Tennessee Football’s playoff chances: Reject the Narrative

Tennessee football ranked 6th in the latest AP Poll and 4th in the latest Coaches poll. Call me crazy, but I respect what coaches have to say more than pencil pushing nerd sports writers who graduated from Big 10 schools. Anyone who thinks that sports writers don’t have biases just aren’t paying attention and it comes as no surprise that 4 of the top 5 teams in the latest AP poll come from the Big 10. Luckily the CFP Committee has the final say, but that doesn’t mean the national sports writers have no say in the matter.

There is already a narrative building from various sports writers that a 10-2 Tennessee team would be left out of the 12-team playoff. Furthermore, many of these same writers have Alabama making the field by the skin of their teeth. Now if I remember correctly Tennessee beat the Crimson Tide less than a month ago and held them to 17 points (Alabama has scored 34 and 42 points in their 2 games since). It almost feels like no one cares about Tennessee winning that game just because they were the home team which is ludicrous. If head-to-head isn’t going to matter and teams like Indiana can be 10-0 without even playing a ranked team yet and still be ranked ahead of Tennessee, I’ll start the movement for Tennessee to move to the Big 10 right now.

Again, the CFP committee’s rankings on Tuesday night is what matters, but it is still very annoying that people just don’t care that Tennessee is 8-1 with arguably one of the best wins in college football this year when you consider the way Tennessee stifled the potent Alabama offense. The good news is Tennessee can put that narrative to bed if they win their last 3 games, but Tennessee fans should be very vocal about how much nonsense is being spewed right now and reject the biased narrative that is building.