Tennessee football: Russell Westbrook channels Butch Jones with life championship claim

Former Tennessee football head coach Butch Jones has been able to resurrect himself in more ways than one in recent months. He’s landed a new head coaching job with the Arkansas State Red Wolves, his most famous and first major protege, Antonio Brown, won a Super Bowl, and now NBA stars are living by his philosophy, including Russell Westbrook.

The Washington Wizards guard recently responded to criticism from ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith using one of Jones’ most infamous quotes. When Smith criticized his play, Westbrook said he’ll be okay if he doesn’t win a championship, noting that getting to where he is in life from where he grew up already makes him a champion. Here’s his exact quote.

Of course, that’s basically saying he’s a life champion. Jones said the same thing when Tennessee football failed to win the SEC East in 2016 despite being a preseason top 10 team. His exact quote was his players are champions and that they’ve won the “championship of life,” which is the greatest championship of all.

This all started when Smith said on First Take Tuesday that it’s no longer about numbers with Westbrook but instead about a title. Given the fact that Westbrook has averaged a triple double once before but only got past the first round once without Kevin Durant and is now, it was a super reasonable take.

Westbrook then had a long response, and his wife, Nina, also went at Smith. Both of them had a focus on Westbrook’s accomplishments off the court, which are to be commended but blatantly missed the point.

To be fair to his wife, she was defending her husband, so nobody should hold anything against her. However, here’s what Russell Westbrook and Jones both failed to understand: nobody is questioning their accomplishments in life. The same holds true for UT players in 2016. Their accomplishments in life were not questioned.

Whenever any analyst, media member or even blogger is talking about a player, the context is usually about what they accomplished between the lines. It’s ridiculous to compare that to what they’ve accomplished in life. Smith said as much.

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Now, to be fair to Jones, Russell Westbrook’s comments are more ridiculous because, as Smith pointed out, he’s paid hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue a title. He may not win one, but the reason he’s won his life championship is because people are paying him to try to win one.

Jones, on the other hand, was coaching amateur athletes. Tennessee football players, at least on the surface, weren’t getting paid, so they shouldn’t be held to the same standard. However, they were on academic scholarship, and Jones himself was getting paid millions, so there were some perks that they enjoyed with the expectation that they would try to win a championship.

Simply put, claiming a life championship is not a good excuse for failing to do what you got the life championship to try to do in the first place. If a regular person fails to get something done at work, that doesn’t mean they should be fired, but if they said it’s okay this didn’t get done because they are life champions by just having the job, they might.

One year after making those comments, Butch Jones was out as Tennessee football’s head coach. Not setting a high standard is something Vol fans hold against him. Ironically, like Russell Westbrook now, Jones eventually got thin-skinned with media members as well.