT has decided that the house, unoccupied since 2016 when the UT Department of Health and Environmental Safety moved out, is to be demolished in June or July. In Dan Harralson’s May, 2018 article in Blank News, UT spokesperson Tyra Haag explains the reasons for UT’s decision:

In late July 2016, the SBC approved the demolition. It’s just not possible to renovate the home due to excessive costs. And because of its condition, no one else can be assigned to the building.

You’re reading that correctly. The Department of Health and Environmental Safety ran the house into the ground and now the university says there’s nothing healthy or safe about the house’s environment.

Oh, the irony.

That comment from Haag to Harralson follows up what she said in a January, 2018 interview with Knox News:

“The excessive cost to renovate this structure is not a prudent use of funds when the end result does not meet or provide the program needs of the campus,” Haag said of 2111 Terrace Ave. “From an occupancy standpoint, it is unacceptable, and we cannot assign anyone to the building.”

Seriously? So, wouldn’t it have been prudent for UT to use some funds to keep and maintain the house at some point during its fifty-plus years of owning the property? Would that have been acceptable? Because let’s be honest here, Ms. Haag. What’s really unacceptable is the incontrovertible fact that the house’s condition is UT’s fault. The university deliberately allowed the house to deteriorate, and its condition is due to UT’s outrageous neglect of the property.

Consider, too, that this isn’t the first time Tennessee has screwed the pooch when it comes to its responsibilities as a land grant university, a status that requires the school to act as a conservator toward historic or culturally significant locations. UT’s 2009 Campus Heritage Plan stated that:

While peer campuses throughout the nation have adopted policies to promote and protect historic resources, the University of Tennessee has largely resisted systematic preservation efforts. As a result, many of the flagship campus’s extant historic resources are currently at risk, and the university’s legacy — itself a significant institutional asset — is in jeopardy.

The 2009 Heritage Plan also admitted that:

Prior to the Campus Heritage Preservation Project, the University of Tennessee had no inventory of its historic and architectural resources. There was no recognition of historic properties, even among top administrators. Decisions regarding potentially historic properties were made on an ad hoc basis with no established standards or review processes.

This wasn’t the first attempt to address the issue of conservation either.

In 2001, the university developed and published a revised master plan for the campus. Among the master plan’s “governing principles” was historic preservation, which specifically called upon the university to: “…respect the historic character of existing buildings” and to “collaborate with historic preservation groups within the community.” Notably absent from the master plan was a detailed preservation plan or any specific preservation policies or proposals.

In fact, UT had multiple plans to address its lack of conservation before 2001. The University of Tennessee has been telling the world it was going to preserve its historic buildings since 1919, when the original Old College building was demolished. The problem is that UT hasn’t lived up to any of those promises. Terrace Avenue neighbor James Mason has his own views on UT’s treatment of historic properties:

“UT tends to ignore groups like Knox Heritage that are trying to preserve the history of the city. UT has torn down many of the houses in this neighborhood, some of which were really fine houses.”

Okay, so what gives here? What’s really going on? People have been agitating about preserving the Neyland/Briscoe house for months now, and while the property may apparently have no value to UT (obviously, considering how they’ve mistreated the house for fifty years) it certainly has value to a lot of people. What’s so expensive about this house that Tennessee can’t afford to repair and renovate it? Not like we’re talking about a huge building, after all. It’s going to cost the university $38,000 to tear down the house and level the lot.

Sure could do a lot of renovation for forty grand, I’m thinking. The uses this house could be put to that would turn the property into an asset for UT, Terrace Avenue, the children of Neyland and Briscoe, and for Knoxville are many.

A museum, dedicated to General Neyland and the traditions of Tennessee football.

A museum and center for the folk art of East Tennessee, featuring the work of local artists like Russell Briscoe.

A special accommodation — maybe for something as altruistic as a home-like place to stay for families of critically ill kids at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, which is no more than half a mile from the house. Or something as beneficial as a bed & breakfast steeped in Neyland lore.

I live in Ohio. I’d pay good money to stay at General Neyland’s house when I come down for games. That place would be booked solid four or five years in advance.

At the end of the day, though, UT hasn’t considered any of those actions. They’ve been full speed ahead on destroying the house for months, ignoring the negative press and pretending not to hear the blowback from fans, alumni, and Knoxville residents regarding those plans.

Because, you know — UT’s need for another parking lot is far more important than conserving a house with legitimate historical and sentimental value to the people who are the community they allegedly serve. Hell, if UT doesn’t want the house, sell it! I’d be willing to bet a buyer would show up and pay $38,000 for that house this afternoon. For that matter, give it away and write it off. The East Tennessee Historical Society would probably love to get their hands on the house, and I’d wager they’d find a way to honor both residents of that property.

