The subject of Tennessee winning championships – or the lack there of – has been a hot topic around Knoxville in the past year.
The two biggest sports – football and men’s basketball – are in championship droughts. Basketball, which is currently on a three-year postseason hiatus, hasn’t won a regular-season SEC title since 2008 and hasn’t won the SEC Tournament title since 1979. Football, meanwhile, hasn’t won the SEC East since 2007 and hasn’t won an SEC title since 1998, the national championship season.
Butch Jones drew plenty of headlines when, after Tennessee didn’t win the East in 2016, he declared the seniors “champions of life” and then mentioned looking for “five-star hearts” during recruiting celebrations following National Signing Day.
Now that it’s died down a bit from that, new Chancellor Beverly Davenport had a comment via Twitter that got some Tennessee fans stirred back up on Saturday:
https://twitter.com/ChancellorDav/status/845689703567425536
For background, Al Roker of NBC is traveling to campuses around the nation to be part of schools setting various Guinness World Records. Tennessee is attempting to make the biggest “Power T” by assembling students and alumni in Neyland Stadium.
That’s not the huge issue people had, though. The fact that Davenport refers to this as “another Tennessee championship” seemed to trigger plenty of reaction.
https://twitter.com/TyK8606/status/845693327022460929
https://twitter.com/VFL70/status/845697609574600704
That standing on a field champ trophy will look nice next to that life champ trophy. Give me a freaking break.
— Curtis Herd (@CurtisHerd) March 25, 2017
That's not how this works… that's not how any of this works https://t.co/n61LSY1FiK
— Austin Stanley (@AustinStanley81) March 25, 2017
