Can Butch Turn It Around

As the newest intrepid explorer to stand at the rim of the smoking crater of Tennessee football, Butch Jones has inherited a remarkable rebuilding job,¹ on a number of levels. You have to be a company man to land this kind of gig, and he's a good one, adept at working the Volunteers' all-time conference rank in SEC victories (second), all-time national ranking in bowl appearances (tied for third), and other assorted Rocky Top mood elevators into speeches and casual conversation. But in the 14 years since the Vols took the first-ever BCS championship, the facts are these: The team hasn't been back to a BCS bowl game since 2000. The Vols haven't won a bowl game since 2008. They haven'tbeen to a bowl game since 2010. Only one team out of the past five finished with a winning record, and the past two years have seen two (2) conference victories recorded.And lord-a-mercy, will 2013 ever be grim. Operating under a new staff, with a new starting quarterback and another scheme change on defense, Jones's first Tennessee team faces this seven-week stretch beginning with Week 3: travel to AP preseason no. 3 Oregon, travel to no. 10 Florida, host no. 5 Georgia, host no. 6 South Carolina, and travel to no. 1 Alabama. All of this happens before November. Even if there's a massive uptick in on-field production, how masked might this course correction be by the level of competition surrounding it?So, we don't pretend to know what we'll be able to make of the nascent Jones era in Knoxville at season's end, not even after living through it, not even as a native child of Rocky Top. All we'll say is this, home folks: Remember just what it is you'll be looking at in December, and ask yourselves if the future really looks burned-out and black, or whether it might just be Smokey Grey.