Tony Vitello missed the mark when discussing successes Tennessee baseball had throughout the season this year. Given the brash style of the Vols and the way they embraced the hate from the nation, none of those successes outweigh the ridicule they now must accept.
UT won the SEC Regular Season and Tournament Championship. They earned the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. Somehow, though, they couldn’t reach the College World Series, losing in three games during the NCAA Super Regionals to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Notre Dame didn’t even get to host a regional. This is a bad choke job by any stretch of the imagination. However, Vitello and Tennessee baseball have to own it more than your average team would have to because of the way they went about the year.
En route to that No. 1 overall ranking, the Vols welcomed the controversy that came. When Jordan Beck dealt with a cheating allegation earlier in the year against the Vanderbilt Commodores, Vitello jokingly referred to him as Mike Honcho during an interview. The sarcasm was warranted and perfectly fair, but it was there.
Beck also threw up middle fingers after a home run in the Vols’ regional win against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, and he had a notorious bat spike in the Vols’ one win over Notre Dame, which came on Saturday. That’s a lot of brashness for one player.
He wasn’t the only one to bring the smoke, though. Vitello got suspended for getting into the face of an umpire during the regular season and making contact. His pitching coach, Frank Anderson, was ejected twice during the year, missing the final game as a result.
Drew Beam got ejected in Rocky Top’s Friday loss to Notre Dame. Everywhere you turned, the Vols were owning the moniker of the classless baseball team and rubbing the old school noses in it. Fans had a blast in the process, and it made for a fun season. That’s all fine if you back it up.
However, if you can dish it, you have to take it. Given all the ways Tennessee baseball dished it out during the regular season, they are going to have to accept all the ridicule that now comes with one of the most historic choke jobs in college baseball history.
Vitello can bring up winning 57 games. He is right to talk about the onslaught of unfair and unsubstantiated cheating allegations, including erroneous reporting of PEDs on Evan Russell during the NCAA Regional that was an awful look for ESPN.
All of that, though, ignores how the Vols went out of their way to invite all the national hate. It’s similar to Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers in 2015. Remember when he did all that talking en route to the MVP and a Super Bowl appearance?
It’s fine if you want to do all that, but if you do, then you had better back it up or own it when you don’t. Newton walked out of his press conference after losing to Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos in which he played horribly, and it was just a bad look.
To be fair, Vitello didn’t walk out of any press conference. However, Tennessee baseball fans can’t just be talking about what they accomplished this year to defend themselves from what will come. They embraced the hate and the controversy. If you do that, ridicule follows when you choke. The Vols must now accept that.