It’s supposed to be a friendly agreement. Games like the one Tennessee football played against the Akron Zips Saturday usually involve one team paying the other a lot of money to lose to them in a blowout.
Of course, the Appalachian State Mountaineers usually have other goals in mind, but for Akron and the Vols, everything went to plan. UT won that game 63-6.
However, for such a blowout in a game between teams on such different levels, there was a lot of jawing that happened. Tennessee football tight end Jacob Warren said he understood it from Akron’s side.
“No one wants to lose,” he said. “No one wants to get beat by however much they were getting beat.”
Some Vol fans are blaming Akron’s chippiness as the root cause of some injuries in the first half. Jabari Small went down on the second play from scrimmage. Cedric Tillman later went down, and eventually Tyler Baron got hurt.
Josh Heupel implied that Tillman’s and Small’s injuries were minor, but we still don’t know. Baron’s doesn’t appear to be an issue at all.
Still, the aggression came to a head in the second half, as Jimmy Calloway threw multiple punches at an Akron defensive back and was subsequently ejected. Warren said he didn’t see it, but he addressed the matter.
“To me, it’s a lapse in focus, and that’s not him, and I wish that wasn’t what the media and everyone else that was watching is going to see as him, and it’s really unfortunate,” he said. “Obviously he’ll be fine, but it’s unfortunate that that went down.”
With SEC play beginning the next week, being aggressive like that in a game that’s in hand is obviously something that will hurt the Vols more than Akron. That’s why they needed to be careful.
Warren said Akron was getting that way because the Vols were feeling confident. He said they can’t talk much because they’re losing in such a big way.
“That makes them mad, and then it leads to the next play where people are trying to take shots at each other, and then it leads to all this other stuff,” he said.
However, Warren noted that such chippiness is natural when you have such competition involving young players with “pride” and “cockiness.” He said that doesn’t mean he’d get violent, though.
“To me, when I’m on the field, if you do something stupid, or if you’re trying to hurt one of my teammates, yeah, I’m going to get in your face, and I’m going to confront you about it or whatever, and I’m going to tell you to stop doing it,” he said. “I’m not going to put my hands on you. I’m not going to do anything to get myself in trouble, right, to get a flag or whatever it may be.”
Of course, Tennessee football has historically been the one to probably have the attitude when facing the Florida Gators in the past given Florida’s dominance in the series. They’re trying to change that this year, though.
