Free Mykelle McDaniel from NCAA Censure and the Abuse of Coach Butch Jones.

The following excerpt is from the book I co-authored with Tom Mattingly Empowered: The Fan ReVOLution That Changed College Football regarding the treatment then-head coach Butch Jones doled out to a player, Mykelle McDaniel, after he refused to play on a torn meniscus his freshman year at the University of Tennessee. To date, Mykelle McDaniel has yet to play a down of college football--first owing to Jones's blackball, then UT's refusal to release his transfer papers, and now the NCAA's ruling that he must sit out ANOTHER year and only have three years of eligibility wherever he decides to play. If you want to see what Mykelle says for himself, you can watch the series of interviews I did with him in 2018 on YouTube. Butch Jones is currently serving as an "intern" at the University of Alabama, an arrangement which allows him to collect monthly checks of $160,000 because the $35k Bama pays him doesn't end his buyout agreement with UT. 

That led us to Mykelle McDaniel, who I interviewed a couple of weeks later along with his mother, Chante-Amoure Simmons. Mykelle was another highly touted recruit, a four-star strongside defensive end who had thirty-one offers coming out of high school—including offers from twelve of the fourteen schools in the SEC: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Auburn, South Carolina, Mississippi State, Texas A&M, Kentucky, LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, and Tennessee. Mykelle and Marlin did not know each other, and Marlin’s full story is only being revealed now, in this book. So there was no way that these two young men somehow coordinated their stories. Marlin is in Knoxville; Mykelle is in Hutchinson, Kansas.

I spoke with Ms. Simmons before she and her son committed to an interview with me. The first thing she said struck me hard and made me feel slightly sick. “My son’s father hasn’t been a role model in his life. My second husband never had that bond with Mykelle either. The reason I felt comfortable sending my son to Tennessee was because Coach Jones presented himself as that father figure I always felt my son needed. I thought he was going to go to Tennessee and have that mentorship I’d always wanted for him. But I was a single mother going through his recruitment period with him, and I had no idea what to look for.”

I don’t think I’ll ever get over hearing the tragedy in her voice. Her voice was lovely anyway, soft and low-pitched, and she spoke with such sincerity and eloquence that as soon as she finished that comment, I started to get angry because I thought I knew what was coming. I just hated it for her and for her son, who I’d not yet spoken to. The bond between them was so touching. I mean—think about it. Before she would allow me to interview her son, she had wanted to talk with me first.
I don’t blame her for that. I admire her for it. She’d learned her lesson about trusting strangers with Mykelle.

As I said, I thought I knew what was coming. In actuality, I had no clue how bad that story was going to be. The next day, I interviewed Mykelle with his mother sitting in on the call.

During the pre-training camp physicals, the UT team doctors detected popping in one of Mykelle’s knees. They soon diagnosed a torn meniscus—an injury I can empathize with because I’ve had the same injury myself—and recommended that he have surgery to correct the issue. Because he’d finished a math class late—and not because he failed it. He had a score of 26 on his ACT—Mykelle already had an academic redshirt for the 2016 season, his freshman year. So his path seemed clear. He would have the problem surgically corrected, which was a fairly minor procedure, and would redshirt that season.

But the coaches didn’t agree. They were appealing the academic redshirt and thought there was a chance he could play that season. So Jones and his staff were pushing Mykelle to go ahead and play the season—with his injured knee. Of course, Mykelle, at eighteen, was anxious to start playing too. But a torn meniscus isn’t an injury to be ignored. The torn meniscus in my knee had led to a total knee replacement. I couldn’t imagine any responsible coach or trainer trying to get a young man to play with a torn meniscus and particularly not in the SEC.

“We had like a team advisor. You know, you go to him and just talk to him, you know what I’m saying? Just talk to him. The guy’s not supposed to tell anybody what you talk about at all. I did find out later on, the more I talked to him, the more I told him, the more he was going back to coach and telling him everything,” Mykelle explained. “So I got to talking to him and I was just going back and forth, getting his opinion and expressing my opinion as far as how I feel about playing on my knee right now and thinking about whether I wanna fix it or whether I want to go ahead and have the surgery. And the first day I actually tell him about it, later on that day in a team meeting, Coach Jones was…he didn’t say my name, didn’t mention any name at all, but he started saying that: ‘If you’re thinking about having surgery instead of playing, don’t be a bitch. Man up and help your team out.’ Didn’t say any names but I’m not stupid. I clearly know who he was just talking about.”

“So, after you decided to go ahead and have the surgery and that was with Knoxville Orthopedic Clinic, correct?” I asked.

“Correct.”

“Okay, were the trainers, the assistant coaches, or Coach Jones pushing you to not have the surgery and to go ahead and play even though they knew the doctors had recommended it?”

“Everyone except the doctor himself,” he replied. “When I approached everyone else about it, they said, ‘Don’t have it. There’s a chance you could burn your redshirt. We need you…’

And so on and so on. When I went to the doctor about it there was one thing consistently on my mind. It’s my career. I need to be smart about it. So I go see the doctor and I explain to him that the coaches have not been allowing me to have my surgery for a couple of weeks now and he says, ‘They can’t do that. I had no idea they were doing that. It’s illegal for them to do that. No one can pick and choose when you have your surgery but you.’ When he told me that, and once they (the coaches) were aware that he told me that, that is when they permitted me to have my surgery.”

Now there were all sorts of alarm bells going off in my head. Marlin Lane had also stated that the physicians at KOC were outstanding and provided great medical care, but that he had to go to them outside of the normal injury protocols with the trainers. Now, we have an eighteen-year-old freshman being told by a KOC physician that the coaching staff was making medical decisions on his behalf although that was illegal. That goes well beyond Jones and his staff micromanaging the program. If not outright abuse, that’s downright negligence.

Butch Jones was trading the health and future prospects of his players for wins on Saturdays in the fall and no one at UT had stepped forward as an advocate for those young men.

Mykelle’s mother put her foot down. Her son’s surgery was scheduled and successful, thanks to the Knoxville Orthopedic Clinic physicians. Three weeks later, Mykelle was back on the practice field, training with the team. Because he wasn’t active on the roster, he was working with the scout team. Six weeks into a fourteen week season, it would have been ridiculous to
burn his redshirt. Clearly, the smart thing to do was to let him sit out the remainder of his redshirt year, and then join the active roster the following season.

On his first day back at practice, Mykelle was wearing a green no-contact jersey that the trainers had told him to wear.

“I was back on the field. I came back. In my mind, I’m one hundred percent. I still have a green jersey on but I’m still working. I’m still practicing on the scout team. I walk onto the practice field and I’m like, ‘How you doing, Coach?’

“And Coach Jones says, ‘I’m doing good but I’d be better if you wasn’t in that green jersey.’

“I said, ‘It’s not me, it’s the trainers that got me in it.’

“And he said, ‘Yeah, you being a little bitch.’ His exact words.”

