Knoxville Becoming The Black Eye Capital Of The SEC

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When it comes to brand names, Tennessee used to have one of the best in college sports.  Traditionally, the Volunteers have been one of the 10 winningest football programs in the country.  Bruce Pearl has raised the bar for Vol basketball.  The national all-sports race has always included the name Tennessee.  The school has built some of the biggest, nicest venues in the country.  Boy Scout Peyton Manning has been the face of the program.  And the UT athletic department has been known for legendary coaches and All-American players.

But in the world of brand names, perception is reality.  And the national perception is this: Tennessee’s program is a mess.  So whether folks in the Volunteer State want to admit it or not, the reality is this: Tennessee’s program is a mess.

Put another way, if your school garners more bad publicity than a school whose athletic director was arrested for DUI with a woman’s panties in his lap… it’s done its work.

We live in a ticker society.  What originally fills up a ticker space at the bottom of ESPN’s programming is much more impactful than the final outcome of those same stories.  A player might be cleared of charges a month after the fact, but the original arrest will always get the most play.  Those initial charges — especially when they’re big, juicy and out of the ordinary — will define outsiders’ perceptions of a program.

With that in mind, here are some of the black eyes from around the SEC in the past year (and I’m sure I’ll leave some out, so I’m sorry in advance):

Georgia — An athletic director was arrested and forced out in an embarrassing scandal.  There have been numerous arrests of individual football players.

Kentucky — John Calipari is a one-man ticker scroll.  There were charges of improprieties involving Eric Bledsoe.  A TMZ report claimed that the NCAA is investigating some Wildcat basketball players for their connections to agents.  Former coach Billy Gillispie was arrested for a DUI… as was a current Calipari assistant.

Alabama –  The Tide had to deal with NCAA sanctions due to a department-wide textbook scandal.

Florida –  Urban Meyer’s health issues were technically more bizarre than embarrassing.  But rumors of widespread marijuana use on the Gator football team briefly made national news.

None of those stories gave fans of those schools reason to take pride in Hometown U.  Those are stories that America saw on tickers and heard about on national talk radio shows.  Forget which ones turn out to be completely true.  They’re all out there.

But as bad as those stories were, look at what Tennessee has dealt with in just the past year:

* Lane Kiffin made national news for running his mouth and receiving SEC reprimands as a result.  To make matters worse, he was usually wrong in what he said.

* Three UT football players were arrested on charges of armed robbery outside a convenient store.  Marijuana was found in their get-away Prius.

* An NCAA probe into Tennessee’s use of recruiting hostesses made national headlines.

* Four UT basketball players were arrested on New Year’s Day with guns, marijuana and an open container of alcohol in their car.  The Vols’ best player was dismissed in the fallout.

* Kiffin up and left Tennessee for Southern Cal, publicly shafting one of college football’s traditional powers.

* Some Vol fans reacted to Kiffin’s departure with death threats, burned mattresses and a near riot on campus.  YouTube videos and an HBO report documented the affair for folks all across the country.

* Now “seven to 10″ football players appear to have been involved in a barroom brawl that has left one off-duty police officer in the ER amid reports that he has bleeding in his brain.  Another man was sent to a Knoxville hospital as well.  And a campus police officer was assaulted, too.  Two Vols have been arrested.  So far.

* The latest story could be bad from an athletic sense, too, if the bar owner’s claim that “VIP status” was given to UT athletes is true.  The NCAA — which has already been snooping around Knoxville due to the hostess case and other possible Kiffin violations — might take an interest in just how much money UT players saved on cover charges over who knows how many years.  That’s an obvious “extra benefits” case.

Many Tennessee fans — as happens at all schools — will say that boys will be boys and UT’s shepherds can’t watch over their flocks at all hours.  True enough. 

But beatings and gun charges are worse than your run of the mill foul-ups.  Talking to an agent or using a free text book or drinking underage is one thing.  Leaving an unconscious man for dead in the street is something else.

Over the past 12 months the UT athletic department has been generating bad headlines at a 1980s Miami or Oklahoma clip.  And as I stated above, if a school comes out of this week with more of a black eye than Georgia… it’s done some seriously heavy lifting.

For now at least, Knoxville, Tennessee is The Black Eye Capital of the SEC.