Tennessee Volunteers Growing Closer As A Team
By Zach Ragan
Apr 20, 2013; Knoxville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers head coach Butch Jones signs a helmet for a fan before the spring Orange and White game at Neyland Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports
“Having each other’s back” is a cliche that often-times is overused and said without thinking by football teams around the nation.
But cliches like that are exactly what Vols head coach Butch Jones thrives on and they aren’t used by Jones without thought, or a reason behind them.
The truth is team 117 has each other’s back, they’ve grown together as a family, something Butch Jones preached from the moment he arrived in Knoxville.
"Everything that we do is centered around family. It’s a brotherhood – Butch Jones, December 7, 2012"
When you watch this team interact you can immediately feel the closeness, not just among the players, but among the players and the staff as well.
And where there’s closeness, there’s tough love — something else this staff is good at demonstrating.
If you ever have the chance to take in a Tennessee practice, you’ll see that tough love, which has brought this team even closer together, something that running back Alden Hill described to us during Tennessee’s media day last week.
When I asked Hill if he felt this team was closer than the team last season, he didn’t hesitate to answer my question.
“Oh for sure” the redshirt freshman running back exclaimed immediately after being asked if team 117 was closer than the previous team. “Coach Jones has done a lot of things with us. We went through some hard training, this is the hardest training I’ve ever been through. When you go through hard adversity ,with the workouts, it really brings you together”
Last season you could sense the dissension among players and between the players and the coaching staff. The tension hit a crescendo during the Vols loss at Vanderbilt, after which Derek Dooley was relieved of his duties as head coach.
The next game, coached by offensive coordinator Jim Chaney, you sensed a different Tennessee team. The players were playing for someone that they felt cared about them and that respect was reciprocated after the Vols beat Kentucky, as the team doused Chaney with Gatorade, sending him off with a career 1-0 record as Tennessee’s head coach.
Butch Jones has found the formula for creating a family atmosphere with this football team.
Not only is this team much, much closer, but they’re a team full of players that fans can be proud to call Vols.
With all the negative publicity in the college football world lately, arrests, autograph scandals and eligibility issues, you are hard pressed to find a program that hasn’t been affected negatively in some way this off-season.
Tennessee, however, is one of those rare programs. You haven’t heard of any players getting in trouble, fights in night clubs, beer bottles being thrown, arrests, academic fraud investigation, none of that stuff.
What you have heard, are stories of the football program improving their team GPA and having the best academic semester they’ve had in recent memory.
You’ve heard about the countless hours of community service that this team has provided.
You’ve heard stories about the habitat for humanity home that this team contributed to this summer.
Those are the types of things that build closeness and team chemistry, which in turns prevents breakdowns on the field in the third quarter when players hit that invisible wall.
When the guy to the left of you is there to pick you up, that’s something you can’t measure by looking at stats, depth charts or highlight reels.
"To our great and passionate fan base, and everyone here that loves this program, we’ll be working to be champions each and every day. We will be a champion in everything that we do. That’s not only on the field, but off the field. It starts in the class room. It starts graduating with a meaningful degree. It’s being a productive citizen, it’s being active in our community. That’s what winning is about. I really believe that if you win off the field, you will win on the field. We will be a champion in all we do. We will start from day one to create our culture in our players for them to understand how to succeed on a day to day basis and the standards by which they will abide by. – Butch Jones, December 7, 2012"
Jones wasn’t blowing hot air when he promised all those things, he’s delivered on all of it.
So is there really any reason to doubt that he’ll have Tennessee back at a championship level in the near future?