Porch Talks with Joel Schmieg

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Attention Tennessee fans everywhere: I will try to make this as simple as possible, so that you can comprehend it.

The Volunteers are posers.

They still don’t have a quality victory — no offense, Georgia.

Tennessee barely managed to beat the now-unranked Bulldogs thanks to a last-second hail-mary made possible by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Georgia for a guy taking his helmet off after catching what should have been the game-winning touchdown.

Tennessee started the season ranked way too high at No. 8 and then barely beat Appalachian State in overtime, which dropped them all the way to No. 17.

Since then, the only victories to talk about are against No. 18 Florida and the previously-mentioned Georgia Bulldogs to move UT up to No. 9 in the latest AP poll.

The win against Florida only counts as half of a quality victory in my book, at least for now.

There is a good chance Florida will drop out of the top 25 by season’s end as well.

So I would advise Tennessee to enjoy this feeling while it can, because two weeks from now, UT will be coming off two straight losses to Texas A&M and Alabama, and all will be right again.

Even then, Tennessee will be able to cruise to the SEC Championship thanks to an extremely weak SEC East and get a rematch with one of those two West teams it will have already lost to.

After keeping it considerably close for the first half, the other side will run away with the game, and the Vols will end up in a semi-respectable bowl game thanks to its 10-3 record that includes, at max, one quality win.

Whether Tennessee wins or loses that bowl game, it will start the 2017 season ranked way too high, yet again.

It might as well be called the Volunteer cycle.

The path is inevitable — start the season ranked absurdly high, edge out close games early, lose to all the SEC West teams, and finish the season in a decent bowl game.

I hate to mention the SEC bias, but it’s real.

The entire SEC gets a good name, thanks to the SEC West, which deserves the recognition.

The west is loaded — I get that. But why does the east share in that same recognition?

The only team from the east that ever represented the SEC in the national championship game during the conference’s reign of terror was Florida, and the Gators are a long, long way from where they used to be.

So get off your high horse, Tennessee, before you come crashing down.

By the way, Butch, get off the ground. There’s no crying in football.

Schmieg is the sports editor

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