COLUMBUS, Ohio — There are some cold, hard facts the University of Tennessee football team must face this offseason.
Naturally, when the temperature at kickoff dips into the low 20s, everything feels cold, but Saturday night’s bludgeoning at the hands of Ohio State — with the entire college football world watching — was a bucket of ice water to the face type of wake-up call.
And what should truly make Big Orange Nation shiver is seeing just how much ground their beloved Volunteers have to make up to be competitive with the nation’s top-tier title contenders. If consistently lopsided losses to Georgia in Southeastern Conference play weren’t alarming enough, a four-score humbling by the Big Ten’s Buckeyes should serve as motivation to identify and address all the areas where Tennessee is sorely lacking.
For all the positives from this 10-3 season, the lasting takeaway will be that Tennessee was exposed for not being remotely close to ready for prime time, and certainly not the College Football Playoff. Among the weekend’s four first-round games in the inaugural 12-team version of the CFP, only SMU’s 28-point thumping by Penn State earlier Saturday was (narrowly) worse than the 42-17 stomping Ohio State administered inside “The Shoe.” And even that came only after Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava’s otherwise meaningless 2-yard touchdown run with just 1:56 remaining.