If you’re a player at a program that’s fortunate enough to have high expectations, then you better embrace it.
Because shying away from those high expectations would only lead to certain failure.
Fortunately enough for Vol fans, starting quarterback Josh Dobbs craves the high expectations.
"Dobbs: When you come to Tennessee, you come to win an SEC championship and to win a national championship. That’s our mindset. That’s everyone’s mindset when they were recruited to come to Tennessee. So I don’t feel like there are raised expectations. That’s always been our expectation. Now we have to go out and execute."
Obviously every team’s expectation is to win. But let’s not kid ourselves and think that Tennessee was a contender in 2013 or 2014.
Butch Jones’ goal the past two seasons was simple — play in a bowl game.
The goal this season is much higher — to win the SEC East.
It will be very interesting to see how the Vols respond to being front-runners in one of the toughest conferences in college football.
Tennessee, under Butch Jones, has never been in this position. It much different when you’re not sneaking up on folks.
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So if the Vols are going to be picked to finish out front, they need to own it.
Josh Dobbs is doing and saying the right things. It wouldn’t be smart to shy away from the championship talk, simply because it sends the wrong message to the rest of the team (and fan base).
If you want to be a championship team, you must believe you’re a championship team.
That belief starts with Dobbs and as you can see above, it looks like he believes it.
Of course the Vols can’t just believe the hype, they must make other teams believe it as well.
That’s a fine line that Tennessee will walk in 2015. They can’t get big heads before they’ve even played a game, but they need to have the confidence that all championship teams have. A bit of swagger, if you will.
If the Vols can harness the pre-season hype and not let it overtake them, they’ll be a very dangerous team this upcoming season.