Or, if they want, I’ll drive down from Ohio today. Within a week, I’ll have an organization put together with contractors, interior designers, and curators. Within a year, I’d have a fully functioning facility where reverence for the General would be the order of the day downstairs, while upstairs the guest bedrooms would be adorned with Russell Briscoe prints on the wall. A dual purpose, to reflect the dual heritage of the building.

There are creative and useful ways the Neyland/Briscoe house could serve the UT community. Why are they being ignored?

Why are we being ignored yet again by an administration that seems determined to drive itself off a cliffside road in the Smokies, Thelma and Louise style?

See, if you’re not mad about what UT is planning for this house, you should be. Once again, the administration — and in this case specifically Senior Associate Vice Chancellor Jeff Maples, who holds the fate of the Neyland/Briscoe house in his hands — has proven to be tone-deaf to the wishes of the community around them. You’d think that after the Schiano debacle, the Currie firing, the document dump that made UT’s administration and Board of Trustees look like badly costumed freaks running through a clown car, and then the egregious termination letter President Joe DiPietro sent to Dr. Beverly Davenport in some Mafioso-styled career and character assassination — you’d think that after all that, the University of Tennessee powers that be wouldn’t be stubborn enough to once again ignore the wishes of fans, alumni, former athletes, neighbors, and local officials regarding a once again brainless decision on their parts.

You’d think they would have learned by now that they ignore this community at their own peril.

You’d think.

The University of Tennessee is broadcasting its priorities both loudly and clearly. UT was willing to spend $340 million to renovate the stadium named after General Neyland — a plan in which they planned to remove hundreds of the peons’ seats (you know…the ones we peasants sit in for games) in order to put in a VIP club. However, the administration is not only unwilling to spend a few thousand dollars to renovate and repurpose a house General Neyland lived in, they’re also of the opinion that the Tennessee community is so stupid we’d fall for a line like “the excessive cost to renovate this structure is not a prudent use of funds”.

Really? So taking seats away from the regular folks for whom Tennessee football is a luxury to build a space that only the sifted few could enter is somehow a more prudent use of funds?

Bull.

Time to put an end to this. Sign Greg Minton’s petition to save the Neyland/Briscoe house. But also consider contacting Vice Chancellor Maples’ office at 865–974–4204 or email him directly at maples@utk.edu. Let him hear what you think of UT’s “prudent use of funds” that will bury a piece of UT and Knoxville history. Enough is enough! This continuing tone-deaf attitude, this condescension and dismissal of the Tennessee community has gone on for far too long and it needs to stop. If UT can’t find a way to save the Neyland/Briscoe house, a prospect significantly less expensive than the constant construction projects on campus, then the school should make the property available to someone or some organization who will.

Doesn’t sound like it’s so hard, does it? But for some reason, the University of Tennessee thinks it’s both impossible and imprudent — or, at least, they want us to think it is.

At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is simple. UT doesn’t care what the people of Tennessee want. The university has proved that time and time again. They particularly have little or no interest in preserving historic sites, which they’ve been proving repeatedly for a century now — since the demolition of the Old College in 1919. And although UT officials are utterly indifferent to what the fans and alumni are demanding regarding the Neyland/Briscoe house and pretending not to hear the feedback on social media or in the local press, they’ll certainly expect everyone to pony up when it’s season tickets or Neyland Stadium renovations time.

They won’t listen when it comes to what we want, but they won’t have a bit of trouble calling or emailing for donations, will they?

And unless the Tennessee community steps up, UT will be calling every alumni and season ticket holder on their usual schedule. While the bulldozers scrape an important piece of UT, Knoxville, and Tennessee history off the rich, dark soil where once Russell Briscoe painted and General Robert Neyland considered his maxims while watching his children play in the yard, UT reps will be calling as usual for more donations.

Why?

Because they think we’re stupid.

Because they think the Tennessee community only cares about wins in football.

Because they think our opinion doesn’t matter.

Because after all their bleating about Tennessee traditions and history, they have no qualms about burying a piece of that history. They’ll be adding another body to the body farm tally, but this body will have General Neyland’s name attached to it.

Perhaps the UT administration, and especially Vice Chancellor Jeff Maples, should remember that traditions, like history, shouldn’t be demolished for being inconvenient…especially when the reason for the inconvenience is decades of tone-deaf negligence they’re personally responsible for.

You rarely learn a lot from a spring game. After all, it’s a glorified scrimmage, there to give recruits a taste of what a game day is like and the fans a bit of excitement heading into the second half of the off-season. The coaches don’t want to give anything away about their teams just for a scrimmage. But some spring games are more revealing than others.

