This Week on Rocky Top for July 13-20
This Week on Rocky Top for July 13-20
A sampling of Tennessee-related news items over the last week
Football
Tennessee got commitments from a couple of big-time prospects, WR Travis Smith Jr. and LB Christian Gass. Here’s our profiles of each:
SEC Media Days was this week. Some of the significant UT-related items:
UT was picked to finish 7th in the SEC by the media. It seems to me that there’s a group of teams including Tennessee, along with Ole Miss, Missouri, LSU, and possibly Oklahoma that everyone is afraid to make strong predictions for, so they all end up lumped together (would you be surprised if any of those teams make the 12-team playoff? but they can’t all make it…).
Josh Heupel told the media that 15,000 fans are on the season ticket waiting list, which, like, is cool, I guess? There’s a ton of incredibly overpriced tickets available on 3rd-party sites, so it seems like that number would be more impressive if all the people currently holding season tickets would use them instead of immediately relisting them online.
Heupel also told the media that he feels this is the deepest team he’s had at Tennessee, “the deepest that it's been by far… I couldn't be more excited about going and lining up with this group this fall.”
There was talk about Nico Iamaleava being bigger than he was the last time we saw him in spring ball. And the screen grabs from CFB 25 make Nico look thicker than expected:
But this recent picture of Nico posted on X seems to bear that out as well:
Baseball
Tennessee got some good news following the MLB Draft when Jay Abernathy decided to head to Knoxville in the Fall. Abernathy has incredible speed, and I can’t embed the video here but if you haven’t seen this kid run, I recommend clicking this link and watching how he motors around the bases.
Tony Vitello was, to no one’s surprise, was named National Coach of the Year.