I have to admit that at that moment, I kind of lost my temper. What made it tough was that I was on a three-way call with Mykelle and his mother. The last thing I wanted to do was to follow my initial instincts, which would have involved cussing. So I took a moment and then asked, “Okay, so he called you a little bitch because you were wearing the no contact jersey when you first got back out on the field after your surgery, correct?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“So what did you do?”

“I chuckled and said, ‘Yes sir. I hope it gets better.’ and I continued on with my stretches. And he walked past.”

Always just a little embarrassing to realize a teenager is more mature than I am at fifty-two. But that’s the kind of young man Mykelle is. Like his mother, he’s articulate and extremely courteous. In this day and age, it’s positively refreshing to hear an eighteen year-old just being
polite. Those “yes ma’ams” told me more about his character than any amount of background research could have. These were good people, who could never have anticipated what was going to happen next.

“It’s South Carolina week,” Mykelle went on. “The next incident was South Carolina weekend and we come out for practice Monday and I’m pass rushing this particular day, against this person…a new starter on the o-line. He tore his meniscus before I tore mine. He had surgery before me but his body didn’t heal as fast as mine. He took his good time coming back, so he was literally just now coming back off his meniscus injury and they put him in the starting lineup and line us up to go to work. And I’m going against him and he’s shooting his hand…he’s heading for my face mask. He’s shooting his hands and he’s aiming for my throat, slapping me in my face and whatnot. I turn and Butch Jones is literally just standing right there.

“We had officials at every practice and they would throw flags and, you know, break up every fight before they happen. Literally. Every practice there would be twenty officials out every single practice. There’d be twenty officials. And he’s slapping my face mask and he’s doing it for so long and it gets to the point where I turn to Butch Jones and I say, ‘Are you just going to sit there and watch him do this?’

“He doesn’t respond to me, he just head nods. I don’t know what that means but I said, ‘Are you just going to sit here and watch him keep playing me dirty like that?’ He just nods his head. So I go back, and I come off the ball, and at this point, I do a post move. That’s a move that you don’t do at practice. You’re not supposed to do it against a teammate. At that point he grabs me and he throws me on the ground. Once he throws me on the ground, everyone else hops on top of me. I mean the offensive line was on the bench. They wasn’t even in the game or in the play. The line’s just jumping and stomping and beating me and nothing is happening. Officials
just standing there, not running onto the field. Coaches standing there, not doing anything. I was cool with all the running backs, the only people jumping me were the offensive line. Running backs just standing there watching. Wide receivers just standing there watching. Everybody just stood there watching.

“I talked to a couple of people afterwards, one of the running backs that I was cool with, his name was Jeremy Lewis, he tried to hop in, but his coach cussed him out and said, ‘Don’t you hop in. That’s your o-line. You leave them alone.’ I talked to Jauan Jennings. He told me he was running a fly route. He was way down the field, he didn’t even know what happened until he got all the way back. Everyone was asking, ‘Where were you when it happened?’ Everybody had different reasons but they all were saying it was just the offensive line when they did what they did.

“I went back and looked at it. I saw it on camera that same night, you can pull it (practice film) up on camera. I watched the offensive line just run in and jump in, I watched Jauan running the fly route, I watched the coaches just standing there, I watched the coach cuss the running back who tried to hop in to help me, I watched Butch Jones stand there, I watched the officials just stand there. The next day when I go back, everybody is in the locker room looking at it on their iPads. Everyone on the team gets it. Once Coach Jones comes in and sees everyone’s on their iPads in the locker room watching it, they take the film off of the site. They take that play off of the team thing (practice video site), they took that whole play off. It’s no longer there. I don’t know what they did to it but it was no longer there.”

When writers are conducting an interview and things like this come out, it feels almost like a double gut punch. The first response is a human reaction, visceral and raw, to what you’ve just heard. The second is like getting slapped across the face or punched in the jaw with
adrenaline. That feeling is like leveling up right before a boss fight in a video game. You don’t know exactly what’s coming, but you think to yourself that now might be a good time to head to the closest save point. You recognize the feeling that you’re getting close to something really big.

“So how many…when you say jumped, are you saying they physically pummeled you? They hit you?”

“Stomped, punch, beat. I was beat. By the entire offensive line. If you need me to go into names, as far as the offensive line, I could name the entire offensive line on the 2016 player roster.”

“Now were they instructed to do so by the coaching staff?”

“If you ask me? I know nothing as far as they did it. I do not know nothing for a fact. If you ask me, I’m no fool. I’ve seen other fights happen all through the season. I’ve seen other scuffles happen, the referees break it up, I mean within a second, like instantly. The officials are over there and then it’s over with. This particular fight, they all just sat there and watched.”

Mykelle’s mother was still on the line so I asked, “Ms. Simmons? You saw that entire fight on film, right?”

She’d told me that during our conversation earlier.

“Yes. I saw the fight but when I tried to go back the next day after my mom was saying you need to find some way to download it, the next day when I tried to go back it was gone.”

“How long would you estimate that scuffle went on before it ended?”

“I would say about at least ten minutes?”

Although nothing should have shocked me at that point, I found myself gobsmacked yet again. “That long? Ten minutes?”

“Oh yeah.”

Now, I cannot imagine she was running a stopwatch while she’s watching that film of her son being assaulted by a group of football players. I also am aware that during a traumatic situation, witness descriptions are usually inaccurate—over- or underestimated because of the stress those witnesses are coping with. That’s enough to make two minutes feel like five, or five like ten for most people.

Regardless, her testimony makes it clear that the incident went on much longer than an unplanned scuffle between football players in the heat of the moment would have. Keeping in mind that coaches and officials were standing by and watching—allowing—this to happen indicates to me that this assault continued for some minutes before it finally ended, and that is disturbing.

“All right. So what kind of physical shape were you in after that Mykelle?”

“My adrenaline was running so I don’t feel anything at the time. I get up and I grab my helmet. Coach Jones tried to go to the next play and none of the scout team players ran in to replace me. So he’s like, ‘Who’s supposed to be here right now?’ And then I’m putting my helmet back on and running back onto the field, and he grabbed me and was like, ‘No, you go to the sidelines.’ That’s when he started cussing out the scout team players. ‘Why the f*** are are you out of the game? Get out there, you’re not doing nothing, or I’m gonna take your scholarship!’

“So he went out there and that’s when I calmed down and realized that every time I moved my shoulder, my collarbone was popping out. Literally. I showed the doctors, they took me into the training room with the doctor to take a look at it and he said I needed to go to the emergency room immediately. And they put me in an ambulance and I went to the emergency room. He said the way my collarbone was moving, it was too close to my throat. They didn’t want my bone to cut anything, you understand what I’m saying? So, they took me to the emergency room immediately. They took me there, they X-ray’d it, put me inside the CAT scan, they said—they basically came up with the conclusion I got a contusion in my collarbone and they can’t fix it, because if they go in and fix it, nine times out of ten they would do nothing but make it worse. Just gotta pray it falls back into place.”

