KNOXVILLE -- It took Tennessee football coach Butch Jones less than two minutes Monday morning to remind every parent why he might be the best guy out there to coach their athletically gifted sons.
"Our first three practices will be in the evening because we have to win in the classroom first and foremost," he said at the start of his preseason news conference inside the Stokely Family Media Center at Neyland Stadium.
"There are a couple of days left in summer school, so we don't want to interfere with that."
I'm certain that Jones isn't the only head football coach from a Fat Cat Five conference who chooses to espouse his commitment to academics at the start of preseason practice. He's just the only one who seems routinely to put academics first, regardless of what time of year it is.
So when his initial words have to do with winning in the classroom first and foremost - and he can point to a steadily improving team grade point average since his arrival in December 2012 to back up his rhetoric - it carries extra weight. It rings true. It screams of a coach with his priorities in order, which seems all too rare these days.
Not that strongly embracing academics will keep Jones employed if the Volunteers don't produce on the field. Entering his third season, he stands a pedestrian 12-13 overall and 5-11 within the brutal Southeastern Conference.
It may be true that no fan base falsely inflates its importance nationally more than the Big Orange Nation, given that Tennessee has played for exactly one national championship since 1951 and hasn't been to a BCS level bowl since the year after that 1998 title.
But it's also true that a program with a historic 100,000-seat stadium, a total of 37 nine-wins-or-better seasons in its 118 years of football and one of the most recognizable songs in all of college sports - "Rocky Top" - should win at least as many SEC games as it loses and contend for a national championship more than once every 64 years.
Tennessee quarterback Joshua Dobbs speaks to reporters at the Southeastern Conference NCAA college football media days Tuesday, July 14, 2015, in Hoover, Ala. Because of that, Jones' ability to keep convincing Volniacs that he's on the verge of once more making UT relevant may well hinge on this year's wins and losses, especially if no wins come against Alabama, Florida, Georgia or Oklahoma.
"As I have said, we can't just be a year older," Jones noted. "We have to be a year better. We have to learn from past experiences. We have to be a year wiser."
And they should be. For the first time since he's been at Knoxville, both the first- and second-team offensive lines are made up of scholarship players only. Quarterback Josh Dobbs is a junior with significant experience. The defense is filled with difference makers - most notably end Derek Barnett, backs Brian Randolph and Cameron Sutton and linebackers Curt Maggitt and Jalen Reeves-Maybin, who just might be the nation's best open-field tackler.
Beyond that, running backs Jalen Hurd and Alvin Kamara could form a nasty 1-2 punch behind Dobbs, and there are enough talented wideouts to fill two rosters.
This isn't to say everything is as Jones wants it to be.
Noting last year's red-zone struggles he cited the following stats:
1) "When you look at our SEC competition scoring offense, we were 27 percent in scoring offense in the red zone. That is inexcusable. We need to score touchdowns in the red zone."
2) "I believe, defensively, we were in the red zone 34 times last year, and we gave up 32 scores, so that is going to be a point of contention. We have always invested in it, but we will continue to invest in it even more."
Yet much of that could also be contributed to the coach's tardiness in handing the offense over to Dobbs once Justin Worley was lost for the season due to injury.
Yet the positives apparently outweigh the negatives enough for Jones to admit that he's "a lot more comfortable" than last year.
Of course, he also noted, "For us as a football team, still 64 percent of our team is comprised of players that have been in one year or less in our football program. That still puts us as one of the youngest teams in all of college football."
Yet because most of these players, as the NCAA likes to say, "will be turning pro in something other than athletics," academics also matter, which is why Jones so often talks of "meaningful degrees."
This is not to say that every Vol is pursuing as meaningful and difficult a degree as Dobbs' aerospace engineering major. There are the usual majors so often listed in major college football media guides: sociology, recreation and sport management, kinesiology and communication studies, not that there's anything wrong with those.
But there also are Vols players majoring in architecture (freshman linebacker DaJour Maddox), business analytics (kicker Aaron Medley) and biomedical engineering (defensive back Todd Kelly Jr. and tight end Alex Ellis). Others are tackling finance, history, special education and human resource management.
So no matter what ultimately happens on the field this autumn, the Big Orange Nation should puff out its chest at least a bit this week, if only to show some justifiable pride that its head coach hasn't forgotten the importance of winning in the classroom first and foremost. If there is justice, meaningful wins on the football field surely will lfollow.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com