Brandon Walker Is Mad as a Hornet That Tennessee Is Killing It on the Recruiting Trail

For those who may not be aware, Tennessee has received commitments from two five-star prospects and two four-star prospects  — not to mention the nation's No. 1 JUCO running back — just this week, moving the Vols' recruiting class to No. 4 nationally. This kind of tear hasn't been seen in quite some time, never mind the fact that it's coming during a time when coaches can't even visit with recruits.

Whatever you think about recruiting and its general predictiveness of future success, all I will say is that since 1996, only once — Oklahoma in 2000 — has a team won an undisputed national championship without having at least two top 10 recruiting classes in the previous four years. This stuff matters.

And it appears Brandon Walker is extremely upset that the Vols keep killing it, because he is lashing out again. It's oftentimes hard to tell when Brandon is being genuine and when he's being a character, but this is real anger. He can't stand the thought of Tennessee being good again. His claim of Tennessee having top 10 classes every year is also provably false — and the latest top 10 class it did have produced eight NFL players — but that's really ancillary to the main point here.

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And I get it. He's a Mississippi State fan. There hasn't been much for him to latch onto there in the last few decades or so. And I'm sure much of his vitriol stems from him being old enough to remember the 1998 SEC Championship Game, when Mississippi State had a chance to ruin Tennessee's perfect season and derail its national championship hopes, before losing by 10 points and watching the Vols roll on to a national title — something the Bulldogs have never won, by the way.

I don't like to see Brandon and the rest of the SEC lashing out. But they are fearful of what the sleeping giant in Knoxville could become under Jeremy Pruitt — and I don't blame them. It's about to be a really bad time to be a Tennessee hater.