Tennessee hosted Georgia State on Saturday in Knoxville for what most of the home crowd (and maybe some of the home team) likely assumed would be an easy opening week victory.
Georgia State kept it close, leading early in the fourth quarter, but when Tennessee scored to take the lead, it definitely looked like it would stay close at worst for the Vols.
True again.
@bmancimaglia knocks it through from 31 yards.#Vols in front, 23-21. 12:05 left to play. pic.twitter.com/WzHkvjR3xf
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) August 31, 2019
Except that’s not what happened, because Georgia State scored 17 unanswered points to open up a 38-23 lead. That included this score, which essentially sealed the game; a winding touchdown run from Georgia State quarterback Dan Ellington.
The Georgia State team account has the end zone view, which features an incredible angle of the two Tennessee defenders slamming into each other as Ellington heads for the score.
https://twitter.com/GeorgiaStateFB/status/1167953314513707014
Perfection. The Tennessee team account, meanwhile, simply logged off. And not even with a little joke about how it was time to log off; they just simply stopped tweeting after the field goal tweet above. No final score, no “Welp, it happens!”, not even a congratulations to the opponent. Radio silence.
I suspect by 2019 all team social media people have had "what to do in case of embarrassing loss" strategy meetings. obviously you gain nothing from those "our team lost here's the final score" tweets but I think this looks worse? https://t.co/2w7ogPrgFD
— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) September 1, 2019
It can’t be easy to be a sports social media person in the wake of an embarrassing loss; perhaps especially in college football, where mentions are going to be particularly crazy. It is still odd; are they going to pop back in with a look at next Saturday’s game against BYU? Maybe a winking acknowledgement to their absence? It’s tough to say! But what’s the point of a team account if it’s not going to tweet about the team?
UPDATE: They’re back!
Back to work.
Week 2 | 7:00 PM | ESPN pic.twitter.com/OZHMoRoy0l
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) September 1, 2019
About Jay Rigdon
Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.