Tennessee assistant football coach John Jancek.
Tennessee’s Willie Martinez, right, assistant head coach for defense and defensive backs, celebrates with defensive back Justin Coleman after he intercepted a pass during an NCAA college football spring scrimmage at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville.KNOXVILLE — Tennessee assistant football coaches John Jancek and Willie Martinez both insist that Saturday’s game against No. 6 Georgia is “strictly business.”
So all those years they spent on the Bulldogs’ staff with Mark Richt — five for Jancek, nine for Martinez — don’t make this one just a wee bit different?
“I have a lot of fond memories,” said Jancek, the Vols’ defensive coordinator who last coached the Dawgs in 2009. “My children still have friends in the Athens area. I still have friends on their coaching staff who I talk to regularly, just not this week. This is a business and my job is to beat them.”
Added Martinez, the UT defensive backs coach whose last season with the Dawgs was also 2009: “I’ve got some great memories from my time there. Both my daughters graduated from Georgia. But it’s really like any other week.”
But can it really be like any other week with all that past history, especially for Martinez, who’s known Richt since the two were students at Miami? How can you have spent so much time working for Richt and helping recruit Georgia redshirt senior quarterback Aaron Murray to UGA and then label this nothing more than business?