All for Tennessee
Fansided

Tennessee football: Season ticket sales show how Vols are back as a program

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 06: A general view of the Tennessee Volunteers taking the field before the start of their game against the Georgia Bulldogs at Neyland Stadium on October 6, 2007 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 06: A general view of the Tennessee Volunteers taking the field before the start of their game against the Georgia Bulldogs at Neyland Stadium on October 6, 2007 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit

Reports about Tennessee football’s season ticket sales for 2017 show how the Volunteers truly are back as a program, even if the titles haven’t come yet.

Must Read: 4 Reasons Vols could be better in 2017 than 2016

Yes, Tennessee football’s 2016 team under-achieved. And yes, there’s a chance the 2017 season is Butch Jones’s last as the Vols’ head coach.

But no, that does not mean the program is not back. And numbers beyond championships tell that.

Jimmy Hyams of WNML noted on Twitter Monday that the Vols had sold nearly 69,000 season tickets already for 2017.

Now think about that. Last year, the Vols entered with ridiculously high expectations, and as football becomes more of a studio sport, they got back to 2007 numbers, another year that opened with a senior quarterback and in which they won the East.

More from Vols Football

The numbers this year, though, prove that Tennessee football is truly a program once again and that 2016 wasn’t just a single seaso. With lots of departing talent and much lower expectations than 2016, the season ticket sales barely dipped.

That means that Vols fans remain invested.

There are other ways to show Tennessee football is back, including the fact that they will still likely open the year in the Top 25.

And they’re playing in one of the feature games on opening week.

This is not to say that the Vols are a championship program or will win anything this year. But it does demonstrate that Butch Jones deserves more of a break than he’s getting for putting the program back on solid ground.

Even Paul Finebaum was forced to admit as much. After being harshly critical of Jones last week and then hearing Jones respond on ESPN Monday, he moderated his stance when the two spoke later.

And Finebaum had to note just how far the program has come under Jones.

Sure, it’s not your standard period for a rebuilding program. People expect a coach to get a championship within his third or fourth year of rebuilding a program.

But the coach’s first job is to get the program to the point where it can compete for titles.

Jones has successfully done that. And the season ticket sales prove that he’s made Tennessee football relevant again.

Next: 4 Ways 2017 Vols are similar to 1998 title team

So while the championships have not come yet, it’s time to give him more respect than he’s getting. After all, Tennessee had gone through three straight losing seasons before he arrived. And they went through five straight seasons finishing the year unranked.

Of all the other rebuilding jobs out there, no program had fallen that far.

Home/Vols Football