Wow.
McDonald’s bags.
Was the cash better than a sausage/egg/cheese biscuit?
In all seriousness, this is a contender for the funniest allegation of all time, in anything. It’s unexpected (football season’s been over for a week). It’s visually comical (take a moment, close your eyes, and picture a recruit receiving a McDonald’s bag from an assistant coach, looking inside, and realizing he was not getting a complimentary breakfast, or at least not in the way he thought). There’s no guarantee it was effective (as it’s unclear exactly when the money was given, and if some players were able to say, “Cool, thanks, see you when you play Georgia next year”). Most of all, it’s entirely harmless, because this is basically a free market practice seeping through the cracks of the NCAA’s misguidedly fearful attempt to keep itself powerful.
There are questions to be answered about Tennessee’s football program, and we’ll get to those. Namely, we’ll talk through the possible ceilings for the Vols. But before that, let’s talk more about the bags. Because I want to know how much money those guys might have given away. I’ll try to sprinkle “allegedly” in here enough to keep us in the clear, but just in case I don’t do it enough, let me give a blanket “allegedly” here to begin: All of this is “alleged.”
That oughta do it. Let’s begin.
I don’t know how large McDonald’s bags are. I asked Stu, who delivers McDonald’s (and other things) to help finance this blog, and he said:
“There are a few sizes. Some are pretty big but that’s if the drinks are in there, and I feel like they probably drank the drinks themselves, right?”
This tracked with my estimation.
In my memory, McDonald’s bags are comparably sized to brown paper lunch bags. And according to Target’s website, there are two sizes of brown paper lunch bag you can buy at the Target nearest my apartment:
For the sake of getting a range of possibilities, we’ll examine both bag sizes. The lunch bag (“LB”) and the large lunch bag (“LLB”). Now, we could just figure out the volume of the open bag. But I don’t think the bag was open. I think they rolled down the top. If you’ve got an open bag stuffed to the top with cash, that money’s flying around, and I mean that in the physical sense.
So, let’s start making assumptions. Since we’re going for the high end of the possibilities, I’m going to be rather conservative with these. Since I doubt the Tennessee coaches were packing these as efficiently as humanly possible (if they were, I do not think they would’ve [ALLEGEDLY] been using McDonald’s bags), I’m also going to make some non-conservative assumptions.
First assumption: They rolled it over twice. Two one-inch folds.
Second assumption: They only packed it up to the part where the bag’s walls had to start bending , since packing it over that—while possible—would be something of an engineering feat.
Third assumption: For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume the bag wall bent at a 45-degree angle once it was, in fact, bent.
Using the Pythagorean theorem, and subtracting two inches of bag wall on each side for the foldover, we find that to adequately fold each bag under these conditions, the LB would have approximately 6.415 inches of height in the “fillable cube” (my term for the volume of the bag in which money could go, a rectangular cylinder topping off where the bag starts to bend) while the LLB would afford the packer approximately 7.547 inches of height with which to work.
This means the respective fillable cube volumes are roughly 102.7 cubic inches (LB) and 188.7 cubic inches (LLB).
Now, from here we could just divide the fillable cube volume by the volume of a single bill, but that would require assuming these guys were folding bills in various ways so as to fill every possible inch of the fillable cube. And again, I just don’t think that was happening, especially since at some point, the bag might start tearing if packed too thick.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about the bills themselves, first:
According to a quick google search, a one-hundred-dollar bill (if they were filling these with 20’s they were wasting space) is .0043 inches thick, with surface dimensions measuring 6.14” x 2.61”.
This presents some limitations.
The most efficient-yet-easy way to pack the LLB (right half of the figure) would be with one “main stack” and three “side stacks.” The main stack would consist of 1,755 bills, flat on their backs, flush with one corner of the bag. From there, the first side stack—a 0.11-inch-thick stack of bills turned on their end, filling the bag length-wise when viewed from above—could contain 25 bills, and each of the next two side stacks—1.39 inches thick, adjacent to one another and filling the bag width-wise while leaving some dead space in one corner—would contain 323 bills. This leaves us with a total of 2,426 bills, or $242,600.
For the LB, there can be no main stack, since laying the bills on their back would result in some curvature at the edges, the length of the bill being larger than the length of the bag. One side stack, flush with two corners, could be 1,191 bills thick. The other, filling the cube width-wise while also leaving some dead space, could be 119 bills thick. For a total, in this case, of 1,310 bills, or $131,000.
Do I think there was this much money in the bags? Unless this was an extremely isolated incident, no. That seems unlikely. Which is part of why I’m not worrying too much about the dead space. But at the same time, if you really wanted to, you could fit six figures in a McDonald’s bag without too much trouble. And I don’t know why I feel vaguely reassured by that.
Now, Tennessee’s future.
The way I see it, there are four possible ceilings for Tennessee.
Ceiling Number One: Consistent Bowl Eligibility (a la Kentucky)
As the current landscape stands, it’s hard to imagine Tennessee being better than Florida or Georgia. This year’s recruiting class is supposed to have been Jeremy Pruitt’s best, and it’s only rated as the sixth-best in the SEC by 247 Sports. Factor in that it would likely require a great scheduling draw for Tennessee to avoid Alabama, Texas A&M, LSU, and Auburn, all of whom have consistently out-recruited the Vols (with the possible exception of Auburn, depending where this season’s classes land), and it’s easy to see a world in which Tennessee’s just trying to win eight games a year, play no one noteworthy in nonconference, and win a bowl in a blowout now and then.
