Randy Smith
Oh ye of little faith...remember, we never held any aspirations of Tennessee's football team playing for the SEC East Title. At best, we were hoping for a 7-5 season and a trip to a bowl game; any bowl game. And even though the Vols are 3-5 on the year overall, they are now headed down the stretch of the 2014 college football season. After facing three top ten ranked teams in their last four games, U.T. will end the season facing four unranked teams; two on the road and two at home.
Tennessee faces South Carolina this weekend in Columbia, before returning home to host Missouri and Kentucky before closing out the season at Vanderbilt.
If the Volunteers win 'em all, they indeed finish 7-5 and will be bowl bound. If they win three of the four, they are still bowl bound at 6-6. If they split, or worse, they are at home for the holidays for a fourth straight season.
A frustrated Tennessee fan base has been buzzing since that 34-20 loss to Alabama last weekend, They are excited about the play of sophomore quarterback Josh Dobbs, who rallied the Vols from a 27-0 deficit in the second quarter, to a 34-20 final. ('Bama won the first half 27-10, while the Vols won the second half 10-7.) That same fan base is also asking the questions,"Where has Dobbs been all year?" "Why didn't Coach Butch Jones play him before now?" or "Why burn his redshirt to simply mop up in the Alabama game?"
The answers to these questions are really known by Coach Jones and Coach Jones alone. I firmly believe however, that Coach Jones and his staff fully planned to redshirt Dobbs and give him three full seasons of eligibility beginning with the 2015 season. A more serious than we first thought shoulder injury to senior starter Justin Worley forced Jones and his coaches to make an adjustment in their plans. Now that Dobbs' redshirt is off the table, the Vol coaching staff now needs to play him as much as possible.
Remember 20 years ago in 1994...Tennessee Head Coach Phillip Fulmer was faced with a similar problem. He had a senior quarterback in Jerry Colquitt and a talented junior back-up in Todd Helton. Fulmer also had a super talented true freshman in Peyton Manning, whom Fulmer wanted to redshirt. Within the first two games of the season, both Colquitt and Helton suffered serious injuries and that forced Fulmer to burn Manning's redshirt. When Peyton Manning entered the Vols' lineup for the first time, he never looked back. Twenty years later and Peyton Manning is the most prolific passer to ever play the game of football. Oh, also remember Tennessee was very good with Manning calling the signals for the next three years as well.
I'm hoping that history will repeat itself or at least come very close. Tennessee is not nearly as talented as the teams that surrounded Peyton Manning in the mid-90s were, but they're getting there.
As far as the final four games of the 2014 season are concerned, let's take 'em one at a time. While the Vols are still seeking their first SEC win of the year Saturday against South Carolina, the Gamecocks are trying to snap a three game league losing streak. Both teams have plenty of reasons to go after a victory this weekend, with both teams' post season chances riding on what happens in Columbia on Saturday. Since the Big Orange faithful set their sites much lower than the Gamecocks fan base did, a second straight win over Coach Steve Spurrier's crew would be really sweet. After all, we're now down to the portion of the schedule, where the Vols at least have a chance to succeed.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. He is currently teaching Broadcasting at Coahulla Creek High School near Dalton, Ga.
His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for thirty years.
He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century.
In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have four grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, DellaMae and CoraLee.
To contact Randy: rsmithsports@epbfi.com