Vol Twitter strikes again: Peter Burns blames social media for Tennessee’s troubles
By Keith Farner
Published:
There are plenty of reasons to go around to explain Tennessee’s struggles that have resulted in an 0-2 start. SEC Network host Peter Burns has identified social media as a main problem.
“I’m a huge golfer and one of the things about golf is committing to a shot and having positive thoughts,” Burns said Monday on SEC This Morning, according to 247 Sports. “All sports is a mental game. At this point, the Tennessee team has been kicked so many times while they’re down, from their fan base to people running idiotic social media mobs about the hiring search to where all of the sudden doubt starts to creep in.”
This is the Vols first 0-2 start since 1988, and Tennessee is 6-16 over its last 22 games. The Vols play Chattanooga on Saturday.
“It’s not, ‘Hey, we’re going to win this game.’ It’s ‘How are we going to lose this game?’ And that’s exactly what eventually happened (against BYU),” Burns said. “They’re playing prevent defense and there was this feeling amongst a lot of fans there like, ‘Hey listen, we’re bouncing back.’ I love the Vols fans. It sounded so loud in that crowd. They showed up with passion. But again, don’t underestimate all the trash talk that’s been done online.”
Burns also threw water on the theory that former coach and current athletics director Phil Fulmer would take over at some point this season.
“Jeremy Pruitt is going to be the coach this year and he’s going to at least be the coach until 2020,” Burns said. “Now after that, there’s a whole lot of work to be done. But putting all this stuff out there about Philip Fulmer taking the job, shut up. That does not to help this program. It does nothing to help this school or Jeremy Pruitt. If you haven’t learned your lesson about social media and what all this outside stupid noise can do to a program, every single college program should look at this as a case study as how all the social media garbage out there and see that it can virtually destroy a team from the inside.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