Tennessee’s Orange & White Game was very revealing in a number of ways, but not in the ways you’d expect. Sure I could go through a list of things I liked and things I didn’t like from the players on the field, but that’s not what I look for in a spring game and especially a spring game right after a tumultuous transition.

I look for other things. I’ll leave all the position breakdowns and play analysis to the guys who do it better than I do, which is pretty much every journalist in Knoxville. What I’m good at spotting are elements that don’t necessarily take place on the field, and there were a few things I took note of that I found interesting.

Like, for example, injuries. Stop for a second and think about this. The Tennessee Volunteers went an entire spring practice cycle without any serious injuries.

How long has it been since anyone’s been able to say that? I’ll give you a minute to think...

I’m watching the Georgia spring game as I write this and I just watched Jake Fromm hang out Riley Ridley to dry on a pass in the end zone that left the WR down after the play. Showy pass, but unnecessary in a spring game and with potentially serious connotations for the real football season. But in Knoxville, the trainers ran out on the field exactly zero times. That tells me the S&C woes are on their way out the door. New strength coach Craig Fitzgerald seems to be on his way to building that bigger, stronger, meaner Vols team that UT fans expect.

As Coach Pruitt mentioned in his post-game press conference today, there were four guys out for the game that were left-over injuries from prior to spring ball, and on a legit game day some of those guys would have been cleared to play. For a squad that’s going to be facing depth issues on some units, that’s outstanding news and should be very reassuring for the long haul, as well. To me, it’s an indication that the past few years of having 25+ injuries by mid-October might be in the rear view mirror for real, and that’s huge news.

I also noted that the play-calling demonstrated a definite trend back to what longtime UT fans have always expected from their teams. Fullbacks? How did that happen? QBs under center? Wait…is that still legal?

I-formation?

Quick! Someone bring the crash cart, stat!

Very little razzle-dazzle, and I’m of the opinion that a flea-flicker doesn’t count as razzle-dazzle. Good, sound football fundamentals. And despite SEC Network’s Greg McElroy running around the field in his Boogie Fever-inspired electric blue skinny pants talking about how it’s going to take QB Jarrett Guarantano a long while to learn the pro-style offense this new Volunteers incarnation will run, let’s be serious. With 226 yards passing and 134 yards rushing, the first team offense didn’t seem to have that much trouble figuring a pro-style offense out. That’s because a pro-style offense requires a sound football foundation to run successfully, and those foundations were starting to show during the O&W game.

And finally, investment. There’s no doubt this coaching staff is fully invested in this team — and not themselves. Coach Pruitt’s voice when he spoke about the lack of commitment of some UT players demonstrated spoke volumes.

Elements of that investment could be seen on the field too. Daniel Bituli’s fire and brimstone couldn’t be denied on the sidelines, as he came down hard on the defensive unit for a lackluster performance. Leadership — both on and off the field — can only come from a fully invested player.

Could there be any doubt about Jauan Jennings’s investment? During the Vol Walk and on the sidelines, still not cleared to play, no one was happier to be in a Vols uniform than Jennings. Watching his coiled tension on the sidelines as he watched the game, you could tell he was yearning in every sinew of his body to be out on the field too.

And let’s continue to be honest — the thought of a Marquez Callaway-Jauan Jennings tandem at WR is the kind of thing to make UT fans drool and SEC defensive coordinators wince. Especially when you throw in Austin Pope/Domick Wood-Anderson and Eli Wolf, Tim Jordan and Ty Chandler, Josh Palmer and Brandon Johnson.

UT has a lot of options offensively. Hallelujah.

When grad transfer QB Keller Chryst shows up this fall, the quarterback competition is going to be something to keep an eye on. Not just because of who ultimately wins the position between Chryst and Guarantano, but because of how that competition will hone the skills of both players. Competition is healthy, and Coach Pruitt has made it clear that no one has a starting spot on the roster yet. Players have to earn that shot, and make no mistake — whoever is named the starter in any position will have flat smooth earned that place on the field and not in the boardroom.

“I will give my all for Tennessee today” is no longer just a catchphrase. It’s a requirement.

And while there were demonstrable elevations of the team’s investment on the field, there were some observations regarding investment off the field as well. Coach Pruitt noted one of those after the game:

Our fans today were like our football team. Some were here and doing great, some weren’t here for legitimate reasons, and some should have been here and weren’t. That sounds just like our team.

