Tennessee Football: What the Volunteers Should Be Thankful for in 2014

With Thanksgiving coming up this week, it's time to take stock of the things the Tennessee Volunteers and their fans have to be thankful for both in this season and in the years to come.

The 2014 campaign hasn't been pretty at times, but it has also provided a spark of hope for recruits and current players. Butch Jones is slowly righting the ship in Knoxville, and although the wins aren't quite where he or his coaching staff want them to be, it's clear the Vols are no longer content to roll over when the going gets tough.

Tennessee has one very winnable game left against Vanderbilt standing in its way of reaching a bowl game for the first time since 2010, and a postseason berth, although likely in a lower-tier bowl and against a non-marquee opponent, are still indicators that the program is on the upswing.

It's hard to keep a program like Tennessee down for long, and while it took an unusual set of circumstances to cause the team to free fall in the first place, it appears that a round of fortune may be headed towards Knoxville to reverse the trend and restore the Vols to their place among the elite in college football.

Here are four important circumstances and factors playing into Tennessee's favor this Thanksgiving holiday. 

Rising Talent in the Middle Tennessee Area

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One of the biggest knocks against Tennessee when predicting future success was the program's reliance on stealing talent from surrounding states.

For years, Tennessee recruited well not just nationally, but also in traditional SEC hotbeds like Georgia, Florida and Alabama. But with the coaches of the major programs in those states locking down more and more of their top players, it looked like the Vols would struggle to restock elite talent on the roster.

However, the middle Tennessee area is starting to produce elite talent on a yearly basis, and Jones is making it a priority to establish relationships with high school coaches in the region and create a pipeline to Knoxville.

Mid-state commitments like Derek Barnett, Jashon Robertson, Jalen Hurd and Josh Malone are already making big impacts on Tennessee during their freshman season, and Jones is still battling for the signatures of 2015 in-state recruits like Kyle Phillips, Van Jefferson and Ugo Amadi.

If the Vols can count on signing eight to 10 solid in-state players every year, they can round out classes with high-quality players from neighboring states, including North Carolina—a state that has been especially kind to Tennessee lately with the commitments of Marquez North, Emmanuel Moseley and Shy Tuttle. 

Vanderbilt Becoming the Vanderbilt of Old

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Vanderbilt's ascension under former head coach James Franklin added insult to injury for Tennessee during its struggles in recent years. 

Former Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley managed to defeat Franklin and the Commodores in overtime in 2011, but a blowout loss to Vanderbilt in 2012 cost him his job. 

In 2013, Butch Jones desperately needed a win over the Commodores to send his first Tennessee team to the postseason, but Franklin managed to steal a win at Neyland Stadium to keep the Vols home for Christmas for the third year in a row.

Eliminating Tennessee's bowl eligibility two years out of three effectively means the Commodores denied the Vols 30 practices—which is significant for a team desperate to regain its footing in the SEC.

However, with first-year head coach Derek Mason at the helm, Vanderbilt has quickly reverted to pre-Franklin form, starting off the season with a blowout loss to Temple and losing every SEC game by double digits.

At this point in the program's rebuilding process, wins are at a premium, and Tennessee needs to once again have the luxury of a built-in win or two in the conference schedule.

Although Tennessee handled Kentucky easily two weeks ago, the Wildcats won't always be a pushover with Mark Stoops at the helm. That fact, combined with Jones' emphasis on locking down recruits in the mid-state, should give Tennessee fans something to keep an eye on.

An Uncertain Future in the SEC East

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Yes, Will Muschamp finished his career at Florida with a perfect record against the Vols, and yes, Mark Richt hasn't lost to Tennessee since 2009.

But Jones is quickly turning Tennessee back into a contender, and his relatively young coaching career means he could outlast almost all of his competitors in the division. 

Richt has coached the Bulldogs since 2001. Unless he's dead-set on becoming the next Vince Dooley, it's not unreasonable to believe he may hang up his headset within the next five years or that the UGA faithful will become restless if he doesn't deliver a national championship soon. 

At 69 years old, Steve Spurrier may or may not return for the 2015 season, and Gary Pinkel is 62 years old and in his 14th season with the Tigers.

Although it's unlikely every prominent SEC coach in the East Division will retire in the near future, there will likely be at least one or two shakeups that could benefit the Vols.

Tennessee's downfall after firing Phillip Fulmer helped Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and even Vanderbilt boost their win-loss records and conference championship hopes in recent years, so it stands to reason that the resurgent Vols will themselves benefit once the major players in the East fall on their own hard times due to coaching changes. 

A Loyal Fanbase

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Tennessee recorded four sellouts in 2014 in games versus Utah State, Florida, Alabama and Kentucky. 

The Vols played in front of the third-largest number of fans in the country, with 698,276 taking in the action from Neyland Stadium, according to Wes Rucker at 247Sports.com. Tennessee also ranks seventh in the nation for average attendance this season, with an average of 99,754 fans at home games.

For a program that hasn't won more than seven games since 2007 and hasn't been to a bowl game since 2010, those are impressive numbers.

Attendance dropped every year during Derek Dooley's three-year tenure in Knoxville, but it's clear that the Tennessee fanbase is buying into Butch Jones' rebuilding process, even if the wins aren't showing up on the field just yet. 

A stadium that seats 100,000-plus fans is a huge selling point for recruits, especially when they see that the fanbase is (mostly) patient and sticks with the team even during lean years.