The Tennessee Vols’ win over the Florida Gators on Saturday night is one of the best wins for UT in the last 20 years.

But if you listened to the ESPN broadcast of the game on Saturday night, you’d think the Vols beat a team full of players that were just going through the motions.

ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler made it a point to question Florida’s motivation throughout the night, which felt very dismissive, at times, of Tennessee’s inspired performance.

“These body blows [are] piling up against a defense that’s already depleted and maybe lacking a little motivation at this point,” said Fowler after running back DeSean Bishop rushed for a touchdown that pushed Tennessee’s lead to 21-0.

Little comments like that were common throughout the broadcast.

Florida was a motivated team coming into the game against Tennessee

The comments from Florida interim head coach Billy Gonzales after the game certainly sounded like the Gators came into the game with plenty of motivation, despite the narrative that ESPN is pushing.

“We played a good football team,” said Gonzales when asked if Florida came out flat against the Vols. “Last year they were a College Football Playoff team. This year they’re a field goal, an overtime loss to Georgia [away from being] in the CFP Playoff [conversation] at a high level right now. So they’re an extremely good football team.”

Gators running back Jadan Baugh, who ran hard all night despite the lopsided scoreboard, offered a similar sentiment while speaking with reporters after the game.

“It was a slow start for us,” said Baugh. “I didn’t expect it coming in with [the] energy that we had going into pregame. I kind of thought we were going to play fast and start fast. But no, the outcome wasn’t what we expected.”

“It’s frustrating, man,” added Florida quarterback DJ Lagway. “Just the tradition and everything. It’s just hard — especially losing to Tennessee, you know, such a big rival. You always want to come home and pull those out.”

Florida obviously didn’t play well on Saturday night — the Vols essentially won the game up front on both sides of the ball — but it’s clear that this game meant something to the Gators (Urban Meyer even gave the Gators a motivational speech about beating Tennessee before the game).

ESPN wants you to believe that Florida wasn’t motivated to win on Saturday night. But that’s just blatantly false. This is a team that beat Texas earlier this season, and they gave Ole Miss quite a scare in Oxford last week.

This was a big win for the Vols. And it was a good win. Florida, after all, had won its last five games against SEC opponents in the Swamp (and three of those wins were against ranked teams).

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