“Okay, at this point Ms. Simmons, you have documentation from the hospital that he went to. Was that UT medical center or somewhere else?”

“I’m not sure about what hospital it was because they never gave me documentation so everybody was telling me that Butch Jones had it, and I scheduled meetings with him. First of all, he wouldn’t take a phone call with me. I scheduled two meetings with him after that, both of which he cancelled. I was able to… Coach Strip (Steve Stripling) connected me to the doctor, and I don’t remember the doctor’s name. I have emails, I’m gonna go back through my emails and see what I can find.”
“So after that event, and I saw the text message exchange you had with Butch Jones on your Twitter feed. Did you ever discuss the incident more with him?”

Just as a note—that text exchange was just about what you’d expect from an angry eighteen-year old football player who just found out his coach was glad he got injured as the result of a fight. The language was probably cleaner than what I would have used if that had been my son on the field.

But not by much.

“Oh yeah, he called me after that and when he called me his exact words were, ‘I understand you’re frustrated, I understand you’re upset, but there’s a certain way you can’t talk to the University of Tennessee head coach.’”

“Oh wow, that’s just arrogant. My God.”

“Yeah, he said, ‘I apologize for what happened. I didn’t mean for that to happen. You won’t need to focus on getting any revenge from anybody, I’m gonna get the revenge for you. I’m gonna talk to them, I’m gonna get on to their coach. I’m gonna make sure they’re in trouble for this, they will pay for this.'

“So, I got off the phone and thought, ‘I’ll sleep better tonight.’ And nothing happened to the offensive line. Nothing at all. Yeah.”

“Some of my teammates—Taeler Dowdy, and Jauan Jennings, and John Kelly—they told me at the end of practice that Coach told the whole team that he was glad that what happened, happened. You got to understand that at the time, the whole starting defense…I’m the only scout team player on scholarship so everybody who’s on the field knows that I’m honestly there because I want to be on the field with them. So they respect me, I’m chill with them; they understand that’s who I’m with. So the whole defense has no idea that this happened to me so when, Butch Jones said, ‘I’m happy that happened because when we play South Carolina this weekend it’s going to be a street fight and that’s just showed me that y’all are ready for a street fight.’

“That’s why I texted him and I said, ‘Did you say you were happy it happened?’ That’s when the text messages started because right when I found out I texted him and I asked, ‘Did you say you were happy it happened?’

“He was trying to say that I was twisting his words. ‘I was happy that you got out there.’

“I don’t understand how you can even switch that. You were happy that I got out there? Or you happy that it happened? I don’t know how…I don’t really understand what he’s talking about on that.”

“Yeah, that’s not something any normal person would say.”

“Yeah, not at all. So, while I’m in the emergency room—I’m in the hospital when the defense found out. That’s when Derek Barnett, Corey Vereen, Kahlil McKenzie, Jonathon Kongbo—all of them, the whole defensive line—that’s when they went to the offensive line in the locker room and basically there was a fight in the locker room about what happened. A little scuffle, not really a fight because the offensive line wouldn’t fight back. They were like, ‘We don’t wanna fight, we don’t wanna fight, we didn’t mean for it to happen.’”

As soon as I heard that, my mind instantly flashed back to the 2017 season when ShyTuttle had his orbital bone broken and Butch Jones had claimed in a press conference that he’d fallen on a helmet. Obviously, fights on and off the practice field were a pretty standard event though—something these players were accustomed to under this coaching staff. Here again—I’ve been around football for a long time. I know how frequently tempers flare up on the field, both during practice and during games. But something like this?

How often was this type of thing going on? And how out of line was that with other teams?

Preferred walk-on Taeler Dowdy was one of the players that Mykelle had mentioned in regard to the incident. I spoke with him a week later.

“Okay, so you witnessed the fight that ended up breaking Mykelle’s collarbone, right?”

“Yes, I was actually in the locker room with him after it.”

“Okay, why don’t you tell me about what went down as far as you could tell with that whole thing?”

“I won’t say I saw the whole thing but I definitely heard from everybody, because everybody was talking about it. I think it was a play, and it’s funny because the coaches, like, I was a practice player at the time and, Mykelle, he was a scout player too. And they (the coaches) would like for real yell at us if we would beat the first stringers, like if we, I guess, went too hard and we actually beat them they would get mad. And Mykelle, he would just always beat the o-linemen and I guess they just all get mad and they jumped him. When he came into the locker room, it was just him when he came into the locker room, and I had to help him take his shoulder pads off and stuff. And then like five minutes of him being in pain, the trainers finally came. I don’t know, I just felt like they definitely dealt with that wrong. And then after that practice, Coach Jones says, ‘Good job to the offensive linemen for like sticking together and having each other’s backs’ or something.”

“What were other players saying in the locker room about what happened? After it happened?”

“Well, a lot of the defensive players were mad and, I mean, the linemen, them and Mykelle kinda like—they just didn’t like Mykelle because he would do good. He would do good against them at practice so they were gloating about that. I don’t feel like they felt bad that they did what they did.”

“Did anybody on the coaching staff, strength coach, GAs, other players, did anybody step forward and say what they did was wrong?”

“Not that I heard of honestly because that wasn’t the only fight. I mean, there were fights after that and I believe that because of that situation went so wrong there was more after that…because of that. There wasn’t a punishment for that or something.”

So, let’s take a minute to assimilate what’s been said. Another player has just corroborated Mykelle’s story. Keep in mind, too, that Mykelle’s account dovetails with what Marlin Lane had said earlier—not only about injuries and how the coaches demanded their players continue to play, but also about how Butch Jones used players against their teammates, setting some guys up as almost a gang in order to enforce his rules and expectations upon the others.

“While you’re playing, if you don’t perform to the way he wants you to perform, or basically carry a jug of water or do this and do all that, he was basically saying, ‘You’re not performing up to your abilities so I’m going to give you a year probation on your scholarship. If you don’t perform or do what you came here to do that’s…you’re done.’” Marlin (Lane)had said two weeks earlier. “And what kind of had me up in the air with the last interview I did, which I did not with you guys, but with some… I can’t even remember, who… I think it was SB Nation, I’m not sure but they quoted something that I said in the wrong—”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“It almost kind of messed my career up with jobs or…and everything else. But by me, you know, just knowing certain people that they gave me a chance at my job now. By them ( SB Nation article) saying he had me threaten kids’ lives, which I never did. I never said that. What I said was he would use me, because of my background, where I come from, my environment. On player staff meeting one day which is—we sit at a table like this of probably fourteen players that pretty much can have a voice to other players—and we were sitting in his office conference room and he literally told me, ‘I’m going to tell you why I got you on player staff because you got street in you and so you could go up to certain players and say this to certain players and they won’t react to you because of...’