It would be a step up. Tennessee’s made four bowls in the last decade. It would also require relegating Tennessee to a status adjacent to that of Kentucky, where Mark Stoops has basically achieved this exact ceiling. It’s not a bad life, but it’s hard to believe Tennessee’s ceiling’s really as low as that of Kentucky, and it wouldn’t be accepted by Tennessee fans, making its longevity unlikely.
Ceiling Number Two: Ten Wins, Consistent Division Contention (Insert ACC Coastal Hopeful)
What would you call the current era of college football? For me, I’d say it begins with Nick Saban’s arrival at Alabama, especially given we’re looking at the SEC in particular here.
If you say that’s the line, or even if you say Urban Meyer’s arrival at Florida is the line, Tennessee has never won more than ten games in this era. The one time they did was 2007, Saban’s first year at Alabama. That season (Phillip Fulmer’s second-to-last), the Vols lost two SEC games (at Florida, at Alabama), lost on the road to Cal to open the year, and lost the SEC Championship to eventual two-loss national champion LSU.
It’s possible this is the ceiling. Nine regular season wins. Six SEC wins. Contention for the SEC East title. You might argue this is too high, and that could be fair—Tennessee’s only gotten to nine wins twice since2007, and those were aided by bowl victories in the Butch Jones years. But given the recent inconsistency of Florida and Georgia, it’s easy to imagine a fringe-top 20 Tennessee team getting a few good breaks and winning the division. This isn’t to say they’d be the best in the division, but they could conceivably compete for an SEC Championship appearance, even if this were their ceiling.
Ceiling Number Three: Consistent SEC Contention, National Championship Non-Contention (Auburn)
Believing in this scenario relies on looking at some fringe recruiting classes. In 2005, 247 shows the Tennessee class ranked first in the SEC and fourth in the nation. In 2007, it’s again fourth in the country, but it’s second in the SEC. In 2015, it’s second in the SEC again and fourth in the nation once more.
For Butch Jones, 2015 was the high-water mark. That great recruiting class came in. The Vols struggled out of the gate but beat Georgia before playing Alabama within a touchdown in October in Tuscaloosa. After that, the guys from Knoxville won their last six games, culminating in an Outback Bowl stomping of twelfth-ranked Northwestern. It was a disappointing year in that it included losses to Florida and Arkansas, but it at least ended with some hope. Hope that quickly faded. In 2016, the Volunteers again won nine games, but this time the bad losses came later in the year, at South Carolina and at Vanderbilt. After a four-win 2017, Pruitt was brought in to replace Jones.
If Jones had been able to maintain that recruiting success, Tennessee would be where Georgia currently sits as a program. If Jones had been able to at least come close to maintaining that recruiting success (more realistic), Tennessee would be more like Auburn—a conceivable SEC champion many years, if one specific result were to break the right way, but not seriously in the national title picture. This is probably the realistic goal for whomever Tennessee brings in, if given enough time. Recruiting, though challenging and perhaps requiring some creativity, isn’t impossible. Resources aren’t nonexistent. And again, Florida and Georgia, while good, haven’t achieved the consistency of Alabama or even the peak LSU’s achieved.
Ceiling Number Four: Powerhouse (Clemson, maybe even Alabama)
Clemson’s the dream, right? Get one coach who changes everything?
A few things to remember:
- Clemson gave Dabo Swinney a longer leash than Tennessee might. Swinney’s first six records: 9-5, 6-7, 10-4, 11-2, 11-2, 10-3. Now, granted, those are good final records, but had Swinney only won five games in 2012, playing some stacked conference schedule like Tennessee might have to play, would Tennessee keep him?
- Clemson’s suspicious positive PED tests from 2019 remain suspicious, and Clemson didn’t start recruiting at the top of the pack nationally until after they’d become perpetual playoff appearers.
- Clemson plays in a frequently weak conference, which can mask not actually being all that good sometimes (see: 2020, 2017).
In other words, it’s doubtful Swinney could have been as successful at Tennessee as he’s been at Clemson. More could go wrong. And not to hammer on the PED thing, but that was weird, and maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen a full explanation of how something that widespread happened at the exact time Clemson was competing physically with the Alabamas of the world despite not occupying the same sphere in the recruiting world.
But still, the possibility exists, because as Swinney’s shown, any of these fringe-successful programs can make the leap if the right coach makes the right moves in the right circumstances. Even Alabama’s an example of this: The Tide went thirteen seasons in a row without winning twelve games. It’s not like Nick Saban inherited some dominant force of a program, and it’s not like Tuscaloosa’s advantages dwarf those of Tennessee. Sure, it’s closer to some recruiting hotbeds, but not by leaps and bounds, and sure, the money’s there, but would it be there if Saban hadn’t resurrected the program?
The arguments for Tennessee getting to this level go as follows:
- At some point, someone’s going to become the next Saban or Swinney, and if you can keep him (and money does come in higher bunches when you’re winning games), he’s yours. It would be harder to do this at Tennessee than at USC or Florida or Texas, but it’s not impossible.
- The Name-Image-Likeness rule change, when it eventually happens, will open the door to paying recruits through means not limited to McDonald’s bags. Tennessee’s boosters are rabid enough that one would expect them to compete financially with the rest of the SEC.
It’s only two arguments. They aren’t flawless. But they’re there, and they’re legitimate. So what’s Tennessee’s actual ceiling? Obviously, the fourth one, because we can understand it’s possible, and that’s the definition of ceiling in this context. What’s a realistic goal for Tennessee’s next coach? Again, probably the third ceiling, because it’s attainable and doesn’t require becoming one-in-two-hundred. Where will Tennessee land? Probably below the first ceiling. Because the university’s failed, so far, to put together a coherent and consistent strategy since the millennium turned, and when it came down to it under Jeremy Pruitt, there just wasn’t enough money in the McDonald’s bag.
