South Carolina Means A Whole Heck Of A Lot
Tennessee find themselves at a crossroads of their Saturday night date with the Gamecocks inside Neyland Stadium.
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Last year happened. It did. Tennessee fans remember it. South Carolina fans remember it. Heck, every college football fan remembers it. The Volunteers went into Columbia in the second-to-last game of the 2022 season and laid an egg. Even worse, they laid an egg when they controlled their College Football Playoff destiny. Beat the Gamecocks and Commodores and the Vols were in an unbelievable spot to both miss the SEC championship game and still make the CFP. I don’t need even need to write the score, you remember. It happened. It did, and it was bad.
That game feels like forever ago, though. One of the best aspects of being an Everything School is that fans don’t really have all that long to dwell on events like the South Carolina game for too long. Before you know it, college basketball is here. Then college baseball. Then fall camp all over again. You get the idea. Tennessee is good, even elite in a lot of areas within their athletic program, especially baseball and softball, and fans feel good about the direction of the athletic department under Danny White. Go to any Vol baseball game in the spring and there is a strong possibility you’re going to run into Zakai Zeigler or Josiah-Jordan James. It appears as though everyone supports one another. Tony Vitello supports Rick Barnes. Kellie Harper supports Josh Heupel.
But Tennessee football fandom is a different animal. Head coach Josh Heupel was reminded of that following the Vols’ loss in Gainesville two weeks ago. Tennessee was favored by more than a touchdown going into the game, a rarity when the Vols visit the Swamp, and the team got drubbed worse than two seasons ago in Heupel’s first season coaching the team and they were road dogs. It was a reality check for both the Tennessee football team and the Tennessee football fanbase. It’s hard to do replicate what Tennessee did in 2022. It’s darn near impossible, really. Like the South Carolina game, though, it all happened. Tennessee fans saw it. It felt like ‘98. We wondered if there 2019 LSU possibilities. The Volunteers beat Florida, LSU and Alabama in the same dang season. Vol fans had waited for a season like 2022 for two decades.
Naturally, expectations rose. Folks understood a drop-off was likely with Hendon Hooker, Darnell Wright, Cedric Tillman and Jalin Hyatt off to the NFL. However, it’s one thing to think about it, it’s another thing to see it. Vol fans saw what regression looks like in Gainesville. But really, they saw it the week prior against Austin Peay. They saw it in the third quarter against UTSA. They worry they will see it again against South Carolina.
There is no reason to panic in Knoxville, but there is reason to worry. There is a difference. Heupel is 14-3 at home at Tennessee. He’s 21-3 when he scores at least thirty points at Tennessee. When the offense is able to execute the way Heupel wants the Vols usually win. The floor will always be quite high during the Heupel era for this very reason. When it doesn’t, though, you see things like Florida happen. Or what happened in Athens a few weeks before Columbia. When it’s rough, it’s rough for the Vols. But, man, when it’s easy, like the first quarter against UTSA last week, it’s a thing of beauty to watch.
All of this can be true, and yet, Saturday feels like a pinnacle moment for Heupel and Tennessee. You lose this game, you’re staring at 0-2 in the SEC and your season is effectively over before you even get to Texas A&M, Alabama and Georgia. (Expectations, remember.) Even worse, you will have lost back-to-back SEC games where you were favored. That sort of stuff matters. When Heupel loses SEC games, it’s generally not pretty. Ole Miss at home ‘21. Georgia on the road in ‘22. You get the idea. So if the Vols go down at home Saturday night as 11.5-point favorites, it’s fair to assume a whole heck of a lot went terribly wrong. Terribly. You lose to South Carolina and suddenly 7-5 looks certain. If you lose to the Gamecocks and Gators, why would you expect to be able to beat three better SEC teams later and win both road contests at Missouri and Kentucky? You wouldn’t, of course.
Like it or not, this game means everything for the 2023 Tennessee football team. You get revenge and stifle Spencer Rattler and then go into a bye week with a whole lot of momentum. Heupel has never lost a game coming out of a bye and you get the Aggies right at that time. Perfect. Alabama on the road looks winnable. Suddenly, Georgia is the only remaining roadblock you’re worried about from the middle of the season on. People will have forgotten all about Florida. With a victory, 10-2 or 9-3 seems likely. A result that most Tennessee fans expected coming into this year, with 9-3 being the most common. Crisis averted.
It’s also the biggest game for Joe Milton III in his career. All eyes will be on the best quarterback in the SEC this year in Rattler. (The guy average 14.4 YPA against Mississippi State over the weekend.) The crowd noise issues in the Swamp won’t be applicable in this game. Center Cooper Mays looks like he’ll make his season debut. Dylan Sampson is coming off a huge game against the Roadrunners the previous week. He can’t have a quarter like he did in the third against South Carolina. We haven’t see four consecutive great quarters from Milton to this point this season. This is it. You’ve got to do it here or you’re staring at 0-2 in SEC. You’re staring at a situation, fair or not, where fans will have adjusted their expectations for the 2023 Vols. Instead of thinking about a trip to Atlanta, the conversation swiftly shifts to getting 5-star true freshman QB Nico Iamaleava reps to get him ready for ‘24. You lose this game, you have to sit with it for two weeks instead of one. A whole lot more time for folks to talk about what happened against South Carolina under the lights in Neyland.
Like it or not, beating South Carolina means a whole heck of a lot for Tennesssee, Josh Heupel, Joe Milton and Tennessee fans everywhere. Everything changes after Saturday. For better or for worse. Buckle up, folks.
Chase Thomas is “The Sports Renaissance Man”, “Atlanta Sports Guy” and your favorite VFL. He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and still resides in Knoxville, TN with the Sports Renaissance Woman and their little buddy Khaleesi The Dog. Chase also obtained his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of North Georgia. He has written for a variety of publications that include Outsider, SB Nation, VICE Sports, SI’s The Cauldron, Cox Media Group & ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. You can email him at chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.