Top officials from BASS and ESPN will never admit it, but I’ll bet they were less than thrilled to see Alton Jones win this year’s Bassmasters Classic.

Jones is a nice guy. He’s a soft-spoken, devout Christian who takes his family with him to every tour stop. His wife, Jimmye Sue, homeschools their three kids, so they can travel the pro-fishing circuit without missing out on their education.

Jones isn’t covered with tattoos or piercings. He doesn’t break dance on stage or scream like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone when he lands a fish.

In other words, he’s the polar opposite of what ESPN and BASS are pushing these days.

For several years now, they’ve been trying to turn the sport into a cross between NASCAR racing and professional wrestling. They’ve stopped just short of asking some anglers to wear capes and masks.

They’ve unfairly given more camera time to anglers who fit their silly profile, and they’ve lost many of the fans who once supported tournament angling.

Still, no matter what they do, they can’t make bigger fish bite for the anglers who behave the silliest.

Some tournaments are still gonna be won by nice, normal guys like Alton Jones.

Before you turn your attention completely to fishing or turkey hunting, you should spend some time cruising your hunting property the next few weeks looking for antler sheds.

Whitetail bucks lose their antlers this time of year to make way for next year’s larger racks, and the sheds can often be found in areas where deer feed heavily. Most of the people I talk to find them around the edges of food plots and near corn feeders.

Finding sheds can help you learn a lot about your hunting property.

Some people are shocked when they find big antler sheds because they never knew they had such big deer on their property. When you find an impressive rack (or half a rack, which is often the case), you know a big buck is calling that area home. It gives you a head start on your scouting for next year.

If you’re hoping to find sheds, don’t wait too long.

Since they’re made of calcium, they are eaten by all sorts of rodents and small critters and usually disappear quickly.

Go out now, and kill two birds with one stone:

Scout for some big gobblers, and look for some big sheds.

Hope nobody put off getting that free oil change. Just kidding. I know a lot of Tiger fans experienced a major hangover today, and that’s only to be expected. I asked before the UAB game which game fans would rather lose, if they had to lose one. I think a loss to UAB would have felt better because it could have been written off to being on the road, against a team that was making crazy shots all game. Losing to Tennessee probably hurts more because, well, it’s Tennessee, and the Tigers lost because they got killed in the effort areas.

I always resisted the undefeated talk, because it’s just so hard to do. At the same time, I never was in the camp that the Tigers needed a loss in order to win a national title. We’ll know for sure in about six weeks whether they indeed needed to lose this game, but if I had to render a snap judgement, I’d say it will be a positive in the long term. Now that we’re past this game, it’s a little easier to look back and make that argument.

Here’s what I’d say. From the Georgetown game on Dec. 22 through the first 27 or 28 minutes of the Houston road game on Jan. 30, the Tigers really played unbelievable basketball. They soundly beat Georgetown and Arizona, ripped through the Pepperdines and Sienas, beat Southern Miss by 36, totally out-ran Gonzaga and had a 20-point lead in the second half at Houston. From that point on, however, I don’t think I could say the Tigers have gotten better as a basketball team. Sure, they won the games — UTEP, UCF, Houston again, UAB — but were they really getting better? And if you’re not getting better at this time of year, you’re getting worse. Was arrogance creeping in? Perhaps. It’s hard to maintain that edge when you feel invincible. Maybe that’s why pretty much every loose ball or rebound that could have gone either way went to Tennessee for 80-90% of the game.

This is probably a good time for a loss, with four games to go in the regular season. That’s plenty of time to bottom out and build back up to the point where the Tigers can play their best basketball in March. That’s what Florida did two years ago when they lost three games in a row — including at home to Tennessee — at this very same time of the season.

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For a team that likes to talk — and from what I’m hearing in the press room, that’s going to be detailed plenty by national media outlets — the Tigers sure didn’t want to do much of it Saturday night after a 66-62 loss to Tennessee.

Look, I understand that losing stinks. It’s hard, especially for a team that isn’t used to it. But the lack of leadership, the lack of accountability shown by Chris Douglas-Roberts and Antonio Anderson in the postgame locker room was flat-out poor. This was the No. 1 team in the country, playing a national game in front of national media, and they are a big story. When you lose, you can’t pull what the Tigers pulled Saturday, basically giving the middle finger to reporters. For the record, Robert Dozier, Doneal Mack and Derrick Rose talked about the game. Nobody else did. And by the way, this kind of stuff isn’t tolerated in other programs. Ask anybody in our business. A lot of people in the Memphis program and the fans like to complain about the media. That performance Saturday — not during the game, but after — isn’t going to earn much benefit of the doubt.