One of the biggest storylines over the next two weeks leading up to Tennessee playing Ohio State in Columbus for the first round of the College Football Playoffs will be that southern team traveling north to play in late December.<\/p>\n
Translation: it\u2019s going to be cold. That\u2019s likely to be fact, but how much of a factor is that going to be? It\u2019s not like Tennessee is playing home games in South Beach. \u00a0<\/p>\n
East Tennessee weather is like a box of chocolates. You truly never know what you\u2019re going to get. Tennessee\u2019s final home game on November 16 saw the Volunteers shut out UTEP in 55-degree weather. Pleasant. One week later, Tennessee took down Vanderbilt in Nashville with 41-degree weather at kickoff on an afternoon that saw temperatures drop as the game went along. It was chilly with the wind blowing at times.<\/p>\n
The Vols practice in the mornings. Yes, the Anderson Training Facility (indoor practice field) is utilized but it\u2019s not like Tennessee is out in the sun at 4 o\u2019clock every afternoon getting ready for the next game. The team has worn cold gear this year, after all.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, not sure what the temperature will be up there at night. Know it won\u2019t be sunny and 85,\u201d Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said on Selection Sunday<\/a>. \u201cWe played in 30-degree weather a week ago. For us, a lot of our practices are in the morning. We\u2019re outside. It\u2019ll be similar temperatures to what you\u2019re going to get up there. Our guys got to be able to handle anything that comes at them. That\u2019s the weather, it\u2019s outside distractions. It\u2019s us getting ready to go be our best 11 on 11 between the white lines. And we\u2019ll be ready to handle that and operate at a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n And as long as the practice field conditions are suitable, the Vols will be outside over the next two weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the course of the lead up to kickoff, we\u2019ll be outside as much as we possibly can,\u201d Heupel continued. \u201cTypically, the\u00a0temperatures, at some point during this preparation will mirror what we think we\u2019ll have on\u00a0Saturday night up there. We typically get outside unless something is not right with the grass fields, as far as wet, damp, frost, whatever it might be.\u201d<\/p>\n The cold is nothing new to Ohio State. In the Buckeyes\u2019 final home game of the regular season, a 13-10 loss to rival Michigan, the kickoff temperature was 27 degrees, according to the game book<\/a>. What will the weather be on Saturday, December 21 at 8 o\u2019clock eastern time? Who knows. It was 51 degrees at 8 o\u2019clock in Columbus, Ohio Sunday evening.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a once in a life a lifetime opportunity up until this point. I mean, this has never happened before. I think it\u2019s exciting. I think it\u2019s exciting for our players. I think it\u2019s exciting for our coaches and staff.\u00a0It\u2019s exciting for our fans to be part of something that\u2019s never really been done before,\u201d Ohio State coach Ryan Day said on Sunday<\/a> of the home playoff game in December. \u201cAnd also having a night game in the Horseshoe and who knows the weather will be? It\u2019ll be it\u2019ll be great. It\u2019ll be electric. We\u2019re all excited about it.\u00a0It\u2019s the first time for this. It\u2019s just very different than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. We\u2019re just in a different time.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll practice outside like we continue to do to make sure that we\u2019re ready for the elements because this time of year, that becomes a big part of\u00a0it.\u201d<\/p>\n Safe to say, both coaches are more focused on the opponent than the weather. Tennessee\u2019s offense will face the best defense it has seen all year. Ohio State\u2019s defense will be tased with trying to slow down the USA Today Southeastern Conference Player of the Year in running back Dylan Sampson<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n There\u2019s going to be plenty of preparation leading up to this one and I\u2019m sure members of both teams will have the long sleeves on. We\u2019ll see how big of a talking point this turns into.<\/p>\n The post Josh Heupel & Vols preparing for the cold, preparing more for Ohio State<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the biggest storylines over the next two weeks leading up to Tennessee playing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}