Yes, Coach, it does — coming from one of those should-have-been-there-and-had-legitimate-reasons-not-to-be. Now I personally don’t take offense to this comment, mostly because I agree with him. I don’t hear this comment and think, “Oh wow — Coach just insulted the fan base.”

He didn’t.

Instead, Coach Pruitt also learned a few things himself today and not just about the team. He learned valuable lessons about the fans and the condition of Vol Nation after the past ten years.

Just like the team, the fans’ ability to hope has been decimated the past few years. So for a while, it’s understandable that just the bare bones show out when asked. As we get closer to the season, that’ll change.

Just like the team, some fans are asked to change positions just so UT can field a full squad. Turnout for the spring game wasn’t 102,455, but a packed lower bowl and the dulcet sounds of 55–65,000 folks singing “Rocky Top” are one hell of a start.

Just like the team, there are bright moments when the fans can almost see the future. Once all the despair and anger and hopelessness begins to fade, fans will look at the 2018 schedule and think, “Yes, 6–6 is reasonable but I wouldn’t be surprised by 7–5 and maybe, just maybe, there’s a Dobbnail Boot in our future that can get us to 8–4.”

Just like the team, the fans must once again learn the sound foundations of the game and how to best provide that support base to the team in games. Sometimes not everybody’s going to show up to play, but those who do show up aren’t afraid of any game or opponent…ever.

But then, too, the fan base is also a lot like AD Phillip Fulmer.

I know where the bones are buried. I know the good guys…the bad guys…

Vol Nation knows who the good guys are…and where the bad guys’ bones are buried too. Vol Nation knows what it takes to succeed in the SEC. Vol Nation knows what it takes to make a difference in a game. Vol Nation knows what kinds of preparation and hard work are necessary to make a massive transition in a reasonably short period of time.

There’s no reason for anyone to be offended or insulted about Pruitt’s comments, or to try to twist them into a narrative that isn’t the case. Fans learned more about Pruitt; he learned more about the fans.

And at the end of the day, we all know what category of the three the offended folks are probably hailing from. I think, too, that the way Coach Pruitt ended that comment about Vol Nation is the real takeaway from that moment.

I think we all need to look in the mirror and see who we want to be.

That’s a great use of one’s time during the off-season, by the way…for players, coaches and fans.

And writers.

Any writer or journalist that finds a way to create outrage based upon what Coach Pruitt says is just feeding the same old narrative that’s brought them clicks in the past. Stories like that happen when the media is trying to steer the story back to that unrest because it sells news…makes people click on their links. They’ve learned that an angry UT fan base equals money in this cash for clicks media existing today, so they show a picture of two people sitting alone in the upper bowl and then flat-out state that the attendance the university announced officially is a little exaggerated.

Only by twenty-five thousand people or so.

Buying into that narrative and letting unscrupulous media outlets convince UT fans that the brand new head coach insulted the entire fan base because no one showed up for the spring game is like opening up the mouse hole in the garage wall and inviting vermin right back into the house that was just exterminated.

That’s not covering the story. That’s creating the story, and Vol Nation should know better than to let the rats right back in.

The major takeaway from the Orange and White game is that this is a work in progress, and some of that progress really impressed the heck out of me, at least. I liked what I saw on the field. I liked seeing the lower bowl full of excited fans — and there were a lot more than 40,000 people there. I liked seeing well-crafted, well-run football plays.

And I really liked watching Pruitt’s presser and knowing that for this man, it’s never going to be good enough.

Never.

As we head into the slough of despair known as the second half of the off-season, I’m pleased with what I’ve seen so far this spring from the Volunteers. I looked at Neyland Stadium on Saturday afternoon, and for the first time in a decade had the comforting sense that now things feel like they’re supposed to feel again. Make no mistake: the 2018 season is a rebuilding year, but not in the normal sense of the word.

2018 is about rebuilding the heart of what it means to be Tennessee for all of us — players, coaches, media, and fans. And watching the Jeremy Pruitt era kick off on Saturday, along with this week’s confirmation of the Phillip Fulmer captaincy of the UT Athletics ship, made me quietly confident to be a Tennessee fan again.

I have a feeling the Vols will have at least one surprise for us this fall, and I would not be surprised at all if that surprise came in Charlotte. For the task at hand of rebuilding a football program, I like what Coach Pruitt has brought so far and want to see more. I think UT’s on the right track and I think Pruitt has nothing but the greatest respect for Vol Nation…no matter what the vermin might want you to believe. At the end of the day, though, my biggest takeaway from the Orange and White game is probably the one that gives me the greatest pleasure.

Welcome home, Tennessee football. Great to have you on the way back to where you belong.

