Tennessee football coach Butch Jones may face a similar line of inquiry along every stop on college football’s unofficial offseason speaking tour this summer.
It started at the Southeastern Conference’s annual meetings Tuesday in Destin, Fla., where Jones took questions from a small group of reporters that will pale in comparison to the gathering at next month’s SEC Media Days.
“When you took over this job, where did you expect to have the program by now?” a reporter asked Jones. “And are you about where you’d like it to be?”
“It’s a journey and it’s a process,” he replied. “I’m very grateful to all the players and staff that have really brought Tennessee football back. We still have so much to do, and it’s all about winning championships. But the first element that goes into winning championships is contending to win championships on a consistent basis. Our program has done that.”
Tennessee contended to win its first SEC East title since 2007 last year, until losses to Vanderbilt and South Carolina ended an injury-riddle team’s chances at that benchmark. The Volunteers won a bowl game, six players were drafted into the NFL and the program posted another strong year under the standards of the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate.