On Saturday night I watched the Tennessee/Florida game while attending to the wants of six third graders. My daughter Emily had a sleepover party to celebrate her ninth birthday. Every time the girls needed some water or a doughnut, they came downstairs.
“Is Tennessee winning,” they would ask.
“No,” I would reply.
“Of course,” one of them said.
This is what a generation of kids is growing with in Knoxville. Tennessee has had so much futility over the past decade that losses are not feared, but expected.
The blowout loss to Florida doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be optimism for the Jeremy Pruitt era, but that any delusions of a bowl game trip should be wiped away right now.