Last fall, the entire sports world watched as the University of Tennessee fan base exploded into outright rebellion on SchiaNO Sunday. The national sports media referred to Vol Nation as ignorant. Uneducated. An online lynch mob. Trailer park Bubbas from Pidgeon (sic) Forge. The thought that a sprawling fan base could actually protest against a football coaching hire was something those pundits couldn’t wrap their heads around — particularly when the ignorant, uneducated, unwashed masses succeeded and forced the university to back out of their deal with Greg Schiano.

And then forced the firing of John Currie.

And then forced the hiring of Phillip Fulmer.

We all know that story. It’s our story, regardless of what ESPN shills might claim. For the rest of the sports world, that story ended when Coach Fulmer hired Jeremy Pruitt as the new head football coach. For the sports media, their narrative shifted. The backwards populace of Rocky Top was now appeased and ready to sink back into the downtrodden mass Vol Nation had always been…something the media needed so they could continue to further the belief that Tennessee fans in general were too stupid to do anything but yell “Woo!” at the right time.

But man, they were so wrong.

The UT fan base didn’t say “We are the caretakers now” lightly, and they didn’t stop believing it after Pruitt was hired. The huge amalgamation of people that make up Vol Nation didn’t just return that power immediately to the elitists who run anything, although they seemed to think that’s what had happened. That’s why Governor Bill Haslam felt completely confident in his hastily drawn-up UT FOCUS Act, a bill that would eradicate the current UT system Board of Trustees and allow him to appoint every single member of the reconstituted BoT. After all, why would the peasantry care about the Board of Trustees?

All those people care about is winning football games, right?

And that’s why he and other state leaders were surprised when they called for the first vote on the bill in the TN house of representatives. All of a sudden, a significant chunk of the legislature was voting against the bill — after a hurried social media-generated campaign where UT fans called or sent emails to the entire legislature to protest the bill.

After the UT FOCUS Act was passed by only two votes in the house — not bad for a protest that lasted only a couple of days — the governor probably felt like his troubles were over. After all, confirmation of his appointees was merely a formality. No protest could get organized fast enough to have an impact. Since the bill passed, he could name who he wanted to and no one would care. After all, UT fans only cared about one thing in the SchiaNO disaster. Football. They wouldn’t be interested in which bureaucrats would be named as trustees.

He had a chance no other governor would ever have — every single member of the BoT would be appointed by him. If he needed to call in those favors for any reason at all — like, say, hiring the replacement for outgoing UT president Dr. Joe DiPietro — he’d have the votes to get what he wanted.

Nope.

It became instantly apparent that it wasn’t going to be business as usual in those confirmation hearings when Senator Dolores Gresham, Chairman of the Education Committee from District 26 said the following:

There is an uproar in our state about the scandalous events being supported by our leadership of the University of TN. Tennesseans are blessed with a bedrock foundational values for life, for family, for freedom. These events on the UT campus fly in the face of those values. Email after email, phone call after phone call reflecting the outrage of our constituencies are not to be ignored. Not by us and certainly not by the leadership of the institution. Heretofore, these Tennesseans have held a love and loyalty for the institution, so they are saying to themselves, ‘What a betrayal’…So for the candidates here for confirmation, heed my words: we expect better…and we expect lots better.

If you haven’t watched that committee hearing, you need to because nothing demonstrates the shift in the political winds more clearly than that hearing. Why? Because what would only a few weeks before would have been an automatic, thoughtless approval suddenly was not. Gresham’s speech set off a conflagration in the committee’s confirmation process that burned through five of the governor’s appointees. Current BoT Vice Chair Raja Jubran withdrew his name from consideration, leaving the governor’s staff scrambling and shell-shocked. Eventually, the committee would refuse to confirm four more of the governor’s candidates: Sharon Pryse, Brad Lampley, Melvin Malone, and Bill Evans.

That’s huge. According to the UT FOCUS Act, all appointments must be confirmed within 90 days. In this first BoT, that means July 1, when it would officially be empowered to run the UT system. However, this is an election year and the legislative session ends early. If those five slots aren’t filled by the time the legislature is done for the year, then the next governor of Tennessee would fill those remaining appointments.

The three other members of the previous BoT the governor appointed — Pryse, Evans, and Lampley — were rejected because of their ties to the recent fiascos on campus, particularly the athletic department’s coaching search. The other rejected candidate, Malone, was nixed because he was a lobbyist. Senate Speaker Randy McNally’s words emphasize what’s really happened in Tennessee in the months following the Rocky Top ReVOLution:

It dealt mainly with a desire to start anew — with a fresh board — that didn’t have some of the problems that the previous boards have had.

