A few minutes after Tennessee’s game against Oklahoma began on Sept. 13, the final score of the Georgia-South Carolina game appeared on my Twitter feed.
South Carolina 38, Georgia 35.
I mentioned the result to my comrades in the press box at The Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and paused for a moment.
Then, in my most sarcastic voice, I dusted off a phrase that nobody in Knoxville had used in several years.
“Looks like the Vols control their own destiny in the SEC East,” I said, eliciting a few chuckles (mainly from myself).
Let me refresh you on what that phrase means. It’s the idea that if UT just takes care of its business and plays decent football, it will have a good shot at making the SEC Championship game.
South Carolina beating Georgia muddied the division as a whole because it left both the favorites with an early conference loss.
In a bygone era, Vols fans rejoiced over outcomes like that because they made their team’s path to the SEC Championship game easier.
But with UT notching a combined four conference wins in the last three seasons, there has been no reason to even look at the SEC standings, let alone prognosticate about how they affect the Vols.
The only SEC destiny the Vols have controlled in the last three years is whether they would avoid last place by defeating Kentucky.
And then Saturday happened.
If there was any doubt that the SEC West is the league’s better half, the East erased it this weekend.
South Carolina struggled against a bad Vanderbilt team, Florida’s defense made Lane Kiffin’s Alabama offense look like the nation’s best, and Missouri embarrassed the SEC by losing at home to an inferior Indiana team.
Georgia (2-1, 0-1 SEC) shredded lowly Troy 66-0, but it’s still too early to tell if the Bulldogs are capable of returning to national prominence after their loss to the Gamecocks.
That will become somewhat more clear when UT (2-1, 0-0 SEC) travels to Athens, Georgia, this Saturday.
Make no mistake; the Vols are plenty capable of continuing in SEC irrelevancy and finishing the season 5-7.
But the rare vulnerability of the six division foes still remaining on their schedule provides a great opportunity to do better.
Only the Vols and Missouri are left undefeated in the East, and the Tigers indicated in their loss to Indiana that they don’t plan on making a return trip to the SEC Championship game.
If, somehow, the Vols complete the upset they narrowly missed last season and beat Georgia on Saturday, they will be a part of the conversation in the East for at least a week.
That’s a week longer than anyone expected.
And no one will be laughing when someone says that UT controls its own destiny.
David Cobb is a senior in journalism and electronic media. He can be reached at [email protected].
