Tennessee's got its November Cupcake tomorrow, and there's several things Tennessee must do in a game like this.

You are Locked on Balls, your daily podcast on the Tennessee Volunteers, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day., good Friday morning, everybody. Welcome into Locked-on Vols, a part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one podcasting network available. I'm your host, Eric Kane, a member of the ValQuest.com team here in town covering your Tennessee volunteers. We are free and available wherever you get your podcast, weekday mornings when you wake up,

and of course, after football games. On today's show, Boogie Bentley is going to join us,

and we're going to go over some expectations for the program, what those should be every single year.

I'm going to revisit the topic from yesterday, quarterback strategy, should you go high school,

should you go portal? We're also named some underclassmen that Tennessee better play a lot in a game like tomorrow. Again, New Mexico States.

But first, the keys for Tennessee in a game like this where it's one of those things where obviously this isn't a Florida.

This isn't a Alabama that's sitting in a Georgia. This isn't even an Arkansas or Mississippi State.

This is not an SEC contest.

This is your November non-conference game, and it's not a good one.

It is New Mexico State that it's got a 3 and 6 record on the season, 1 in 5 in Conference USA Play.

Not a very good ball club, but it's there for the taking.

It's an opportunity for Tennessee to go out

there and do what it wants to do, accomplish what it wants to accomplish. And, you know, my key phrase

here, you know, this week or really for this episode in a game like this is look the part. You've got to

look the part and do what you want to do because in a game like this where New Mexico State is not very good. Sure, you're out of the playoff, but you still need to be, you still need to win convincingly. You need to win by as much as you want to win by. Look the part. It's not that hard. You are a much better football team, and I expect Tennessee to fully do that. I think Tennessee's done a really good job in these Cupcake games, if you will, during the Josh Haiple era. The only one that comes to mind where Tennessee just didn't look like it was ready to play was 2023 against Austin P. That was a disgusting football game. But all the other games, Tennessee's handled these weeks, very good. Also, I think Tennessee coming off such a disappointing loss to Oklahoma, just want to get back out there and play.

And what an opportunity to kind of, you know, exercise some demons, if you will, in a game

like this against the Aggies of New Mexico State.

So here are some things that I need to see from Tennessee tomorrow.

There's a couple of them are some lofty goals, but, you know, this isn't a Kent State type game where that was the worst football team I've literally ever seen in my life at the Division 1 level, the FBS level.

I don't think it's going to be that type of outcome or that type of game, but these are some lofty goals that I think Tennessee needs to accomplish in a game like this.

The first one is start fast, and that's not too lofty.

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