Geoff Calkins

The Commercial Appeal

Butch Jones walked into the Marriott ballroom and took his seat at the head table and it felt vaguely sad.

“Any other time, when the Tennessee coach would be here, there would be hundreds of people,” said Jim Reedy, a Tennessee fan. “And when he walked into the room, everyone would stand to applaud.”

There were not hundreds of people.

Nobody stood to applaud.

The plates of chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans may as well have been a last meal.

“I needed a little love so I thought I’d come to West Tennessee,” said Jones.

He was shut out, again.

But give the guy credit for showing up, anyway, for his annual visit to the Memphis Touchdown Club. When you get shut out by Georgia 41-0, even the name — Touchdown Club — is a potential punch line.

Touchdown Club? What would Jones know about a Touchdown Club? Wouldn’t the Not-Even- Close-to-a-Touchdown Club have been a better fit?

“This is a tough week,” said Steve Ehrhart, executive director of the Liberty Bowl. “I admire him for coming over here and taking the slings and arrows.”

Ehrhart said that as part of his introduction of Jones. Which is better than, “And now, the soon-to-be-former coach of the Tennessee Vols!”

But that is where we are, isn’t it? That is where we have to be.

Jones can’t continue as head coach after this season. There’s a reasonable argument that he should have been fired before the Memphis trip.

Tennessee is 14-20 in the SEC under Jones. The Vols are 5-13 against Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Vanderbilt.

This season has been an unending series of embarrassments, from that ridiculous sideline trash can, to the inexplicable play calls in the loss to Florida, to the this-can’t-be-happening nail-biter against 0-4 UMass, to the juvenile and out-of-touch Shy Tuttle rant, to the astonishing follow-up proclamation that the last two years have “been some of the best years in the last 20 years of Tennessee football,” to Saturday’s historic humiliation against Georgia.

So, yes, there’s a reasonable argument that Jones should have been fired before the Memphis trip. If only to spare him and everyone else from having to pretend that he is something other than a lame duck coach.

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But he wasn’t fired, so everyone pretended. It was utterly surreal.

Before Jones arrived, three Tennessee fans stood in the lobby, talking about how quickly things had changed.

Fan No. 1: “Can you believe that last year at this time we were 5-0?”

Fan No. 2: “A change needs to be made.”

Fan No. 3: “I love his passion, but when all hell breaks loose, it goes to the head man.”

Just then, the head man walked in. You have never seen him trying so hard to make friends. He thanked the media — the media! — for asking “good questions.” He accepted some we’re-still-with-you-coach hugs.

“It’s nice to see so many of these warm faces,” he said, meaning, unlike some of the less-than-warm faces he has been seeing in East Tennessee.

Then, it was dinner, and time for the Liberty Bowl’s high school player of the week, who just happened to be Cordova’s four-star offensive lineman Jerome Carvin, who just happened to have spent last Saturday visiting Tennessee.

“What impressed you?” asked Liberty Bowl’s Harold Graeter.

“Georgia,” someone quietly cracked.

That’s the kind of evening it was, and the main event hadn’t even begun.

Ehrhart did his best with the introduction. What was he supposed to say?

“And now, let me present the coach who couldn’t win the East when Florida and Georgia were in total disarray!”

Nah. Ehrhart talked about academics. Much safer that way.

So then Jones finally took the stage, and he said the sorts of things he always says. Football is a long season. Games hinge on four to six plays, you just don’t know which plays they will be. The margin between winning and losing is very small.

There was nothing exceptional about any of it, except, given the circumstances, even the cliches sounded absurd. When you lose 41-0, the game didn’t hinge on four to six plays, the margin between winning and losing was downright massive, and the season already feels longer than anyone feared.

But the end is coming, for Tennessee and for Jones. Next year there will be a new guy. There has to be right?

Jones shook some hands and posed for photos before leaving. Half a dozen fans formed a line. It may not have been the love that Jones was looking for, but it’s about all that's left.