Basically he was saying where I was from, you know, and I kinda laughed it off but at the same time I’m like…where is that going? Even Justin Worley, like they all... ‘Why would he say that?’”

“When I hear you talk or watch the way you are, I don’t instantly think street, am I wrong here? I mean you’re a very well-spoken young man, how could anybody get street off that?” I said.

“That’s what…‘The reason why I’m in here is because you want me to go to certain players and tell them that if they don’t act right, you’re gonna kick them off the team.’”

So now, all the pieces are starting to fall together. I’m getting a clear picture of what had happened to those earlier teams, those earlier players. I understand better what the environment must been like, and why those squads that looked so good on paper didn’t live up to their potential. I can see why so many injuries decimated the Volunteers, and why so many players transferred. I have three players on the record now: Marlin Lane, who was gone before Mykelle McDaniel and Taeler Dowdy arrived. I have a parent on the record.

As I write this now, I have a strong hunch that these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Too many other players have been named by these three. And I know that for me, this story is just beginning. There are months of research ahead of me as I track down other players, staff members and former coaches, trainers and physicians and university officials.

And obviously, the person I want to talk to the most is Butch Jones. I would be shocked if he wasn’t restricted by a tight non-disclosure agreement after his termination from the University of Tennessee. I’d assume almost every high-profile coach in the country is. That being said, he should be given the opportunity to discuss these claims on the record and I’d be more than happy to provide him that platform.

But I think it’s essential to understand the following as the foundation of what we’ve been discussing: a football coach is in a position of near-absolute authority over the players on his team. A coach must administer that authority in such a way as to not needlessly endanger a player’s safety, or to negatively impact their prospects. Jones was responsible for his players’ welfare on multiple levels, whether they were superstars or on the scout team. Regardless of how you look at these stories—and this is just a fraction of what I was told by these interview subjects—at the end of the day, any coach that jeopardizes the players on his team must be held accountable for his actions.

That’s why the Maryland decision to retain head coach DJ Durkin after the investigation into the death of player Jordan McNair due to heat stroke caused such a backlash among students, media, and fans. The investigators had censured the coaching practices that led to these same kinds of repercussions on the Maryland football team, citing a culture where players were afraid to speak out, a athletic department that was deeply dysfunctional, a strength and conditioning program the university failed to supervise, and an overall lack of oversight warding the players’ health, safety, and well-being.

Being suspended for a few games isn’t true accountability. That’s a slap on the wrist. The University of Maryland had no option but to terminate Durkin the day after they had reinstated him as head football coach.

And let’s be honest—the similarities between Maryland under Durkin and Tennessee under Jones are striking. Considering the type of injury Mykelle McDaniel received, the two programs were closer than anyone, including me, would ever have guessed.

After I wrote this chapter, I sat back and thought for a few minutes about what I’d learned. When I first heard Marlin and Mykelle and Taeler tell their stories, I was kicking myself for not knowing what was happening to them even though I live hundreds of miles away. Like I should have possessed some sort of insight superpower. Then, I felt disturbed that Vol Nation revolted against UT because we were mad that the university was ignoring what we, the fans, demanded and expected from them when it came to hiring a football coach.

Coaches. The highest-paid, most-visible state employees with their multi-million dollar contracts subsidized by taxpayer dollars. And as I thought the above sentence, something clicked in my head.
The fan ReVOLution wasn’t just about winning football games after all. Without the uprising, none of these stories—or the ones we’ll pursue after this book is finished—might ever have come to light.
That’s how important it is for fans to hold their universities accountable for their decisions. Not just to win games, although that’s a big part of it. We must require them to discharge their responsibilities toward all students. If colleges don’t adequately safeguard their students, then it’s everyone’s absolute duty to hold them accountable for it, whether in Baltimore or Waco, East Lansing or Knoxville.

We really are the caretakers now.

Sorry, Football Scoop and Scott Roussel, But Butch Jones Should Never Coach Again

You know, I've enjoyed a Butch Jones-free life. It's been pleasant. No stupid gimmicks. No lies. No BS. But now that we're looking at the meat of the football season and the football coaching carousel is about to start up again, some benighted folks--and journalists--are going to do exactly what Scott Roussel did in his column today for FootballScoop.com. They're going to look at Butch Jones as a viable option for a major football program, especially now that Nick Saban has applied a bit of shinola to disguise the you-know-what that's currently "interning" at Alabama so he can milk every drop of cash out of the University of Tennessee.

And Scott Roussel, the president and owner of FootballScoop.com, thinks that Butch Jones should be a head coach again.

For someone who states emphatically "Butch Jones will be a head football coach again", I have a lot of questions. First off, has no one at FootballScoop been paying attention the past few years? Did you just miss everything that happened since 2015? Since that seems to be the case here, let me help you guys understand why Rousel's column was so ill-advised. Let's take a look at why the last man in America who should be permitted to be the head coach of any football program is Butch Jones. 

But first off...

You know, Scott...Butch doesn't seem to be all that impatient to get back into coaching. He's content with bringing Saban his coffee and polishing Bama helmets for $35k a year...and so would I be if I had a $6.82 million dollar buyout. 

Stop and think for a moment. Does it seem like he's chomping at the bit to get back on the field? 

No, and there's a reason for that. 

In order to start the new con game, you have to make sure the previous one is forgotten. You know, the one where every year of Jones's tenure at UT there were 25-35 players on the injury list by mid-October, leading directly to those end of season collapses of extremely talented teams. 

Many of those most promising players, the 4- and 5-star recruits Scott was drooling over now no longer play football at all. On any level. Why? Because the Volunteers football program was abusive under Butch Jones. He overruled team physicians and forced injured players to go ahead and play anyway. One of the best examples of this occurred during the 2016 Tennessee-Texas A&M game. Eight players went down in the game. 

Some never came back. Many of those departed players cited the verbal, mental, emotional, and physical abuse they endured under Butch Jones as the reason for their departure.

You think parents want to entrust their 5-star players to a coach whose primary concern isn't their son's health and safety? It doesn't matter if the recruiting classes were great if those players leave mid-career and go somewhere else. 

Or lose their future in football entirely.

Players have reported that they were used like gang members to keep other players in line. Some players who demonstrated too independent a thought process when it came to the health and safety of their own bodies were jumped on the practice field by his teammates while the head coach stood there and watched it happen. In fact, the head coach had ordered it to happen, like a Code Red from the play/movie A Few Good Men. 

Think that's a great look for your program?

Think...really think about that 2016 season, when Tennessee started off ranked in the top five in the preseason. Over the span of thirteen months--from the kickoff of 2016 to Butch Jones's firing in October, 2017--the Vols went from top-five, to a 9-4 season record, and then, incredibly, to the basement of everything with a 4-8 record in 2017. The first time in UT's history that the school was winless in the SEC, and a full one-third of the team had either left the program or were out with injury by mid-season for the third season in a row.

