Team 120.
That's really all you have to say these ridiculously hot days to bring a smile to even the most heat-drained, water-needy University of Tennessee football fan.
Thirty-eight days from today, the Vols host Appalachian State to open the season. Thirty-eight days from today begins the football season all have waited on since Butch Jones took over the program prior to the 2013 season. Thirty-eight days from today the Big Orange Nation and its team begin a journey most expect to reach the Southeastern Conference title game, and possibly the College Football Playoff.
And once you get that far, anything can happen. Anything. Including the school's first national title since 1998.
The signs are all there. Last year's 6-0 conclusion - including the bowl rout of Northwestern - after a 2-3 start to finish 9-4. Those 25 points that Jones loves to harp about over the past 18 games.
Either add 25 points to Tennessee's totals in the right games or subtract 25 from the opposition, and the Vols would stand 18-0 in those games instead of 13-5.
Mark WiedmerFrom cold, hard facts such as those did Jones lure defensive wizard Bob Shoop from Penn State to make the Big Orange as difficult to score on as the Big Orange offense has been difficult to stop over those 18 games, when Tennessee has averaged 35.5 points per contest.
But a person close to the program, a person uncomfortable being quoted but very comfortable with the potential success of Season 120, believes the key is something already certain, something long ago forged.
"It's the leadership of these players," he said this past weekend. "It's off the charts. Butch doesn't have to preach effort or desire or making the right decisions off the field because that senior class - guys like Josh Dobbs, Cam Sutton and Jalen Reeves-Maybin - does it for him."
No less than the late, great Bear Bryant once said of recruiting kids with character: "The biggest mistake coaches make is taking borderline cases and trying to save them. I'm not talking about grades now, I'm talking about character. I want to know before a boy enrolls about his home life, and what his parents want him to be."
He also said, "If they don't have a winning attitude, I don't want them."
Say what you want of Jones' occasionally questionable play calling, his endless clichés, his sometimes thin skin, but his recruiting has mostly delivered respectable, resourceful, resilient young men.
Never was that more evident than the days leading up to last season's game against Georgia.
The Vols entered that week 2-3 after painful, fourth-quarter flops against Oklahoma, Florida and Arkansas. There were rumors of dissension both on the coaching staff and between coaches and players. About the only people who believed in the Vols at that point seemed to be the Vols themselves.
Even then, you couldn't help but wonder if it was more of a front than a foundation.
But with the game still five days off, Dobbs told the media: "This team is so close-knit that we don't really care about outside talk. I think everyone knows what we need to do in order to improve moving forward. Everyone realizes that and takes ownership of that."
Added Reeves-Maybin: "It's not like we are looking back on the past like bad things are going to happen.That's not how we operate. We all have faith in each other. We all have trust in each other. We love each other. We are going to keep grinding and end up having a great season."
That weekend the Vols fell into a 24-3 hole inside Neyland Stadium. A team struggling with internal turmoil would have lost 44-3. Teammates who trusted each other, loved each other, had faith in each other might find a way to win, which was exactly what Tennessee did while pulling out a season-changing 38-31 victory.
The only loss the rest of the way was a narrow 19-14 setback at eventual national champ Alabama.
Talk about ending up having a great season.
Now the next season has become this season, the opener just 38 days away. Whether or not Team 120 winds up with a great season in the record book will depend on how many wins this team accumulates and where those wins lead it.
To the SEC title game? An SEC championship? A national championship?
The ending is uncertain, as it is for every college football team during the last full week of July.
But what seems more than certain is that these Vols have more than a few great young men to lead them, and that just might lead them to their best season since 1998.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.