Several days after Tennessee clinched bowl eligibility last November with a rout of South Alabama, first-year coach Josh Heupel said he and his staff never put a ceiling on what the Volunteers could accomplish.
With the second version of Heupel’s Vols on the cusp of being a top-10 team, why start now with division rival Florida coming to town?
“I think that helped create buy-in with our players, because we’ve never set a ceiling on what we could or could not do,” Heupel said Monday during a news conference. “Last year, this was a ball game that helped in the turning point inside of our program. Obviously we didn’t come out on top and there were a lot of things we didn’t do right, but we reset on that Monday and were just able to show how everything unfolded, which created a ton of buy-in, too.
“At the end of the day, this is the fourth game of this journey this year. It’s a big one, because it’s the only one we’ve got this week.”
Saturday’s showdown between the No. 11 Vols and the No. 20 Gators will take place before a sold-out Neyland Stadium with a checkerboard look. The game will have a national CBS broadcast at 3:30 p.m., and it’s being accompanied by ESPN’s popular “College GameDay” traveling show.