No one could ever have predicted even a week earlier those refused confirmations. The political shift took everyone by surprise. But then this week came an even more shocking development — the coup de grace to the governor’s plans for UT. On April 17, a bill was quietly introduced in the Tennessee Senate to extend the tenure of the current board until June of 2019. That bill goes to the House for a vote on April 19.

That, Vols lovers, is called a VICTORY. And it reflects an aspect of UT fans and Tennesseans in general that the national media is incapable of understanding or even recognizing, as evidenced by this hatchet job that CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd wrote earlier this week.

A large portion of those protestors (sic) were faux moral ethicists. They simply didn’t care to see Tennessee hire a former Rutgers coach with a 68–67 record who hadn’t led a team in five years.

All of them should be embarrassed.

No UT fan is embarrassed about what has unfolded, nor should they be. During the Rocky Top ReVOLution, this fan base saved its program from continuing to descend into the nightmare that Phillip Fulmer’s firing had instigated. Quite frankly, what national media figures like Dodd can’t understand is that a fan base exists that doesn’t need to be spoon-fed its opinions and preferences, that refuses to kowtow to the powers that be that supposedly know so much more about what’s best for Tennessee.

They don’t and cannot comprehend that the stereotype applied to UT fans is one they created and perpetuated themselves and that stereotype is wrong. Tennessee fans aren’t illiterate and ignorant, barefoot ridge runners speeding toward the outhouse or the cement pond. UT fans aren’t the Beverly Hillbillies or The Waterboy or Forrest Gump, no matter how much they try to shove that perception down everyone’s throat. This fan base is highly educated, knowledgeable about the game and its players, coaches, conferences, and rules.

And this fan base loves its state university passionately.

This fan base is so educated, in fact, that it rose up again and quietly forced the state legislature to take a stand against a lame duck governor’s agenda — the same agenda that many believe was integral to the astonishing collapse of UT athletics over the past decade.

That’s not something a social media lynch mob comprised of uneducated Bubbas from the Pidgeon (sic) Forge trailer park is going to be able to accomplish or even be that interested in. If Vol Nation was how Dennis Dodd and his ilk try to portrays us, the only thing anyone who sports the orange and white would be interested in would be football. Beating Florida. Beating Bama. Going to the SEC Championship.

Not who makes up the Board of Trustees and who appoints them.

Underestimating Vol Nation has proved to be a big mistake for the powerful, self-important members of the national sports media time and time again. Always. They don’t get who our people inherently are. They don’t understand how Vols persevere, no matter what the obstacles or odds are. They forget things like the LSU game last fall, with Tennessee headed toward their worst season ever, and how Vols fans were packed in the stands singing Rocky Top at the top of their lungs during a veritable monsoon.

Just like the ReVOLution, where Vol Nation demonstrated the true power every school’s fan base actually possesses.

Just like the defeat Vol Nation just handed the UT FOCUS Act, stiffening the spines of the state legislature against a proposal that would have undercut the fan base’s power and consolidated it once again in the hands of those who triggered a need for a revolt in the first place.

A quieter victory, but ultimately more important for the future of UT as a whole. This wasn’t a win in football or basketball or who sits in the AD’s chair, but the entirety of a university that means so much to the people who love it that they found a way to make their voices heard.

And Dennis Dodd thinks we should all be embarrassed about that?

Man, get out of here with that crap.

Don’t be ridiculous. Vol Nation should — and does — stand proudly shoulder to shoulder with heads held high because we accomplished something that not one other fan base in the country has ever done. Dodd doesn’t understand that still evidently, or he’d never have said:

Social media and protesting Vols fans became unhinged. The rest of us cringed.

Cringe away, Mr. Dodd. While you’re cringing, we’ll just continue to do what it is we do so well.

We will continue to support our state university. We will continue to stand up for our beliefs. We will continue to let our voices be heard on any aspect of UT we choose to. While you’re cringing over the behavior of a fan base you’re incapable of understanding or respecting, we will continue to be Vol Nation and we don’t care what you think about that. Sorry to disappoint your narrative, but Vol Nation has nothing to be embarrassed about. We’re not going to cringe like you do. We don’t have to.

Because we won.

Again.

So continue to cringe, Mr. Dodd. Continue to underestimate Rocky Top, and perpetuate the stereotypes you helped to create instead of making an effort to understand who and what Vol Nation really is. Keep making the same mistakes you and your peers have always made, applying a false stereotype to the people who love the University of Tennessee, with all the contempt and condescension you normally display while keeping that fictional narrative alive.

No matter what anyone in a golden tower proclaims, we are Vol Nation…and Vol Nation doesn’t cringe.