As for never losing to a bowl-eligible team, what a crock! Tennessee lost to bowl-eligible teams every single season under Butch Jones. Alabama. Florida, Georgia. South Carolina. Oklahoma. West Virginia. Did you miss those 4-7 losses UT racked up every year under Butch Jones?

Not a great job of research there, buddy.

Why is it that the University of Tennessee led the nation in transfer requests for several years? Think that speaks highly of Butch Jones's treatment of players? 

Think it speaks highly of his active obstruction in those requests, costing players not only time on the gridiron but time getting their educations? Many former players reported having their transcripts blocked and their eligibility as well for several years after leaving UT.

What good were all those top ten recruiting classes then? Matriculation doesn't result in a collapse like that. A coach's primary job is to make certain that the team has the right elements in place so the turnover between upperclassmen to underclassmen is seamless. But that didn't happen at UT. 

Why is that? It doesn't matter how great a Vols recruiting class is if the majority don't play for the entirety of their collegiate career at UT. Florida had a top ten recruiting class this year and lost many of those players before the season started. Did FootballScoop cover that? 

Everyone else did, and seemed to agree there was something wrong with the program in order for that to happen. Why wasn't the exodus of players from UT  given the same scrutiny? Did you cover that? 

Did you even know?

Why is it that through Butch Jones' five-year tenure at UT, the Vols consistently collapsed after three quarters only to lose the game in the final minutes? Abysmal coaching decisions. 

Why is it that the most loyal, steadfast fan base in America rose up in rebellion against their own school, forcing the firing of Butch Jones and a few weeks later that of then-athletic director John Currie? Does anyone with a functioning brain really think that was just an uneducated mob of fans raising hell for the fun of it? 

I hope not. It's never a good thing to insult your target market. Just saying. The uprising was spontaneous but it was also focused and well-directed, resulting in an event unprecedented in college athletics. That entire fiasco in the fall of 2017 originated with Butch Jones.

So answer me honestly: why is it that anyone, athletic director, fan, or sports journalist, would want to bring such a toxic element into their own football program? Oh and by the way, we're not just talking about Tennessee here. Maybe you should dig into what happened at the University of Cincinnati during Butch Jones's time there while you're at it, Scott.

Butch Jones left the University of Tennessee an absolute disaster between craptastic athletic training, the abuse and torment of his players, the exodus of talent from Rocky Top, and ruining the lives and futures of multiple great players. and one of the most humiliating episodes in sports history If Butch Jones legitimately had something to offer another program, he'd already be riding the coaching carousel (like Urban Meyer already is) and selling himself (again) as the once and future king of great football. 

But he's not. He's grinning like an idiot down in Tuscaloosa, acquiring that Alabama mystique while he milks the university whose football program he ruined of half a million dollars a month. He's not pimping himself because he intends to get every penny of that $6.82 million dollar buyout, thumbing his nose like a child from his bolt hole in Tuscaloosa. 

Nick Saban's Head Coach Rehabilitation program's court jester, who gives zero damns about coaching again until his internship and his buyout end.

After what Butch Jones did to the University of Tennessee, its fan base, and its athletes (which is the most important of the three) he should never be allowed to set foot on any football field in a position of authority ever again. If some poor wretched school does bring Butch Jones in to "turn around" their program, they are placing the eighty-five young men on their roster in the path of physical, educational, and financial ruin. Period. 

And those are the facts. 

I'd recommend you read two books that detail what was happening at the University of Tennessee football program, Scott. Maybe pass it along to your colleagues there at Football Scoop too. Pick up Mark Nagi's Decade of Dysfunction, and you'll get the background of the last ten years of horror on Rocky Top.  Then grab a copy (I'd be glad to send you one) of Empowered: The Fan ReVOLution That Changed College Football by UT Vol historian Tom Mattingly and Celina Summers. 

Read the interviews with players, alumni, boosters, UT officials, and fans. Actually learn what happened under Butch Jones before you start lauding him as a potential head football coach at some other school. 

Suggesting Butch Jones be hired to coach any level of football is the equivalent of handing a suicidal person a loaded gun and dropping them off somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A responsible person would never consider doing such a thing. 

Be responsible, and learn exactly what you're suggesting before you put it in print. At the end of the day, you're recommending that some other school lose its legacy and self-respect. But you're also recommending that a serial abuser be given exclusive access to the lives and futures of more young football players. 

Is that really what you want to be known for? Are you sure? Because if he is hired somewhere and more of the same happens, you'll bear a measure of responsibility for it. You may be one of those journalists who sat on his self-proclaimed throne when UT fans revolted and condemned us as ignorant, uneducated, ill-informed and so forth. I don't really know; I don't really care. But what I do know as a long-time writer, editor, and publisher is that you need to know what you're talking about before you put it down in print. And in this case, you patently had no clue what the reality Butch Jones created really was.

You should have known better than to be this irresponsible. You should have known to check out the facts. After all, you own FootballScoop, right? And you were a VP at the Shaw Group, a Fortune 500 company dealing with road construction, for eight years, right? You understand at least the concept of journalistic and corporate responsibility. Or, at least, you should.

But you didn't. That's the real football scoop here. Just...think about it. 

Rocky Top ReVOLution Excerpt #1

Author's note: I'm doing something really different with this book. Obviously, there will be a lot of books released in the coming years by sports media guys who'll do an outstanding job of breaking down the sequence of events that resulted in the Rocky Top ReVOLution from a journalist's point of view. But to me, the big names of decision-makers or influencers aren't the real story embedded within the six day revolt that saw the UT fanbase came together with loal media, former players, alumni, boosters, students, and state officials to stop the hire of Greg Schiano as the new head football coach and the day that Coach Phillip Fulmer was hired as the athletic director. The real story is the fans' story, and that's what this book is about. So have a look at the foreword and the first chapter. Drop me a comment either here or on social media and let me know what you think. I'll be announcing the release date next week.Big shout out to Spencer Barnett for the cover design!  

Rocky Top Revolution

Foreword

Where were you on November 26, 2017?

That’s a question people who love the University of Tennessee will probably be able to answer for the rest of their lives. Not because they were all in the same place physically, but because they were all in the same place mentally and emotionally.

November 26, 2017 was the day a fan base revolted against the hiring of a football coach. Six days later, the athletic director who’d tried to sneak that hire past everyone—fans, boosters, players, and alumni alike—was fired and left UT in an absolute shambles after the worst-conducted head football coach hiring search in the history of the NCAA.

On the same day, former Tennessee head football coach Phillip Fulmer was named as the athletic director for the foreseeable future. Six days later, he hired Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, one of the top assistants in the country, to the head coach position after a calm, methodical, and thorough evaluation process.

On the face of it, this is exactly what happened. The Cliff notes version.

But there’s so much more to the story than that.

