KNOXVILLE – It hasn’t been easy to be a loud, proud member of the University of Tennessee’s Big Orange Nation this autumn.
Between five straight Southeastern Conference football losses before Saturday’s smackdown of Ole Miss and an ongoing NCAA investigation into the men’s basketball program, Volniacs have been as quiet as Nancy Pelosi the past few weeks.
As a media friend has joked on more than one occasion this fall, the Volunteers are about to have the nicest empty facilities in all of college athletics.
At least that seemed the case until true freshman quarterback Tyler Bray and true freshman forward Tobias Harris gravitated to the Smoky Mountains from opposite coasts to save their football and basketball teammates, respectively.
We all know about Bray now. The California Kid has thrown 10 touchdown passes in a shade over nine quarters of play, leading the Vols to two straight victories in the process. To put that into perspective, Peyton Manning threw 11 touchdowns his entire freshman season. Erik Ainge – the former UT quarterback whose long, thin frame most mirrors Bray – threw for 17 scores as a rookie.