WHY NOT TENNESSEE ?
[Note by Joel, 06/11/08 4:34 PM EDT ] This is an older FanPost, but it's attracted some extra attention today, so I'm bumping it front, center, and top. GetOffMyVols' line about it being a mistake to " confuse passion and pride with priority" is a terrific articulation of something that's been on the periphery of my mind for awhile.
-- Joel
Why not Tennessee ? I was just siting here on the porch thinking if I was a football recruit why would I want to go to Tennessee? What do they have to offer ? Well going back in time say forty years when I was a young pup, I played football, and Tennessee was the place I would have liked to gone , but now days things have changed.
I see these young players pick other schools that don't have more or better to offer than Tennessee, and I wonder why they pick other schools. Tennessee has one of the largest stadiums,Neyland Stadium to play in. Why would a player not want to play in front of 107,000 people every home game ? I think that would be great, and Tennessee fans are one of the best group of fans in the south. The campus is one of the most beautiful in the SEC. Located just 30 mins from the great Smokey Mountians. Also the chance of going to next level the NFL are a lot better than a lot of other schools, just look at the number of Tennessee players in the NFL. So why would a recruit not want to go to Tennessee, I don't know. I know I would, go figure. GO VOLS !!!!
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18 comments
Comments
Fascinating Question!
Volman, I’ll have to do some thinking about this one! “The Devil’s Advocate” is not a role that I play very well, so I’ll have to get back to you a bit later.
by Aerobab on May 27, 2008 8:27 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
It's later...
In no particular order:
- “Too traditional offense” – Let’s be honest; the “3-yds and a cloud of dust”, run first plan is not a glamourous offensive scheme. It’s difficult to attract top notch QBs, WRs, and receiving TEs when they’re not going to be throwing/catching the ball. WR’s go to school where they’ll be a Receiver...not a Blocker. (Note the last several years have been a pass-first offense brought about by both ability and necessity. Also, it’ll be interesting to see what Coach Claw displays this fall.)
- Regional Stereotypes - It’s East Tennessee…home of the redneck, hillbilly, beer-drankin’, shine-brewin’ mountain folk, right? Who wants to play for THAT fan base when you can attend a southern Californian school and schmooze with pop-culture celebrities and become famous for hanging out with famous people who became famous for being famous?
- Orange – I’ll be honest, the color doesn’t look great on everybody. From my personal experience, it’s a bit of an acquired taste…can be scary for those without a sense of adventure!
- Typically Deep Position Rosters - With few exceptions, an incoming freshman has to “earn” playing time by riding the bench for a year or two or even 3. Big shots out of HS have typically started for all 4 years. Some won’t even consider a school unless there is an opprotunity to play immediately.
- Removed from a Football “Hotbed” – The E TN, W NC, SE KY, and N GA region is not particularly known for churning out 4 and 5 star recruits like Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and California are known to do. As such, many recruits would have to moving a significant distance from friends, family, and everything else familiar to play ball in Knoxville. That’s not always an easy thing for an 18 yr old to do.
by Aerobab on May 27, 2008 1:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
All excellent points
I agree with you on all of these. Some interjections and hopes?
1. Our offense is quite traditional. Heck, it’s been more of the same for about 20 years now. Enter The Claw. Hopefully The Claw will bring a rejuvination to our offense and young kids will see that he values ability even in freshmen and is williing to get them the ball if they can do something with it. Hopefully.
2. Yes, but have they seen the girls in E.Tenn.? That oughta do it.
3. One does need a desire to stand out in order to appreciate our particular shade of Orange. But at least you won’t get run over walking down the street at night.
4. Again, hopefully The Claw will be more receptive to Freshmen and kids will see that everybody has a chance to start.
5. Yeah, but who wouldn’t want to get out of TX or OK or even, in my opinion, FL and CA? I’ve been to all 4 and I can say E. Tenn. ’s landscape is far more interesting. Besides, isn’t going to college all about adventure anyway? Or at least the promise of adventure?
I've got something for you young man. Ooohh, it's...Thaa Claawww! Oh, you're afraid of The Claw!!
by XRayVol on May 30, 2008 2:52 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
As a Cal Bears fan
I think it’s really quite simple. If stadiums and fans were all that mattered in recruiting, college football would not be a sport. Simple reasons why recruits don’t choose schools with the biggest stadium:
1) They don’t like the coaching staff
2) They don’t like the area (Knoxville is considered by many to be too conservative, and while it isn’t small, some players just like to play in big cities or areas)
3) They want to be close to their family
4) Tennessee is always a recruiting powerhouse. A talented WR, RB, or QB might start at Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, Oklahoma St., or other major programs that are consistently relevant but not in the BCS hunt, while being a second stringer with limited-to-no playing time.
5) The school. Sorry Vols fans, but the University of Tennessee is a mediocre public school, where the faculty and Knoxville citizens value sports more than academics. Some people get drawn away from UT for the likes of great public or private schools like Virginia, Texas, California, UCLA, Stanford.
6) There ARE other schools with great fans and huge stadiums. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn St.
7) To XRayVol: The notion that someone would want to leave Texas, California, or Florida to go to TENNESSEE is absolutely ridiculous. Each has more people, California and Florida have MUCH better climates, they all have better cities, and they all are geographically larger. The only reason someone would move from FL and CA to TN would be because they wanted to find a cheap house, which are quite easy to find in Tennessee because the demand to live there is soooooo much lower.
Go Bears!
PS: Beat up on those stupid Cal rejects when you go to Pasadena, will you?
by RollOnYouBears667 on Jun 11, 2008 12:48 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Just an FYI...
“the University of Tennessee is a mediocre public school, where the faculty and Knoxville citizens value sports more than academics.”
Not sure where you came up with this notion, lets look at some numbers.
Football Graduation Rate
UT – 49%
Cal – 47%
Overall Student Athlete Graduation Rate
UT – 71%
Cal – 73%
Looks like our respective schools faculty value academics and athletics about equally.
As far as the tidbit about Knoxville citizens there are no statistics about what civilians value the most but I think its a little unfair to confuse passion and pride with priority.
While UT may not have the prestige of the universities you listed, it ranks in the top 40 among public schools. Average incoming freshmen GPA is a 3.6. # 2 Supply Chain Management Program according to Supply Chain Review. Top 10 Public MBA according to Forbes.
While you may call it mediocre, I don’t think a UT degree is anything to scoff at.
This coming from a Pennsylvanian who came to Knoxville for academics and not athletics.
by Getoffmyvols on Jun 11, 2008 3:56 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Thanks
Thanks for your input, ROYB667. While I agree with several of your points, and respectfully disagree with others, we need to be frank with respect to academics—highly talented/recruited football players at most major schools are not in it for the education. Seriously, when was the last time you heard a VHT make a statement to the effect of:
“You know, I’ve been working real hard at my vector calculus and differential equations this summer. My understanding of the theoretical concepts involved is really improving. I can’t wait to get into Astrophysics 310 this fall!”
Football players come to Tennessee to play football. Nothing more. Nothing less. The same is true for many other major programs. If a recruit were more interested in academics, he would most likely not worry about the quality of the football program and would be seeking an academic scholarship and not athletic. You’re obviously entitled to your opinion of the academic standing/prestige of MY University of Tennessee, and we welcome it, but please realize that at this particular institution, academics and athletics are worlds apart and have minimal avenues for interface.
Also, we’ll gladly do some Bear-Thumping this fall. Go Vols!
by Aerobab on Jun 11, 2008 5:03 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I too am a Cal fan and I kind of wanted to respond to this because I thought this was a good topic. Firstly the reason I lurk this blog is because I like Tennessee. I was deeply impressed with your fans when you visited Berkeley (though I wish you guys could’ve helped us with the tree sitters instead of just gawking at them). Also UT is the one of the two schools in the SEC that I don’t hate (I’m sorry I dislike your conference quite a bit thanks to the fans from school-not-to-be-named) – Auburn being the other.
In any case I agree with Aerobab on the athletes not going to schools for education. Sure it might be a concern to some players who realize that (at least for us) “hey if I fail in football I can still parade around a degree from UC Berkeley which is no small feat”. But most big time players (like Desean or Ainge) don’t think like that. Also I realized that most of these players take majors like Art History, etc which sorry to offend is in no way all that hard. So while education is important I don’t consider it to be one of the biggest criteria (sadly).
Some reasons I think not everyone comes to UT: 1) They don’t like the conference (admit it you guys have some fans just like the OSU idiots that make you hate them coughLSUcough), 2) Don’t like the south/area/city/state, 3) Don’t like the area, 4) Don’t want to be a part of the tradition, and perhaps most importantly IMO 5) They feel that they can get a better chance to play and have an impact at a different school. Say for example Louisville needed a QB real bad, while UT had two scholarship ones that are in their sophomore year and I’m a 4 or 5 star QB prospect. Statistically speaking I’ll have a big head and an ego to boot so I’ll be thinking that I can make a difference if only the coach lets me play. I’ll single handedly win the conference for us. I can run and throw four touchdowns a game, blah blah. I’m much more likely to pick Louisville here even though it doesn’t compare to UT’s tradition because Louisville offers more of a chance for me to shine.
