If you consider yourself a proud yet frustrated member of the Big Orange Nation today, you want there to be iron-clad reasons that your Tennessee football heroes are 3-2 overall and 0-2 in the Southeastern Conference heading into Saturday's high noon showdown with South Carolina at Neyland Stadium.
You've already decided the coaching stinks, and perhaps it does. Butch Jones might be as out of touch as his crewcut when it comes to running a Power Five conference program that fancies itself - rightly or wrongly - as a Top 10 machine, but more on that in a minute.
But it's got to be deeper than coaching issues, right? And no more talk about injuries unless Jones is willing to take on the unfair burden of his coaching style causing more than its share of breaks and tears, though there's no sane evidence to support that.
Injuries fall into the bad luck category 99 percent of the time. Bad luck for the school. Worse luck for the player, his family and friends, as well as the fans who miss out on enjoying that athlete's special gifts while he's out.
So perhaps Team 121 doesn't like each other all that much. That's it, right? The D word: Dissension. Or the C word: Chemistry. Or lack thereof.
We've already seen backup quarterback Jarrett Guarantano appear to openly pout and sulk on the sideline. Monday brought news defensive end Darrell Taylor has been indefinitely suspended. The locker room must be as tense as a Donald Trump staff meeting. The defense and offense at each other's throats. Every young man for himself. And the coaching staff headed for that same it's-not-my-fault mentality.
Tyler Byrd (10) is congratulated by Brett Kendrick (63) and other Vols linemen after Byrd scored a touchdown in a football game against the Massachusetts Minutemen in Knoxville on Sept. 23, 2017.Just don't try selling that theory to the Vols players. At least not redshirt senior offensive lineman Brett Kendrick or fellow senior defensive lineman Kendal Vickers.
For better or worse, in recent weeks it apparently has fallen to this poised and patient pair to be the collective voice of the Vols for the weekly Monday news conferences. To be fair, they're bright, well-spoken veterans who project an image any SEC program would be proud to call its own.
But they aren't robots. Just two weeks ago Vickers - whose father was in the military for 21 years - gave an articulate, thoughtful answer to a question about how he perceived the NFL's national anthem protests, Vickers calling it a "peaceful protest." He was about to say more before a university employee cut off further comment.
So it would be more than a little unfair to doubt the sincerity of their answers regarding the current state of the UT locker room.
Said Kendrick: "Chemistry, we're fine. We love each other. We have a lot of fun together."
Added Vickers: "We're good. We're close. There's nothing going on. No imbalance of chemistry. Everything is good."
This follows an unsolicited comment from Vickers two weeks ago - right after the disappointing performance against UMass and the dispiriting ending at Florida, but several days before the disaster that was Georgia.
Said the Havelock, N.C., native on Sept. 25: "We got a lot of heart, we really do. This team works hard. This team is really close and people don't really understand that. Just being out there with my brothers every day, I wouldn't have it any other way."
It could be a cover-up, of course. It wouldn't be the first time a school's public relations crew created a smokescreen by selecting two or three veterans to continually create a false sense of unity and happiness.
But it doesn't feel that way. Instead, it feels like the problem may not be the attitude as much as the aptitude, especially at quarterback, where veteran Quinten Dormady seems to have more polish than poise, his game a mess once his "no contact' practice jersey comes off each Saturday. As for Guarantano, he often appears too loose for a team where the margin for error is small.
Forgetting the last play is great when you've got the weapons to make an unforgettable play the next series. These Vols don't appear to be that team. Every snap matters. Until Guarantano figures that out, the Vols don't have two quarterbacks - they have none.
But to have Jones go through the nightmare he's living in terms of his job future after back-to-back nine-win seasons also screams of a fan base in need of a history lesson.
Over the past four-plus decades - including the current one - Tennessee has been consistently elite in the 1990s only. The program won its only national championship of any kind since the 1951 season in 1998, also winning at least 10 games on five occasions in the '90s, playing in five major bowls (if you still considered the Cotton Bowl a major), winning 99 total games and posting no losing seasons.
Every other decade - the 1970s, 1980s, 2000s and the current decade through the first five games of this season - has included at least one losing season (and at least two in all but the 1970s), no more than three 10-win seasons and no fewer than three seasons of seven wins or fewer.
That doesn't make the Vols a Kentucky, Vanderbilt or Mississippi State, but it sure doesn't make them Alabama, Florida, Florida State or Ohio State, either.
One thing Kendrick did say does hint of the undeserved superiority complex the program occasionally displays.
Said the Knoxville native: "I don't know if we thought people would roll over for us. Obviously, it didn't work out that way."
Instead, the Big Orange Nation has to hope this disappointing start won't cause the Vols to roll over the rest of the way.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.