The events of that day were\unprecedented in the world of big-name universities and big-money athletics. The people who loved Tennessee united in a remarkably short time—students, alumni, former players, local media, boosters, and just regular fans—and with their unity forced the university to change the ways decisions were made and influenced in the athletic department. The astonishing uproar, the Rocky Top ReVOLution, was thoroughly lambasted by national sports media. The protesters were called “trailer park Bubbas from Pidgeon (sp) Forge”, a “lynch mob” that was “completely ignorant” of what football was all about. That media narrative portrayed UT fans as ignorant, uneducated, and stupid as those famous sports personalities tried to force Ohio State Defensive Coordinator and former head coach of Rutgers University and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Greg Schiano down their throats as a great hire for UT.

But these events weren’t about a coaching hire. Not really. Hidden behind the rhetoric was a slew of sobering facts. A football coach whose association with a national scandal had painted him, fairly or unfairly, with the same brush. An athletic director, who was telling boosters one thing while working to bring Schiano through the back door. A mega booster, who was controlling the whole show and determined to foist Schiano upon Tennessee regardless of what anyone thought. A civil war was instigated among the top tier of millionaire donors to a university whose prestige in college football had declined since the glory days just two decades ago when Tennessee won the first BCS National Championship game.

The characters on the main stage are fascinating. A desperate athletic director who went AWOL in an attempt to save his job. A former Tennessee head coach, ousted unfairly and in humiliating fashion nine years before, returning to right the Volunteer ship. A vampire in the shadows, determined to suck more power over the university and their hiring practices in the athletic department. A suddenly vivid and blatant divide within the sports media, which demonstrated which journalist’s foot was in which camp.

And out front, vocal and angry and exasperated, were tens of thousands of UT fans who exploded in a spontaneous protest that shocked the sports world…and against the odds, won.

That’s where the real story is. The ones who were the real impetus behind an incredibly visible and public drive to take control away from the power brokers in the shadows and give it to the countless people who are the backbone of UT athletics aren’t mega boosters. They don’t have buildings named after them on campus, or spend tens of thousands of dollars annually for sky boxes in Neyland Stadium. Some are season ticket holders, some only get to a few games a year. Some don’t get to any. Few are wealthy, but they’re all rich with a shared passion for the University of Tennessee.

The fans.

I was part of that protest. This is the only place for an “I” in this story, which is so patently about so many different people. I was at home on that Sunday morning when everyone got blindsided by the news that Greg Schiano had been offered and accepted the Tennessee head football job. I bore witness to the exponential swelling of that “lynch  mob”. As a sports op ed contributor to the Orange and White Report, which covers UT athletics, I joined in the local media’s drive to get news of the protested hiring out. I was part of the “deplorable” social media mob that refused to accept the hire. I listened to live streams of local radio and TV broadcasts as people showed up on campus and gathered in front of the athletic department, chanting “Hell no Schiano!” with signs and bullhorns.

So I am a part of this story. A very small part that had to get a new phone the following week since I'd texted and retweeted the poor thing to death. 

But then, all Tennessee fans are a part of this story. Anyone who knows every word to Rocky Top can pick up this book, read the story, and immediately recognize the fact that it’s basically part of their biography. Their memoirs. Because every Tennessee fan knows that they, too, were part of the Rocky Top ReVOLution and so they, too, share in the victory.

Don’t let anyone fool you. There was no one person who began this protest, no shock jock leading the charge for truth and justice on a white horse. No one was more important than anyone else. What’s remarkable about the Rocky Top ReVOLution is that everyone was instantly unified, to the point where Tennessee government officials joined the “uneducated idiots” on Twitter to voice their displeasure with the Schiano hire. Even White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke out against the hire.

So the media narrative that the folks from the trailer park were mad because Schiano wasn’t a good football coach isn’t even remotely accurate. Those claims were part of an agenda that national sports media has maintained regarding the University of Tennessee and its fans for years. But what also happened as a result of that day was that people started to come to me with their stories of what was happening behind the scenes. As a result, I began to piece together a tale that didn’t match up at all with what the major sports networks and websites were saying.

I promised at the end of that tumultuous week that I would write the real story of what happened around the University of Tennessee. You may think this is a story about ten days, but it’s not.

This is the story of two decades in Knoxville, and the people who remained loyal to the Tennessee Volunteers no matter what was going on.

This is the story of an unprecedented event in sports, where the fans took back their program from the fat cats who were systemically destroying it from within.

This is the story of the Rocky Top ReVOLution and the people who made it happen…a blueprint for fan bases everywhere that face similar problems with their beloved school. A blueprint that every major university’s athletic department now dreads and fears because none of them want to see a fan movement take over their campus, their public relations, and their until-now unaffected hiring processes where the opinions of the little people hold no sway.

This is a story of humiliation and revenge, exile and vindication, fury and triumph. But ultimately, it is a story of the passion people have for the University of Tennessee.

This is the story of Volunteer Nation, and the way they put an end to the most tumultuous and humiliating era in the University of Tennessee's proud history, and no matter what anyone else may tell you this is the real story. This story shouldn't be told in just one voice, but in the voices of the real heroes of this modern-day revolution.

This is the story of the fans and their shared passion for the University of Tennessee.

Chapter One--Vol Nation

Being a Tennessee fan has never been easy. 

For the fans who grew up, like I did, learning about college football when Johnny Majors or Phillip Fulmer was the head coach, the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s were a constant roller coaster ride. Although UT was growing into a powerhouse program, the fan base was isolated...condescended to by the national sports media and all those people who knew everything about the game. 

Let's be honest: the national media never had much respect for the Vols. Only the Lady Vols under beloved and iconic basketball coach Pat Summitt was acknowledged by the media as a powerhouse team. What they failed to realize was that over in the football section on Rocky Top, things were starting to change. 

But for the fans? Not so much. 

Back in the days before social media, the fans' opinions didn't matter. There wasn't an avenue that a sprawling group of people could utilize to make those opinions known aside from talk radio on the local level. ESPN was a growing monster, and UT fans quickly learned to tune them out. 

Make no mistake: ESPN has never liked the University of Tennessee.

That all changed drastically when personal computers created a platform everyone could use. Suddenly, fans from all over the world and all walks of life could take about what they loved online. They could respond instantly to games...or the latest snide remark from some sports analyst who thought it was funny to broadcast the generalization of UT fans as uneducated, stupid, and incapable of understanding big money sports.During the last four or five years, the UT fan base has taken over social media, and hundreds of thousands of people came together under on unifying brand. When Lyle "Butch" Jones was hired to replace the woeful Derek Dooley as the head football coach, the Vol Nation platform was firmly entrenched in Tennessee culture. Jones had to learn to deal with this new aspect of his job and how best to utilize the immediacy of online interaction with the fans.

But coinciding with the beginning of the Butch Jones era as head coach for the football program at UT, a major power player arrived on the field.

Vol Twitter--Still Undefeated

Anyone who’s waded into the shark pool known as Vol Twitter quickly learns the value of social media in today’s society.

