Wiedmer: Is UT's Jones a budding Zook 2.0?

Every college football coach hopes to one day be referred to as the next Bear Bryant. Or Gen. Robert Neyland. Or Knute Rockne. Or in thoroughly modern times, the next Urban Meyer or Nick Saban.

After blowing a 27-14 lead in the final five minutes of Saturday night's 28-27 loss at Florida, third-year Tennessee coach Butch Jones now finds himself in the company of a different collection of coaches, including one former Florida boss not named Steve Spurrier or Meyer.

Wrote one disgruntled Volniac in a Sunday morning email: "(Ron) Zook is alive and well at Tennessee."

Penned another UT supporter on the Tennessean's website: "That was the worst coaching job of a game of football this century."

Chimed in a third fan: "Team is in year #3 (of the Jones era). Running out of bricks."

It's safe to say the Legion of the Miserable, as former Tennessee football coach Johnny Majors sometimes labeled disgruntled Big Orange fans, is once more alive and well in the Volunteer State following the Vols' 11th straight loss to the Gators.

Is it fair? Not entirely. And judging from other emails and posts on message boards, a sizable number of Volniacs remain squarely in their coach's corner.

One fan wrote: "This is a young, very talented team. They just need to know it's okay to step on a team's neck when they are down. You can pull your foot away after the final second ticks off. They will get there."

Another emailed: "Tennessee is well along the road to recovery and Butch Jones has done a marvelous job of recruiting and motivating. But they're not they're not there yet. (Also) can you remember the SEC ever being tougher and more balanced?"

Indeed, when Vanderbilt can go on the road to scare undefeated Ole Miss, Kentucky can snap two-time defending SEC East champ Missouri's 11-game road winning streak and Mississippi State can win at Auburn - all in the same day - every week could become a toss-up game, which could either help or hurt UT going forward.

So no matter how upset the Big Orange Nation might be over those twin collapse-from-way-ahead losses to Oklahoma and Florida, there are still at least seven SEC opportunities to change the conversation. Yes, the next three games over four weeks - home against Arkansas this Saturday and Georgia the week after that, followed by an off week, then a trip to Alabama on Oct. 24 - are brutal. But the potential to turn around the program is also huge.

Win even two of those three, then take three of the remaining four league contests against Kentucky, South Carolina, Missouri and Vanderbilt, and a 5-3 league mark and 8-4 overall record would strongly signal UT football is back, that the Vols are indeed well along the road to recovery.

After all, in a hugely inhospitable environment in which the Vols had lost their previous five games by an average of 16.4 points, they led by 13 with less than five minutes to play. They are close.

And Jones isn't merely a motivator and recruiter. He may need to coach better down the stretch, but holding a 14-point fourth-quarter lead on Oklahoma and a 13-point fourth quarter cushion at Florida also signals he and his staff are doing much right.

Yet should the Vols stumble going forward this season, Jones could also find himself needing several big wins next year to salvage his job.

Until then, his immediate boss, athletic director Dave Hart, might want to quit letting people see him sweat. No matter how disappointed he was over the Florida loss, to sit on a table in the tunnel leading to the UT locker room with his head down, all alone, as if someone had just shot his dog, is not the best way for a leader to lead.

Never let them see you sweat, the saying goes, and that's for administrators as much as players and coaches.

There is, however, at least a slight reason to revisit the email wondering if Jones is Zook 2.0. Both are high-energy guys from the Midwest (Zook from Ohio, Jones from Michigan) who are obsessed with recruiting and motivation. Both have endured at least a couple of fourth-quarter disasters during their SEC tenures. According to some reports, neither was at the top of the list for the SEC job each landed.

But for all of Florida's frustration over Zook's struggles to make good on his titanic task to follow Spurrier, he did hand Georgia's 2002 team and LSU's 2003 team their only losses. He also knocked off Florida State on the road, something Spurrier never did. And in 2003, he beat LSU, Arkansas and Georgia in a row away from "The Swamp."

Though it wasn't enough to earn him a fourth year in Gainesville, Zook's recruits did most of the heavy lifting for the Gators' 2006 national championship with Meyer in charge. Given more time than Zook received, Jones appears fully capable of finishing the garganuan rebuilding job he started.

It must also be noted that much of the Volniacs' frustration has not so much to do with Jones as nearly a solid decade of mediocrity. The Big Orange Nation desperately wants to be relevant again. Earning 17-point and 13-point leads against the Sooners and Gators made it feel that way. Losing them opened a lot of old wounds.

As with most things related to sports, a win in the next game would do much to quiet the critics and recharge those still in the coach's corner.

But just in case the trend of blowing big leads in the final period continues, expect Jones' first name to become synonymous with botch. As in: UT Butches another fourth-quarter lead.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com