Randy Smith
How stupid do national sports services think we are? I know folks here in the south are out of our minds about college football, myself included. But ESPN just this week released a story predicting Tennessee and LSU to both go undefeated and meet in the SEC Championship Game. This is mid-May. The season is still more than three months away from beginning, and already some guy is making bold predictions about who plays for the title.
Coaches everywhere laugh at these guys.
Whatever they predict, generally doesn't come to fruition. Why you ask? because it's too early. A lot of bad things could happen to teams that are looking for big years. Think about the success rate of the SEC media to pick divisional winners in football. It's less than ten percent. They make their picks in late July at the SEC Media Days event in Birmingham; a little more than a month from the start of the season. They've heard all the hype from all fourteen SEC head coaches, and they still can't get it right.
The above mentioned story about Tennessee facing LSU was one I decided not to read. Not that it can't come true, but my goodness let's play a game or two before we start making bold assumptions. I predict divisional winners in the SEC every August. Last year I chose Alabama and Tennessee, which was fifty percent correct. 2016 is sure to be one of the greatest college football seasons ever, and I can't wait for the season to get here. And as great as the Volunteers could be in 2016, I simply must wait a while before I go out on that limb.
I learned a big lesson about making bold predictions about Tennessee from the great John Ward. Every year in the 1980s and the 1990s I would ask John what he thought about our chances. He would always down play it and pick the Vols to be something less than fantastic. Mind you this would be a year that I would pick the Vols to be 10-1 or 11-0. John would always tell me, maybe 7-4....if we're lucky. Most of the time, John was right.
It's not that I was an optimist and John was a pessimist...it's more like he was a realist and I was an idiot when it came to Tennessee football. So...while these articles may be fun to read, let's not bet the farm on Tennessee playing for a national championship just yet. And for all you LSU fans out there who will read the same article, remember some of you wanted to fire your coach last year. Plus, you play in the same division with Alabama, and while the Tide suffered some key losses they should again contend for a championship.
Already the talk shows are presenting plenty of conversation about college football, which is what should be expected this time of year, After all we're only 100 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes from the start of the season.
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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.
He can be reached at rsmithsports@epbfi.com