Social media is a dog eat dog world anyway, but when you add in the volatile emotions of college sports it can get downright scary. Vol Twitter is the most outrageous, aggressive, keen-edged fan base on social media. 

Period.

Vol Twitter quickly became very powerful. It drove public opinion about everything UT. Watching a game while on Vol Twitter was almost ridiculous because they miss nothing.

Nothing.

Every call is analyzed and argued. Every misstep is under the immediate glare of the fan base’s spotlight. Every snafu is dissected. Vol Twitter is so practiced at breaking down game film that some members can do it in real time. They immediately interact with local media, and the younger journalists who cover the UT beat became expert at working with and within Vol Twitter. This extraordinary relationship changed the way that Tennessee sports were reported, and turned journalists into friends. Or enemies, depending on the journalist. 

Vol Twitter was also very in tune with what’s going on with every sport on Rocky Top. And while UT fans congregated on other mediums, like Facebook, Vol Twitter became the online face of the fan base. Vol Twitter and Vol Facebook groups, like the immense Vol For Life group, also exemplified a major divide within Tennessee fans. The Facebook-connected fans were more forgiving of Jones's missteps initially; Vol Twitter, on the other hand, savaged the coach for them. 

As with any large group of people, there were spats and cliques within Vol Twitter that made for some very interesting off-season nights. But since the beginning of the 2016-2017 football season, Vol Twitter was fairly united on one thing they thoroughly disliked about Tennessee football.

Butch Jones

Before the 2017-18 football season, there was a strong sense that it was the last gasp chance for head football coach Butch Jones. In 2016, Tennessee fans had watched in horror as the most talented team to run through the T in twenty years had crashed and burned. Instead of the college football playoffs or a major bowl game, the Volunteers had gone 9-4 and subsequently played Nebraska in the Music City Bowl on December 30 while much of its roster watched from the sidelines or from home. For the second season in a row, a baffling rash of injuries had deep-sixed the season with more than twenty-five players out of commission by the end of October.

Now the Vols were facing a new football season, and the matriculation of talent had created a great deal of uncertainty about what the season ahead had in store. The Vols were picked to finish third in the East division at SEC Media Days, with most prognosticators predicting a seven or eight win season as the pinnacle of what UT could hope to accomplish.

The 2017-18 season was the fifth year of the Butch Jones era. Every player on the roster was one he’d recruited and coached exclusively while at UT. And while everyone was aware this was a rebuilding year, the success of the team would decide once and for all if Jones really was the coach Vols fans had been waiting for.

Butch Jones needed a legendary season.

He got one.

The first eight-loss season in school history, leaving Ohio State University as the only D1 program never to lose eight games in the same year. The first winless season in SEC play, going 0-8 with humiliating losses to Missouri, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Florida along the way. A 41-0 pounding by Georgia, the worst loss in Neyland Stadium history.

No doubt about it. The season was legendary, but for all the wrong reasons. 

After that embarrassing Georgia loss on September 30, everyone knew that Jones would be gone. I, for one, expected him to be fired almost immediately. After all, Athletic Director John Currie obviously didn’t have a problem with firing coaches mid-season, considering that he was implicated up to his eyebrows in orchestrating the Fulmer dismissal nine years earlier. But what emerged from the UT athletic department was…nothing. 

For a month and a half, through a woeful October and half of a disastrous November, John Currie took no action, made no comment, and didn't seem to care that the Tennessee football program, the pride of the university for decades, was being utterly destroyed. For a month and a half, Currie smirked his way through a Volunteer nightmare, while Vol Nation boiled online, local sports media crucified Currie and UT for its inaction, and the rest of the college sports world turned UT into a laughing stock. 

Not until November 16, when Missouri massacred a woefully undermanned UT roster—with only fifty-five players available…a loss of thirty players from the team—50-17 while dropping 659 yards of total offense on the Vols, did John Currie finally take the step everyone knew was coming. During that month and a half of inaction, the Vol Twitter beast was seething, fans were blacking out their avatars--which made their timelines look like targets at a shooting range. And at last, frustration and rage brought all the scattered elements of the Tennessee fan base together. The groups on Twitter and Facebook, the people who called in to local and national radio shows, the local media, the alumni and students, and the former players were all in agreement that the status quo of Tennessee athletics was no longer acceptable.

And while all these elements were stewing together, a recipe for a fiasco was created. At the end of the day, the debacle of a John Currie-run coaching hire was inevitable. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell that concoction wouldn’t boil over.

The Rocky Top ReVOLution had begun. 

Time To Talk A Little Volunteer Magic

Anyone who's followed my blog for the past few years is very much aware that I am a passionate college football fan. One of those annoying ones who will watch any game, any time during the season and will re-watch particular favorites on the DVR the other nine months of the year. And anyone who knows me on any level is very well aware that my LOVE is reserved for only one team and that's the Tennessee Volunteers. I come by it naturally--Tennessee born and bred with practically every member of my family sporting orange and white. And when I was a wild child, doing theater up and down the eastern seaboard, I perfected my love of the Vols through two things--understanding the game of football in a way few women back then did, and bartending at a sports bar in Florida, where for one week every fall I was the most unpopular girl with the busiest bar in the Florida Keys. 

No matter how long I tended bar or where, I have never worn any colors but my own school's.Every bar owner who interviewed me for a job, I told two things. First, I will double your Saturday day shift business from August to April. (Like college hoops too--who doesn't?) And second, I will never wear any gear other than Volunteers gear. The last bar owner was skeptical, seeing as Ohio State is only a few minutes away. But after the first two weeks of football season, he bought in--just like all the others did.

Unfortunately, being a Vols fan hasn't been easy, especially over the last decade. After a series of epic and abysmal hiring decisions by the University of Tennessee AD, the Vols' two biggest rivalries have unprecedented losing streaks. We've lost nine in a row to Alabama, and eleven in a row to the Florida Gators. Not because those teams are always so vastly superior, in my opinion, but because of the miasma of depression and failure that seeped like Legionnaire's disease into the sanctum sanctorum known as Neyland Stadium. 

But suddenly things are different up on the Hill.

Any real football fan who isn't blinded by mindless team bias knows that Butch Jones has been building a monster on Rocky Top. And while some Vols fans and the sports media were hyping Tennessee last summer, I went on record with Ryan McGee at ESPN during a substitute gig hosting Paul Finebaum`that I thought the Vols would go 9-4, but a couple of lucky breaks could take them to 11-2.

Sometimes it sucks to be right.

But I also told Ryan that THIS year would be the Volunteers' coming out party. And man--it sure is starting to look that way. Seventeen starters return from a team that last year was too inexperienced to make certain those couple of balls bounced their way. That includes probably the strongest overall backfield in the SEC, a veteran defensive unit that's chomping at the bit under new Defensive Coordinator Bob Shoop, and the top special teams unit in the country in 2015. The schedule is favorable with both Florida and Alabama coming to Neyland, a major out of conference matchup with Virginia Tech slated for the 'neutral site' of Bristol Motor Speedway, just up the road from Knoxville. and the SEC East currently in coaching flux.

