Jim McElwain is certainly no Steve Spurrier. Spurrier would often go out of his way to poke fun at Tennessee when he was coaching the Gators. Heck, he’d probably still do it today on the golf course on a whim.
But McElwain is on the other end of the spectrum when it comes to taunting rivals, and he’s setting the bar high for the Vols for the 2016 college football season. Despite coaching the Gators to the SEC East title last season, McElwain is singing the praises of his division rival from Knoxville.
“I kind of have to worry about us,” McElwain said Wednesday during an SEC coaches conference call with the media. “I’m sure that they should be (favored) and they should beat the heck out of us. We’re just going to be lucky to show up. I don’t really get caught up in (predictions). Obviously, that’s not my gig. We’ve got a lot of work here to do.”
Tennessee is appearing to be a team ready to finally make a run at the SEC East for the first time under Butch Jones. The Vols have not played for the SEC championship as the East Division champion since 2007, but have been recruiting well and taking steps back to playing at that level. Tennessee is expected to be one of the trendy picks this summer when the conference media days roll around, but the Vols have some ghosts to bust on the way to Atlanta.
Like Florida.
The Gators have won 11 straight meetings with Tennessee. The last time the Vols beat Florida in Neyland Stadium was 2004, before the Boston Red Sox broke their World Series curse (they have since won the World Series three times), before the midway point of the BCS reached its midway point in existence.
In fact, the last time Tennessee beat Florida in Knoxville, Nick Saban was the head coach at LSU, Urban Meyer was coaching at Utah and Jim Harbaugh was taking on his first head coaching job at the University of San Diego three years after playing his final game in the NFL. Spurrier was taking a year off after coaching his final game in the NFL in Washington (he would take on the South Carolina job in 2005). So yeah, it’s been a while since Tennessee toppled Florida.
So is McElwain spitting the truth? Is he looking to inspire his own team, or is this a master ploy to put all the pressure on Tennessee and Jones? It’s notable that McElwain has played the underdog card for his team before. He did so prior to Florida’s matchup with Ole Miss last season, calling the Rebels “a team that I’m sure is gonna come in here and figure that they should beat the heck out of us. [Ole Miss is] a highly ranked opponent that has everything going for it.”
The Gators went on to obliterate Ole Miss in The Swamp, 38-10. We’ll see if McElwain’s underdog gambit works as well this time around.
