Tennessee held its first scrimmage of the 2024 season Friday under the Neyland lights. With only a few weeks until the season officially takes off, preseason camp is in full swing. Scrimmages allow the veterans a chance to reconnect and also gives the newbies the on-field experiences that may be few and far between during the regular season. Even though he’s been a starting center for quite some time now, Cooper Mays still saw a decent amount of action Friday night.
“I got a good bit (Friday). I gotta do a bit,” Mays told Dave Hooker on this week’s Vol Report. “It’s good to be back. You know, there’s a lot of working parts that we got to work through and figure a lot of stuff out. So, it’s been really good.”
Mays will be playing his last year for the Vols and that age and wisdom also brings something else with it, perspective. “(Scrimmages are) always fun,” said Mays. “It’s kind of different than it used to be. The perspective on the sport’s different when you’re younger and when you’re older, but it’s still fun. And we’re still playing a kid’s game.”
Now that he is one of the elders on the squad, Mays explained how it is that his perspective has changed. “Playing at Tennessee and being a center… there’s a lot of pressure on you and there’s just a lot of stuff that needs to get done,” said Mays. “When you’re young… you just want to make a tackle and celebrate, score more touchdowns and stuff.
“But when you’re (older) is when you’ve got certain stuff you’re trying to get better at and there’s a lot of competition and there’s pressure out there. It’s a different ballgame. But it’s a lot more rewarding. There’s a lot of self-worth that comes from being really intentional every day and seeing the fruit(s) of your labor being produced.”
Friday night’s scrimmage met the expectations of the senior Mays. “Usually (the first scrimmage) looks not as clean as you’d like it to be,” Mays explained. “It’s the first time for a lot of new guys to implement a new system. It’s a huge opportunity to get your feet wet and test out what you’ve been working to.
“But at the end of the day, it’s the first time doing it for a lot of people, the first time for this group doing it together specifically. So, it’s usually not your best performance, but it’s super necessary and a lot to learn from comes out of that first time.”
Back to Mays’ outlook on the game of football as he reflects on what will be his last collegiate run. “When you’re young, you always think you always think you know what you got going on,” Mays said. “And you kind of just realize that there’s a lot to learn. You just didn’t really realize it yet, which is probably going to happen to me in the next year or so. I’m probably gonna be like, damn, I didn’t know anything. But, I guess, it’s always about perspective.”
