- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- Georgia
- Michigan (+1)
- Washington (+1)
- Florida State (+1)
- Oregon (+1)
- Ohio State (-4)
- Texas
- Alabama
- Missouri (+1)
- Penn State (+1)
- Ole Miss (+1)
- oklahoma (+1)
- LSU (+1)
- Arizona (+2)
- Louisville (-6)
- Notre Dame (+1)
- Tulane (+1)
- Iowa (+2)
- Oklahoma State (+2)
- Liberty (+2)
- (T-21) North Carolina State (new)
- (T-21) Oregon State (-6)
- Toledo
- James Madison
- SMU (new)
Others receiving votes: Tennessee, Clemson, K-State, Utah, Troy, Kansas, New Mexico State, Kentucky, Memphis, UNC, Miami (OH)
Dropped out: K-State, Tennessee
I’m partially overcompensating for the previous 2 decades of vol football and partly in denial. I don’t really think we deserved to be ranked, but it hurts to see Toledo, Arizona and JMU to be ranked ahead of us. No sleight to them, they’ve had great seasons and actually deserve a ranking. But when dealing with anyone under 30 (my peers for the most part) Tennessee is seen as second class at best and as a result I’ve got some sort of inferiority complex when we don’t have a little number next to our name. This year was disappointing to say the least, but I had to watch Garuntano throw consecutive pick sixes against kentucky, and I still can’t go a week without seeing a reference to the “champions of life”. Times we were genuinely bad and I wanted to not wear PMS 151 c in public. This year our ceiling was still just as high as it was last year, we just had zero consistency to capitalize on it. It’s sad and I won’t try to spin it, but I still can’t admit that we don’t deserve to be ranked. We appropriated BAS as BVS and I guess this is just one of the way it manifests for me. I’ll just always be willing to fight and die on the UT is a blueblood hill.
That made me chuckle.
Yeah, I get all that. I certainly think the narrative on r/cfb only reinforced that view of the Tennessee program. I actually found it really sad how random folks would pile on for no reason (beyond the Butch Jones stuff, which did deserve the mockery). And more so than any other school, although Michigan, Texas, and A&M are also up there. I’m glad our community seems to have left behind some of that toxicity.
Now here’s where I have to disagree with you… Unless you’re referring to a certain orange SEC-bound school with a Manning QB, there are only 8 blue bloods and that’s not going to change anytime soon, unless it drops down to 7 because Nebraska can’t figure itself out.
I told you I’d fight for this, and I can certainly settle for agree to disagree. But right now we’re still top 10 all time win percentage and 11th all time wins. We’re 8th all time for National Championships, including the first ever BCS championship. Sure we’ve no Heisman winners (the football gods non ironically have a bone to pick with us on that one it seems). But we’ve beaten Alabama more than any other team (including one General Robert Neyland whom never lost to the Bear) and still maintain a winning record with pretty much everyone else. All of this is with the last two decades being our worst stretch ever of this length. We’ve been to every NY6 bowl and have won all but the Rose. We’ve got the tradition and market presence of any blue blood and The Pride of the Southland is the best marching band (with the best routine!). What holds us back is we’ve had single decades as bad as these most recent two every here and there plus we’re the only team in the nation with scheduled fixtures against bama, UGA and florida so when we’re bad everyone knows. In all I think that we’ve at least got a leg to stand on in this argument and again I’m more upset that the conversation I normally have about TN is that we aren’t on the same level as Kentucky and SCar (who’ve been better than us for most of these prior two decades).