For anyone who knows me, they know that I love Tennessee basketball and football with a passion unrivaled by most. I’m a third generation UT student, and have been watching games since before I can remember. I devour recruiting news to the point where it’s almost creepy how much I keep up with the lives of eighteen-year-olds. I even cried when Bruce Pearl got fired. It’s safe to say that I have been ecstatic for this season since Cordarrelle Patterson and Daniel McCullers signed to fill two high impact positions.

I’ll be honest, a few weeks ago I even wrote a column set to run this week about how much optimism I had for this football season. I thought that for the first time in what seems like an eternity, UT fans could hope to compete for the SEC East title. I was sure that I would get to travel to a legitimate bowl game for the first time in my college career—then Da’Rick Rogers got kicked off the team.

For those of you who don’t know, Rogers was an All-SEC receiver last season who was expected to lead what should have been the SEC’s, and possibly even the NCAA’s, best receiving corp into the season. For reasons not yet known to the public, Da’Rick has been suspended for this season and, per Derek Dooley, is not likely to return to the team.

The saying goes that one player does not make a team. Personally, I think this is something desperate people tell themselves to try to feel better after an incident such as this occurs. Anyone who tries to turn this into a positive is fooling themselves. Rogers, combined with Justin Hunter and Cordarrelle Patterson, would have put up videogame-like numbers with Tyler Bray tossing around the ball. Now, defenses can double-cover one receiver without sacrificing too much other help defense.

The effect of Rogers’ absence on this team is especially key for Derek Dooley, who is entering his third season as UT’s head coach. At the end of year three, Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Gene Chizik and Les Miles had all won national titles. The moral of that story is that by your third year in the SEC, you better be doing big things. If you aren’t, you probably aren’t the man for the job.

I want you to know that I’m not a complete negative nancy. I think this team has the talent and schedule to win nine games, and possibly even ten with the bowl game. My reasoning is that Bray, Hunter and Patterson are still a talented trio, with several young but capable wide receivers as reserves. Similarly, our three JUCO players on our defensive line have shown a lot of promise in scrimmages. Daniel McCullers seems to be as good as advertised, and at six-foot-six and 365 pounds, he will cause some damage to opposing offensive linemen. Our offensive line has one more year of experience, and Rajion Neal seems to have reinvented himself to restore the running game. We have depth where we haven’t the last few years in the secondary and defensive line, and that gives me reason to hope.

Heck, I even made a fairly sizeable bet with my oldest brother over the win total for this season, and I took the over for 7.5 games. In retrospect, that may have been stupid, but at the very least I want to believe. I want Derek Dooley to do well, probably more than anyone other than his family and the UT boosters. I want our seniors who have endured so much to leave on a good note. I want our fans to shed the bad luck and bad memories, and I want UT to become relevant again.

Remember, one player doesn’t make a team. We’ll be fine. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Shameless Plug of the Week: Hit up the Fort Sanders Yacht Club after home games for a smaller bar atmosphere with reasonably priced drinks. If you are like me, you hate being packed in places with people you don’t know. The Fort Sanders Yacht Club seems to do good business while maintaining adequate space for its patrons. For entertainment purposes, the FSYC also has nearly every video game system since the Nintendo Entertainment System and a few classic arcade machines. The FSYC earns the Hunter Tipton Seal of Approval. It is located on 17th Street, between Chipotle and Goodwill.

— Hunter Tipton is a senior in Microbiology. He can be reached at [email protected].