Tennessee coach Butch Jones tries to motivate his team during pre-game warm-ups.
South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier talks with reporters during the SEC football Media Days in Hoover, Ala., on Tuesday, July 16, 2013.BRISTOL, Tenn. — Though first-year Tennessee coach Butch Jones spent Monday morning at Bristol Motor Speedway to talk about a football game he’ll coach in 1,068 days, the schedule for his team remained the same.
Coming off its first open date of the season, the Volunteers practiced Sunday and took Monday off, just as the schedule set back in the offseason slated for them to do.
Tennessee still is in the heart of its schedule, with South Carolina visiting Knoxville on Saturday ahead of the Vols’ trip to top-ranked Alabama to end October.
“I think their results speak for themselves,” Jones said Monday of Steve Spurrier’s 11th-ranked Gamecocks. “I think they’re an extremely complete football team when you look at physicality, when you look at size, when you look at speed. They’re coming in here with a lot of momentum, a lot of confidence, and it’s going to take our best effort to compete on Saturday.
“Our players realize that. It’s going to be a great opportunity for us, but we have a tremendous amount of respect for their football team. Again, everything I believe is result-oriented, and you look at their results, again, it speaks for itself.”