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Tennessee football: 5 reasons Vols could lose to ETSU Bucs

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 15: A view of the outside of Neyland Stadium before a game between the Florida Gators and Tennessee Volunteers on September 15, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 15: A view of the outside of Neyland Stadium before a game between the Florida Gators and Tennessee Volunteers on September 15, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images) /
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Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images /

5. ETSU has nothing to lose.

Hey, this means a lot. The Buccaneers just restarted their football program back in 2015, with a lot of help from Phillip Fulmer, by the way. They opened this season with a 28-7 victory over Mars Hill, and now they travel into Knoxville with a 1-0 record.

The Vols are obviously 0-1, and the blowout loss to the West Virginia Mountaineers killed a lot of the morale. Confidence is at an all-time low, and the worst part is beating ETSU is going to do nothing for that.

In fact, Tennessee football is desperate to show it’s a program on the rise from last year. But with the UTEP Miners to follow the ETSU Bucs, their players know they’ll have to wait at least three weeks before they can prove anything again. That makes it doubly hard to get up for this game.

Meanwhile, ETSU will have no problem getting excited for the match-up. This is a team that went 4-7 last year but lost three games by one score, now has a new head coach and, as we said, is 1-0. They have a lot to be excited about.

A win over Tennessee would simply create a major spark in the program, while a loss would be nothing worse than a great experience playing at Neyland. So yeah, the psychological edge in this game is fully on the side of the Bucs, and that could play a role if things get tight in the second half.

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