Football at University of Tennessee College declared plans to appoint a new coordinator.
College teams that contend for championships don’t emerge from a single event. Those teams nearly always require time to assemble, bond, fail and learn from it, then learn how to win and then win at a high level. these is true even in these day of transfer portals. Not from microwaves, but from ovens. If fortune favors you, perhaps they originate from an instant pot. Either way, not much of it is visible to the public, and it takes time. Though that’s still a very little portion of the pie, we in the media typically see a little bit more than the general population.
In other words, championship-contending teams don’t emerge out of a single event.
On the other hand, they can instantly declare their candidacy to the public, and fourth-place Tennessee’s 13-11 victory to win the series
Since the Tony Vitello era, competing for championships has become the standard expectation for Tennessee baseball. Even though SEC baseball has one of the toughest schedules in all of collegiate sports, those expectations grow when you’ve outperformed every other institution in the nation for the previous five seasons. Though they haven’t won one, the Vols have advanced to two of the previous three College World Series, and the season in between saw them win 57 games and be unquestionably the best team in the nation. Vitello and his staff are in the unfortunate situation of having to be exceptional in order for their own supporters to consider them, as they recruit, develop, and compete at the highest level in a cutthroat manner.
To his credit, Vitello never runs away from the demands that are currently made of his program. Since he, his staff, and his players set the standard, he is the one who knows it better than anybody else. But Vitello is also an honest man, and over the past few months, he has informed anybody who will listen that his present team is not among the finest in the country. Like most coaches, he detests preseason polls, and he maintained that his team didn’t deserve to be ranked so highly. He was largely aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his team as well as the amount of work still needed to meet the benchmark. And he made that statement well in advance of AJ Russell’s injury that sidelined him on Opening Day.
Here’s the thing: Vitello might not have been wrong.
Tennessee has dazzled at times this season, and its best-in-the-nation offense is on pace to outproduce the cold-blooded buzzsaw that was the 2022 Tennessee offense. But that offense had just enough bad days to produce cause for pause, and the pitching staff had more concerns than usual under Arm Farmer Frank Anderson. It’s not that the pitching was ever bad, but it was never going to be as ridiculously good as it had been the past few seasons, and at times it looked thin and shaky enough to produce postseason palpitations.
The scheduling was another issue that was never truly addressed in a formal setting. In a demanding neutral-site tournament held in Arlington, Texas, Tennessee began the season by facing three formidable Big 12 opponents in quick succession. They won the competition with a run difference after going 2-1. Following that, Tennessee played—let’s try to be diplomatic—as less than formidable opposition. Even the midweek games the Vols hosted—against Kansas State and Illinois, the current Big Ten leader—took place in Lindsey Nelson Stadium’s Friendly Orange Confines. We could talk about schedule construction strategies for days, but maybe the strongest case for Tennessee’s non-conference schedule was that it began with a challenging, neutral
Be the first to comment