Hlas: Tennessee teen Barnett will duel Pops Scherff

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Earlier this month, Tennessee football coach Butch Jones got his contract extended through 2020 and his pay was raised from $2.95 million per year to $3.6 million.

Does that sound vaguely familiar to you in Iowa?

'It is my belief that you should reward people for performance, not whether you think others are coming after him,' Tennessee Athletic Director Dave Hart said.

The Volunteers are 6-6. What would they pay for, say, 9-3?

Ah, but they're all hopped up in Rocky Top after Jones' second Volunteers team got the program to a bowl for the first time in four years. Today, even the TaxSlayer Bowl is fun and exciting to a fan base that played in back-to-back national-championship games at the end of the previous millennium, and won one of them.

Plus, the thinking in Tennessee is that if Jones could squeeze six wins from a team that used 23 true freshmen and started 10 of them more than once, what will he do once they're old enough to shave?

Plus, the Volunteers are in the SEC East. That's a division of soft-touches compared to the West with Alabama, Auburn, LSU, the Mississppis, et al.

But in the here and now, the Vols will play Iowa Friday. You'll see no first-year freshmen starting for the Hawkeyes. Tennessee will have one at running back, tight end, right guard, defensive end, and perhaps middle linebacker.

Oh, about that defensive end. He is Derek Barnett, and he is a phenom. He has 10 quarterback sacks, all in SEC games and nine in the last six games. He has 20.5 tackles for losses, ranking him third per game in the nation and first in the SEC.

'Came a long way from high school to now,' Barnett said before his team's practice Monday at the University of North Florida. Uh, yeah.

The one thing that gives this nondescript matchup some juice is the matchup between Iowa's Outland Trophy-winning offensive tackle, Brandon Scherff, and Barnett.

'A lot,' Barnett said when asked how often he expects to line up against Scherff, everybody's All-American.

'It's a great challenge,' he said with a smile and demeanor that seemed pretty confident. 'It'll be a long, physical ballgame.'

Barnett is 6-foot-3, 267 pounds. He is 18 years and six months old. Fifth-year senior Scherff turned 23 last Friday.

'They're a junior- and senior-dominated football team,' said Jones. 'Obviously they have the experience factor. I believe their fifth-year seniors are at their fourth bowl. They understand the preparation that goes into preparing for a bowl, how to 'X' out all the clutter and the distractions and really focus on the task at hand.'

The major distractions of being at the TaxSlayer Bowl are unclear, other than spending at least a half-hour on the Greater Jacksonville freeways to get from any Point A to any Point B.

But Jones, to his credit, isn't poor-boying it when it comes to how green his squad may be.

'They've done a great job,' he said. 'A lot of them are mature beyond their years. A lot of them had to play out of necessity. It's where we're at in the building of this football program. We may be the youngest team again in the NCAA next year. It's part of the evolution and growth of our football program.'

So, yeah, Old Man Scherff vs. Sonny Boy Barnett. That'll give the ESPN people something to jabber about during their telecast of the game.

'We expect to face a team that's going to run the ball,' Barnett said. 'They're going to keep on running till we stop it. We know they're good, physical and strong. Good players all over the field.

'But I feel like we match up well against them.'

Of course he does. He's 18 and he's made 10 sacks in SEC games. You'd be confident if you were him, too.

Maybe Jones earned that pay bump just for signing Barnett 10 months ago.

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com