As I sit down to write this column, I feel sick. Absolutely sick. I’ve spent the last few hours going through emails, text messages, and DMs surrounding the University of Tennessee head football coach hiring search. I’ve read through the anguish that alumni with two, twenty, forty, even sixty years of support for UT expressed as they begged — begged! — Chancellor Beverly Davenport and President Joe DiPietro not to hire Greg Schiano, not to hire Dave Doeren, not to allow John Currie to destroy UT athletics more than he already did.

As I sit here with my forty years of fandom behind me, I feel like throwing up.

A lot of that is anger — oh, so much anger — now that all of this information regarding the UT coaching search is coming to light. I’m outraged that anyone working inside the University of Tennessee could be so dismissive of the fans’ wishes and importance in the success of UT athletics. I’m disgusted that members of both the local and national media were willing to serve as shills in order to push unpopular agendas on behalf of an athletic director who referred to the people he worked for as “wackos”. I’m astonished that anyone could be so stupid as to think that hiring Greg Schiano would work even though he knew in advance the fans would never accept the hire and asked USA Today sports writer Dan Wolken to “help with the PR” — as if Dan Wolken could change the minds of the fan base about a sub-par coach.

There were a lot of reasons that Vol Nation melted down over the coaching hire fiasco. A lot of reasons. But what’s coming to light now in the John Currie text, email, and social media direct message dump orchestrated by members of the media sheds new light on exactly how the fan base is viewed by some university officials.

It’s a fascinating lesson on “how not to increase your donations next year”.

As current UT Tennis Coach Alison Ojeda put it in an email to John Currie on November 30, 2017:

“I hate the way our students feel like they have so much say in matters they don’t…”

Apparently that goes for fans, alumni, and boosters too. The occupiers of the golden tower have made their feelings quite plain. Aside from Currie calling the fan base and, one presumes, the local media “wackos”, influential boosters like to chip in with their input as well, as in this email to Chancellor Davenport:

So good to know that the hysterical masses’ concerns differed from the sifted few at Cherokee Country Club that day.

What’s really fascinating to me, though, is the sheer audacity of how Currie handled this search, from the way he dealt with fans, boosters, the administration, and the Board of Trustees (BoT)…and how the BoT dealt with the controversy.

There are way too many of these communications to cite, obviously. So, I zeroed in on the BoT and their interactions. As the FOCUS bill is still in committee that would rework the BoT right before Governor Bill Haslam’s term ends, I thought it appropriate to track down how the BoT is working for the supporters of UT and the citizens of Tennessee. What I found there was disturbing.

For one thing, Vice Chair of the BoT, Raja Jubran seems to have a problem with leaks to the media and feels very free with how to handle employees of the state of Tennessee when it comes to leaks according to this November 24, 2017 text:

But the running communication between BoT members, boosters, and UT administrators on November 26 — “Schiano Sunday” — are perhaps the most telling.

While the uprising was going on, Trustee George Cates wrote the following to a large group of trustees and donors:

Jubran replied with the following:

John Tickle had this to say:

Later that same day, Jubran added:

I find it fascinating that people who are allegedly working for the University of Tennessee find it so easy to degrade and insult anyone outside their inner circle, forbidden access to the golden tower where the privileged live and make decisions for those who are incapable of deciding for themselves. The contempt and arrogance these responses display is, quite frankly, revolting. Unfortunately for the school, the fans, alumni, students, former players, and local media demonstrated that they could and would make decisions, regardless of what the sifted few might think.

Predictably, the sifted few’s response continued to be tone-deaf.

See, here’s the thing. the University of Tennessee represents all the citizens of Tennessee. It is subsidized by Tennessee tax dollars. This is the flagship university of the state. What’s made evident to me by these exchanges between Trustees, university officials, and boosters is how unimportant those citizens were to all of them, treated more like a nuisance or a burden, dismissed as a necessary evil to be overcome instead of a section of the people around the university who needed to be won over. None of these people cared what the fans thought, and that ultimately is what led UT to the most disastrous week of public relations imaginable. Jubran’s inability — or unwillingness — to understand what was happening is exemplified in this email from November 26 after Tennessee backed out of the Schiano deal:

You read that correctly. Even after the Schiano debacle, the vice-chair of the UT Board of Trustees thought that Schiano was properly vetted and was impressed with John Currie — even though Tennessee was getting eviscerated by the local, regional, and national media. Even though there were protesters outside the UT athletic department. Even though Twitter had exploded. Even though there were hundreds of emails from UT alumni, donors, and boosters imploring the university not to hire Schiano.

How do you not think that avoiding a full-on revolt from the fan base is a prerequisite for doing a “great job” as an athletic director?