That’s just what I think.
As for the overall graduation rate at Cal. I’m going to be a third year engineering student at cal (major is electrical engineering and computer science a.k.a. EECS or gEECS as I call it) rated to be the #1 CS department in the country (usually tied with MIT and Stanfurd). I know for us the department requires the professor to give an average GPA of 2.7. As you can imagine this means quite a bunch of people fail. Now IIRC if you dip below a 2.5 you are put on probation and can quite possibly be thrown out. Cal is a public university and so they are more likely to throw you out of school. That probably explains why our grad rate (for students that is) is not in the high 80s or 90s.
Anyway Go Vols beat the baby bears a.k.a the fight song stealing, color stealing, mascot stealing, inferiority complex sportion Bruins of UCLA!
I used to be RR at the Cal Golden Blogs
by royrules22 on Jun 16, 2008 1:56 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
gEECS, huh?
Totally 10100111001, dude!
by Hooper on Jun 17, 2008 3:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
10100111001?
let’s see
<?php echo bindec(‘10100111001’); ?>
gives me 1337
Oh indeed!
In other words, Go Bears!
by royrules22 on Jun 18, 2008 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
You guys are freaking me out
If the FBI/CIA shows up at my house tonight wanting to know what sort of secret message you’ve been communicating to terrorist cells, I’m . . . I’m . . . well, I’m gonna be gone for a few days?
Go Vols!
by Joel on Jun 18, 2008 3:58 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Somehow, I just knew
I thought about going with the curveball – 539 – but it doesn’t have enough indication all on its own. A smart-aleck comment with 1A4 would have been fun, but the site is a little more family-friendly than that.
And Joel, this is the end product of spending an internship reconstructing 60s-era FORTRAN code. Everything comes down to binary equivalents. And line numbers.
by Hooper on Jun 18, 2008 11:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Huh?
Don’t make me start speaking in latin! Not . . . that . . . I know latin. Or English, for that matter.
Go Vols!
by Joel on Jun 19, 2008 7:17 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
FORTRAN = God’s curse to programmers.
Or the programmer’s pick-six (with the programmer being the QB)
In other words, Go Bears!
by royrules22 on Jun 19, 2008 7:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Don't I know it.
But I do understand why it’s still the premier code for supercomputer benchmarking: it’s still the best workhorse out there for raw computational power. Other than that, I’m not nearly as strong with the more common languages. I do believe, though, that I’m probably one of the most meticulous code writers out there anymore. A few thousand lines of undocumented spaghetti logic will do that to you. (And gives a whole new appreciation to the second Dilbert strip here.)
Besides, 1 – 3/4 = 1 is absolute beauty when used properly. ;)
by Hooper on Jun 19, 2008 10:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Taking Care of Business
Big ups to the UT Business School and Supply Chain Management program.
UT’s Supply Chain/Forecasting fourms are some of it not the best in the nation. I’ve personally met professionals at these forums who have stopped going to similar ones at “more prestigious” universities like MIT in order to attend ours and continue to bring back their coworkers to learn from our professors.
by InBruceWeTrust on Jun 11, 2008 6:19 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Should read some of if not sorry.
by InBruceWeTrust on Jun 11, 2008 8:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
i don't know if that gals father 'trusts' Bruce w/the position of his hand
i digress…
If I were a top recruit and were choosing on where to play football AND get an education, I could do much worse than Tennessee. i could also do much better
HOWEVA!
What’s going to be on the mind of an 18-21/22 year old for 2 to 3 (4 if the school is lucky) years while playin ball?
1. Football
2. Girls
3. Football
4. Partying
5. Girls
6. Football
7. NFL
8. Girls
9. Football
10. Class
Where might he want to do this at compared to UT?
Entertainment:
UT – Cumberland Ave “The Strip”, Ober Gatlinburg
USC – The Beach “PCH”, Las Vegas (just a hop, skip and jump away)
Dating:
UT – Southern Bells
USC – Models
Academics:
UT- If I tear up my knee, I can get a job w/this degree
USC – If I tear up my knee, I can…Get a job as a bouncer?
Motivation for playing:
UT – Volunteer pride / SEC tradition
USC – National Titles (many)
NFL Draft possibilities:
UT – Pretty darn good
USC – You’re kidding, right?
"HI, MY NAME IS GEORGE, AND I "AM" INSIGNIFICANT...AND I APPROVE OF THIS MESSAGE."
by LOUtheMETandNATSfan on Jun 14, 2008 12:58 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

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