KNOXVILLE – The first official practice of Team 121’s preseason complete Saturday afternoon, Tennessee football coach Butch Jones bumped junior quarterback Quinten Dormady’s backside as the coach exited Haslam Field.
Knowing Coach Crewcut’s time with the media had just ended, Dormady asked how it had gone.
Jones instantly flashed a big grin across his sunburned face, offered twin thumbs-up signs, then said with at least a hint of cynicism, “I’m sure they’ll find something to talk about.”
The talk takes off now, as fast as Usain Bolt, as loud as the late comedian Sam Kinison, as constant as the Weather Channel. A third of it will be as optimistic as Disney World, a third as realistic as CNN, a third as pessimistic as a Democrat grading Donald Trump.
But regardless of how you currently view the Volunteers, it’s here – football time in Tennessee, as the great announcer John Ward so distinctly used to say – and if a few sound bites from Saturday are any indication, there is a strong sense within the team that Jones just might post his first 10-win season in his fifth year on the job.