Vols try to keep focus on football and expect to get Missouri’s best shot
By John Hollis
Published:
Saturday’s game between Tennessee and host Missouri will be the first in Columbia since some of the Tigers’ players threatened to boycott all football-related activities in the wake of a series of racially charged incidents at the school.
Jonathan Butler, a 25-year-old graduate student, had been on a hunger strike because he believed Missouri’s administration, and system president Tim Wolfe in particular, had been lax in response to a series of racially charged incidents on campus. Butler threatened to continue his hunger strike until Wolfe resigned, which he eventually did after the Mizzou players made their intentions known.
Protests on campus have continued, but the Volunteers say they don’t expect the mood on campus to be a distraction.
“We’re pretty isolated when we go on the road,” junior quarterback Joshua Dobbs said, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. “… We’re aware of the situation, but we’re also focused on what we have to do here to have a productive season.”
As if civil unrest on campus wasn’t enough of a distraction already, the Tigers were rocked by Friday’s news that coach Gary Pinkel would be stepping down at season’s end due to health issues.
Despite all the chaos, Mizzou erupted from a prolonged offensive slump to record a season-high 434 yards of total offense in Kansas City to beat BYU 20-16 and snap a four-game losing skid.
“I went to my wife and said, ‘I just don’t know.’ How much can you do to a football team in a seven-, eight-day period of time?” Pinkel said. “I couldn’t have been happier. We rose to the occasion. We battled through adversity.”
Emotions will continue to run high this week as it will be Senior Day for the Tigers and the last home game for Pinkel.
“They are going to play motivated, and they’re going to come out and give us their best shot,” Dobbs said. “We have to come ready to play. Anytime you go on the road in the SEC, it’s going to be like that.”
John Hollis is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers Georgia and Florida.
