Randy Smith
Eight wins, four losses. Not bad in this day and age of college football......unless you were picked in the pre-season top ten and chosen as the team to beat in the SEC East. With that stunning loss to Vanderbilt in the season finale and a loss to South Carolina a few weeks ago, the 2016 season will not be one that Tennessee fans want to dwell on. A lot of schools would love to be 8-4, but not Tennessee. Expectations were much higher. When you consider that the Vols needed overtime to beat Appalachian State and a Hail Mary pass to beat Georgia, team 120 could very easily have been 6-6.
How did things get this way you ask? Perhaps it was complacency on the part of the players.
You know, the feeling that all you have to do to win is show up in your orange shirts. Perhaps it was the many serious injuries suffered during the season. But everyone was healthy and accounted for in the season opening game with App State. Perhaps it was coaching. Maybe Butch Jones staff had players out of position, or the staff didn't prepare their players as they should have. Perhaps it was a combination of those things. Regardless, team 120 will forever be remembered as a team of underachievers as well as a big disappointment to their fans.
Being a long-time Tennessee fan, I was actually glad that the Volunteers would not have to face mighty Alabama a second time this season. That 49-10 loss to the Crimson Tide back in October took a lot of wind out of their sails and set them on course for that 8-4 mark. Then when a win over Vandy on Saturday night meant a possible trip to the Sugar Bowl and a match up with Oklahoma, I was glad that awful defense.....the one that was supposed to be so good with new defensive coordinator Bob Shoop did not have to face Baker Mayfield and the Sooners. That defense, though decimated by injuries gave up 1900 yards in the last three games against Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt; not exactly the SEC's top offensive units. Vandy's 45 points on Saturday night was the biggest point total for the Commodores since 1971.
As expected, there has been a lot of talk about coaching changes. Charlie Strong was mentioned a lot on social media, and Heaven forbid, Jon Gruden's name has popped up again. I don't look for a change to happen because Athletic Director Dave Hart is a lame duck as he is scheduled to retire next July. Coach Butch Jones still has too many years left on his current contract so unless he decides he's had enough and chooses to resign he'll be back for a fifth season in Knoxville. You can look for a few changes to his coaching staff however.
So, how does the collapse of team 120 affect team 121? The Vols lose a lot of skill players, including running back Alvin Kamara and quarterback Josh Dobbs. Unless the team suffers mass defections, most of the players on defense return, but considering how badly they played down the stretch, that may not be a good thing. I can see Tennessee picked no better than third or fourth in the SEC East next fall. When the season started, I bought all the hype that had been cast upon the Big Orange. I picked them to go 10-2 and win the East. Heck they were good enough we all thought to be a College Football Playoff contender.
Perhaps we all put too much pressure on them and they buckled under that pressure. Perhaps they just weren't as good as we all thought they were. Perhaps we won't make that mistake again with team 121.
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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.
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 five grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, Mattingly, DellaMae, and CoraLee.