In the words of Rod Gilmore as Evan Berry sliced up Northwestern with a 100-yard interception return for a touchdown with 8 seconds to go in the Outback Bowl a few months ago: "2016 is going to be a good one for the Vols if it keeps rolling like this!"



Why thank you--yes it is rolling...rolling...rolling, and I don't mean the Tide.

I have a lot of friends. Many--okay, most--of them are football freaks like me. The cornerstone of our friendship is based on and around football. But there's a catch. While we all love our respective teams, we try to keep the fangurl blindness out of it. Do we backslid into 'my team is better than yours'? Of course we do. But we don't lose our minds over a little 'Alabama sucks' or "Vols choke again'. We can discuss each other's teams and players knowledgably and without prejudice. And I gotta tell you something--

The rest of the SEC is starting to take notice.

Don't believe me? If you've never met LSU Dad, you should. His videos are both insightful and hilarious. And this is what HE thinks:

Sports media makes fun of Butch Jones and his cliches, and I have to admit--I got a little tired of "brick by brick" and "analytics" and some of his other favorite sayings too. But it's funny--this year, Butch Jones doesn't seem to be as hung up on those cliches. It's like he used them to mask what was really going on behind the scenes, and now he knows that...well...he doesn't have to. Because he can't. Offseason moves so far have been huge. Keeping Alvin Kamara, Cam Sutton, and my hometown, same high school (Northeast Eagles in Clarksville!) favorite Jalen Maybin-Reeves was a HUGE win for UT--bigger than signing some of the new recruits, frankly. Hiring Bob Shoop was another massive power play.

But here's why things are different on the Hill.

Today is UT's graduation. We are literally sixteen weeks away from opening kickoff. Sixteen weeks and seven hours from now, the college football season will begin. I've been a Vols fan for longer than I will admit--birth, most likely--and I have to tell you: it's been painful to root for UT the past ten years or so. Literally PAINFUL. Even the past couple of years, when our way-too-young team started to close in on the season, the doubts would begin--not only for the fans, but the players. And why not? Eleven losses in a row to Florida. Nine losses in a row to Alabama. These teams are arguably our biggest rivals. And as those circled dates drew closer on the calendar every year, the same feeling began to churn in all our guts.

Dread.

But not this year.

This year, when Florida players started mouthing off--looking at you Jalen Tabor--no one was scared. No one was angry. Everyone was like--knock yourself out, pal. Jalen Hurd, our running back, summed it up best.

6'0. 190. Just talkin' for attention. Not going to end well buddy. 

Considering that he's a 6'4", 240 lb running back who delivers hits like this--

--perhaps Jalen Tabor should reconsider poking the beast with a pointy stick. Especially when that beast has fifty pounds on you and runs 19.1 MPH on an elevated treadmill and 23.1 mph on a flat one. I'm no physicist, but I'd be willing to bet that the Jalen vs Jalen collision will favor the big guy in smokey grays. 

Yes, I said smokey grays--and probably a Checker Neyland triumph as well. 

Senior captain Jalen Reeves-Maybin (again--MY hometown and high school)in his response to the Tabor brou-ha-ha displayed something else I really like. 

Reeves-Maybin said he prefers to let his play do the talking.“We’re not gonna feed into that,” Kamara said. “We’re not too thirsty for attention.”
“Just play the game,” Reeves-Maybin said. “Play the game. Let it speak (for itself). You don’t see great players out there saying stuff like that. Just play.”

As for Alabama, my friends who root for the Tide are a little uneasy about the Third Saturday in October--which this year actually IS on the Third Saturday in October. October 15th, in fact--the day before my milestone *mumblemumble* birthday. A group of Finebaum callers are renting a cabin in the Smokies for that weekend and all going to the game. I'm looking forward to meeting them in person as they've all become such dear friends of mine. And nothing would be a better birthday present than driving back to Gatlinburg in a car with five Alabama fans who just watched the Tide get beat in Neyland Stadium.

I'd be able to cross one thing off my bucket list. Happy birthday to me.

The great thing about college football is that you never know what's going to happen. Regardless, though, I'm starting to see a quiet confidence creeping up Rocky Top. Silly fans--the kind who always think their team is going to go undefeated--don't count. But the knowledgeable fans, the sports media, the coaching staff, and the players--they do. While the returning veterans, the favorable schedule, and the feeling that everything is in place cannot be discounted, the main difference I see between the Vols of 2016 and the Vols of the past decade is in the mindset.of the players. Not just the seniors, but the new guys as well. Ever hear of Jonathon Kongbo? 

You will. 

 Is Tennessee's struggle back to the top of the heap over at last? I don't know. Maybe. Sure is starting to feel like it. The important differential is, I think, that the players don't believe UT is back. They KNOW Tennessee is back. The traditions are back. The power is back. The joy is back. The confidence is back. And it's infectious.

I'm not going to predict a record for the season, or wins over the Vols' biggest rivals. I'm not going to predict All-Americans or Heismans or playoff spots. After all, we are talking about the SEC--anything can happen. But it's foolish for anyone to deny after watching the progress UT has made over the past three years that Butch Jones wasn't kidding when he said he was rebuilding the whole program. The Vols just posted their highest collective GPA in the history of the program. Players are matriculating. And some of our guys, like Josh Dobbs, find ways to make a difference in both small ways and big. All of these things are WINS. The Vols are just better all-around, both on the field and off. They're committed to their path--and that kind of commitment doesn't just show up one day out of the blue. Commitment comes with confidence.

Confidence leads to wins. And if the Vols are winning in the classroom, winning on graduation day, winning in the realm of life, then they have learned how to win on the field as well.

It's good to see Rocky Top with its swag back.

So I'm planning to go to several games--the Battle of Bristol, the Florida game (where I fully expect to see smoky grays and Neyland checkered), and Alabama. Planning to drop off some orange roses on the General's grave, and tailgate with all the Volunteers I know and love online. Probably will bring some gator fritters in September and wear my gator boots. In October I'll dig out 'the' sweatshirt--the one I've only worn to the Third Saturday in October games I've attended since I bought the shirt in 1999--'the' sweatshirt is undefeated in three games in Knoxville and two in Tuscaloosa. I may chuck a couple of things at Lane Kiffin if I get close enough. And I'll be certain to be there with signs that will show up on TV if either Gameday or SEC Nation does their pre-game show at Neyland on those days. But for now, Team 120 has inspired me to deliver a line I haven't delivered since Phillip Fulmer was the coach.

See you in Atlanta..And if UT quarterback and senior captain Josh Dobbs is right, see you in Tampa too.

Because THEY believe, they've made a believer out of me.