Wiedmer: Vols going from Georgia State debacle to Gator Bowl trip not a bad bounce-back performance

Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt will make his first bowl appearance with the Vols when they face Indiana in the Gator Bowl on Jan. 2 in Jacksonville, Fla. / Staff file photo by C.B. Schmelter
Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt will make his first bowl appearance with the Vols when they face Indiana in the Gator Bowl on Jan. 2 in Jacksonville, Fla. / Staff file photo by C.B. Schmelter

Tennessee in the Gator Bowl?

Raise your hand if you thought that would happen in the late afternoon hours of Aug. 31, right after the Volunteers had laid the egg to end all eggs against Georgia State inside Neyland Stadium.

Follow up that embarrassment - some called it the most humiliating loss in program history - with a fall-from-ahead overtime defeat the following week against Brigham Young University, and almost no one save second-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt might have believed the Vols capable of winning their final five games, going 5-3 in the Southeastern Conference and spending the New Year's holiday in Florida preparing for a Jan. 2 game against Indiana in Jacksonville.

"This is a credit to our players, our coaching staff, our support staff, our administration and our fans," Pruitt said in a Tennessee release Sunday. "The Gator Bowl has a rich history and we are honored to be a part of the 75th edition of the game. We've had a great second half of the season, winning five straight, but we are not done yet."

You don't need to see the world through orange-tinted glasses to believe the Vols may just be getting started under Pruitt and his staff.

Not only have they won the aforementioned five straight (including four in a row in the SEC) but there is enough young talent returning and a promising recruiting class on the way to believe the Vols will do at least as well next year - both Florida and Alabama must visit Neyland Stadium, after all - if not better.

In fact, in a year when Alabama missed the College Football Playoff for the first time since it began in 2014, and only LSU reached the playoff from within the conference, the Big Orange just might have the small window it needs to return to the league's elite in a year or two.

As athletic director Phillip Fulmer noted in the same release: "The University of Tennessee is proud to be a part of (the Gator Bowl's) rich history, and we are very excited to bring this passionate fan base and hungry football team to Jacksonville."

Passionate fan base. Hungry football team. Those two combinations are almost impossible to beat at bowl time. Yes, Indiana is no doubt thrilled to be bowling for the 12th time in school history, as well as returning to a bowl for the first time since 2016, which was also the last time the Vols played beyond the regular season.

But this is also Tennessee's 53rd bowl game overall, and while the Big Orange is on a five-game winning streak, the Hoosiers (8-4) have lost two of their past three games, though those two defeats did come against Penn State and Michigan.

The Vols and Hoosiers have met once before in a bowl game, with Tennessee knocking off Indiana 27-22 in the Peach Bowl in 1987.

Not that the Vols reaching the Gator Bowl instead of getting a possible Music City Bowl or Belk Bowl bid was the big news of the day.

That honor fell to the two College Football Playoff semifinals, which will be played on Saturday, Dec. 28, and will pair No. 1 seed LSU against No. 4 seed Oklahoma inside Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium at the Peach Bowl with No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 seed Clemson tangling in the Fiesta Bowl later that day.

After Georgia was thumped 37-10 in the SEC title game on Saturday, there wasn't a great deal of suspense about which teams would make up college football's final four, but the committee should be applauded for both its selection of those four and where each school was seeded.

As for who ultimately wins it, I'll give a shaky nod to LSU, though I've felt Ohio State has been passing the so-called eye test better since late October. There's also the fear that Tigers quarterback Joe Burrow - who transferred from Ohio State in May 2018 - might tighten up should he face his old team in the championship game.

Then again, this single quote from Burrow after he passed for 349 yards and four touchdowns against the Dawgs makes you wonder if anything rattles him.

Asked about all the defensive schemes he's had to face this year, Burrow replied: "We watch film and we go (into the game) and see something they haven't done all year. It happens time and time again every single week. I tell my coaches, 'Why do we even watch film anymore? We might as well go out there cold turkey.'"

Sounds like it might be easier to rattle a CIA agent than Burrow.

But assuming the Tigers get past the defensively challenged Sooners, another 16 days will pass - a longer wait than any Super Bowl participant has ever faced - before the CFP title game on Jan. 1 in New Orleans.

Until then, at least within the Big Orange Nation, the football talk will center on the Hoosiers, who are much better known as a basketball school.

In Indiana's own bowl release, athletic director Fred Glass said, "Earning an invitation to our first ever Florida bowl game is a reflection of the hard work of our players and staff, and yet another remarkable achievement in a season of remarkable achievements."

No offense to the Hoosiers, but anyone who watched Georgia State overpower the Vols in Neyland Stadium on the last day of August knows the most remarkable achievement of this college football season may well be Tennessee reaching any bowl, much less the Gator Bowl.

photo Mark Wiedmer

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @TFPWeeds.

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