Even then, the Vice-Chair of the UT Board of Trustees was so invested in the agenda Currie was pushing that he legitimately believed Currie was doing his job properly.

Inconceivable. That’s like someone hiring a dog walker, and even after the walker sets the dog on fire or lets him jump off a bridge, the bereaved dog owner still writes a glowing reference that reads, “Great dog walker. I’d trust him to walk my kids too.”

What you might find interesting when you look at the UT Board of Trustees is who was appointed when. Any Trustee appointed after January, 2011 was appointed by current Tennessee Governor and Chair of the UT Board of Trustees Bill Haslam. Jubran, for example, was appointed in 2012.

Charlie Anderson was appointed in 2007. What I found interesting was this little nugget from John Currie’s November 29, 2017 text messages:

Charlie Anderson, a member of the BoT for a decade, was told that no one at the athletic department could give him any progress or candidates for the head football coaching job.

What?

Charlie Anderson is the Chair of the Athletics Committee on the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees.

He’s not the only one who found this troubling. For example, this email from BoT member John Foy was telling:

John Foy, by the way, was appointed to the BoT in 2008.

Apparently the only “unwieldy” part of the Board of Trustees sits as the Vice-Chair seeing as his stories can change so quickly.

So, there appears (to me, at least) that there was a definite divide within the Board of Trustees that (very coincidentally) manages to fall right in between the members appointed prior to Governor Haslam’s election and those that Haslam appointed. Anyone who is in the middle regarding the FOCUS bill should feel a tremor of concern about that, because it seems like the portions of the BoT the Governor describes as “unwieldy” seem to reflect those who oppose a specific agenda, and one that doesn’t take into consideration the wishes of anyone outside a tiny, privileged few.

Why else would the athletic director be conducting a coaching hire and refuse to give candidates’ names to the chairman of the Athletics Committee?

Vols fans have every reason to be angry over what’s coming out in the information dump regarding the coaching search. I certainly am. The contempt that our “representatives” have displayed for the fan base and the local media (aside from the ones who serve as the mouthpieces for the university’s agenda)is inexcusable and should not be tolerated. We cannot permit the Governor to reshuffle the Board of Trustees to eliminate opposition, which is certainly easy to infer just from the way the Haslam appointees and the UT athletic department treated pre-Haslam appointees while keeping them out of the loop on the decision making processes.

But perhaps what might anger UT fans the most is a tiny text message John Currie received on November 3, a text hidden in all the smug arrogance pre-Schiano Sunday and the absolute explosion of fan hatred that followed — a text that proves all the heartache and humiliation could have been easily avoided:

“Mike Leach wants to speak to you about coaching the Vols.”

Think about that. Thirteen days before Butch Jones was fired. Almost a month before the Schiano disaster. Tennessee could have had Mike Leach lined up and ready to go before the world’s worst coaching search led Vol Nation into a nightmare.

Over the next few days, every UT sports site including Orange & White Report, is going to rehash every single tidbit of information they find in these emails and texts. I know who reads my columns. I know who my readers are and what’s important to them, just like every other UT writer does. I know what you expect from me.

Here’s what I expect from you: I need you folks to listen to me. There appears to be a divide in our fan base, our Board of Trustees, and our university and that divide doesn’t have squat to do with athletics. That divide is the result of a grab for power, pure and simple.

That divide may be resolved with the FOCUS bill proposed by Governor Haslam to eradicate the “unwieldy” size of the Board of Trustees. But the only thing that’s seems to be unwieldy is the opposition to the men and women the Governor appointed himself. Nothing makes that clearer than what happened during the coaching hire.

Nothing.

It’s difficult to draw any other conclusion than that the people who were involved in making those decisions have nothing but contempt for the people of the state of Tennessee: the students, alumni, donors, season ticket holder, lower end boosters, fans, local media, athletes, former athletes — the entire gamut that is Vol Nation. Sheer contempt. And it’s sickening to witness firsthand.

You were mad last night because John Currie called Vol Nation “wackos”? Then you should be outraged at how the BoT seems to consider Vol Nation, and in particular how Raja Jubran and his cronies do. We may be the “hysterical masses” some “influential support (sp)” called us while on the putting green at Cherokee, but one thing’s for certain.

None of these people really understand what it’s like to be a common Tennessee fan. None of them. And if the FOCUS bill passes, the few voices of opposition against a pervasive agenda that has been destroying UT athletics from within will be ruthlessly eliminated.

Just in time for the Governor’s term to end, and just in time for the new Board of Trustees to name a new President of the University of Tennessee.

If that doesn’t make you mad, nothing will.