National media outlet has a bold 'hot take' for the Tennessee Vols after SEC Media Days

247Sports offered some "hot takes" for each SEC football program with the unofficial kickoff to the 2024 season (SEC Media Days) happening this week.

And their hot take for the Tennessee Vols is one that UT fans will likely appreciate.

247Sports suggested that Tennessee is the most underrated team in the SEC entering the 2024 season.

From 247Sports : Hot take : The Vols are the SEC's most underrated team in the preseason.

Tennessee's players reps all said versions of the same thing this week. They're using the lack of summer love in various polls and power rankings as serious motivation. Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss, LSU and Missouri have all been slotted ahead of Tennessee in most preseason projections across the conference, but only three of those schools have consecutive top-20 finishes like Josh Heupel's program. The Vols plugged a hole in their offensive line with former LSU offensive tackle Lance Heard and refreshed the back end of the defense with other additions.

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel and the players he brought along to SEC Media Days (Cooper Mays, Omari Thomas, and Keenan Pili) made it clear this week that they aren't worried about what the national media thinks of them while simultaneously making it known that the program plans to compete for a national championship in 2024.

"I feel like, me personally, we're a great team, we're gonna compete with those guys (Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss)," said Thomas this week . "We're going to be in those tough games. We're going to win those tough games. And it's just something at Tennessee, that's our culture. That's what we expect to do. Obviously, our team, we don't need validation from anyone. We don't look for validation from anyone. It's just good to know that we come here together, we got each other's back, we're going to be the ones to push ourselves to get to where we want to go and that's to win a national championship."

" The standard at Tennessee is to win championships ," added Heupel. "We’re in a race to get there as fast as we can. We’ve done a lot of great things in the last three years, last season included. Proud of the steps that we’ve taken. But we got to continue to climb.

"Everybody inside of our building understands the expectation, standards, and goals that we have. The expectations are never going to be greater outside of the building than they are inside of it."

Tennessee doesn't seem to care where they're rated by the media. It sounds cliché, but their only focus is go 1-0 each week.

Related: Eli Drinkwitz makes strong statement about his 'standing on business' comment and Tennessee's Josh Heupel