Recent content by David Ubben

New Tennessee director of scouting Brandon Lawson, a Knoxville native, was a Marine and climbed his way to a crew chief on Marine One. I wrote about that and his road into college football. Think fans will enjoy this piece. See the full story here. “The role he played with me in flying the...

I spoke with several recruits to get a feel for what official visits are like at Tennessee under Josh Heupel's staff for the first month of on-campus recruiting, especially ahead of this weekend. Fans can get a look inside here: Later, Tennessee hosts a private players panel. Everyone...

I spent awhile calling up people who have known and worked with Mike Ekeler to hear their best stories about the most interesting coach in college football. We heard plenty of them. You can see them all here. A small sample: His pet piranha was kidnapped after its untimely death. In high...

After Josh Heupel was fired at Oklahoma, he ended up back in Utah as Matt Wells' OC at Utah State. There, he rebooted his career and charted a new course that led him to Tennessee. I spent last week talking to people around Heupel at Utah State about that formative year “He does a nice job of...

Davis is my evil twin.

Hey everyone, I spent a good chunk of last week talking to a bunch of Josh Heupel's former players about how he operates his program. Earlier this week, we wrote about what it's like off the field. In early team meetings, he asked his players for their feedback. What was working? What wasn’t...

Thanks for reading! Here's a link to the full piece if you want to see more on this. The plan they put together when the gym was forced to shut down sounds like a huge advantage for guys who participated.

Hey Smokey! Sorry you were disappointed, but we make a point at The Athletic to produce high-quality, in-depth work that our subscribers feel is worth paying for. Our business model is a bit different than most media outlets, and that allows our work to be different, too. Here's why we charge...

The dead period is over, and players can start making visits to campus. But what actually happens from the time players arrive until the time they leave? We used open records and interviews to reconstruct a crucial recruiting weekend down to the hour. Future Tennessee commits Omari Thomas and...

Hunting for trash? Warrior didn't want to answer a couple questions. I was curious to why. His answer was because it was in the past. That's fine, and actually illustrates some of his personality. I wrote about how he's a completely different player this year. It's fairly obvious that Warrior...

This was the point of my initial post today. This didn't happen. A lot of folks on this board don't follow my tweets and don't follow my work. But every time I'd post one thing that made someone mad (and in at least two cases, it was taken out of context), they would post on this board and for...

We do this every single week for every single game. This is what I wrote after the Kentucky game.

Hey guys, to each his own. If you want to not pay attention to the entire body of work I've done, that's fine. We have a Black Friday sale going on today and I tweeted out about 15 of our best-selling stories in the past year or so. If you want to get mad about one that's more explanatory than...

What if I told you there was a four-month-old baby girl in South Carolina named after Jauan Jennings? And the story behind how she got her name is a great one? Plus, I told Jauan about it on Tuesday and his reaction in the story was priceless. The full story is here. We also have a story...

Hey y'all. No idea why that tweet has people so mad or feeling like I'm "trolling" fans. There were about a million things that didn't go Tennessee's way. It's what I thought a very clear reference on the game. It's not a comment on any fans in any way and I'm legitimately floored anyone took it...