As things continue to heat up in Knoxville, and a trip to Athens is in the works for some hopes are dwindling.  It seems as though everyone has a laundry list of improvements for this football team.  For some strange reason the situation reminds me of an old song writer sitting on the stage who is playing new material.

Good song writers are not easy to find.  I have a buddy that does it quite well, but even in a local setting, people still have their favorites.  So for ten years he trots out on stage, and he has to sing one or two of the same songs every night he appears.  One night I finally asked him what it feels like to be a “song monkey”.  I thought it would be very frustrating to be on stage entertaining only to have people yelling one song title after another.  After all, you can only play so many tunes in a set. My friend took a very pragmatic approach to the question.  He told me that he realized that the old hits paid for the guitar he was playing.

I really can’t imagine what it would be like to get up on stage, bare your soul to the audience, and then have to play something to appease them….every night. To a lot of fans Fulmer has become the song monkey.  His new material doesn’t match what he wrote back in the day, and the fans are ready to hear the old tunes.

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Tennessee Wins:

That’s about the only positive statement that can be made following the Vols’ performance last week against Northern Illinois. A pay-per-view audience and a less than full house crowd watched Tennessee struggle to get past a directional school. With a similar performance against Georgia Saturday, Tennessee will not come within four touchdowns of the Dawgs. Also, Georgia will be extremely attentive Saturday based on what the Bulldogs are playing for and also based on what happened last year. Many think Tennessee is staring a long day right in the face, and with it, a 2-4 overall record and 0-3 conference mark. And, with Alabama coming to Knoxville in two weeks, the Vols could be 3-5 and 1-4 with four games left. Ouch!

Looking at what could be the finished product you can probably give the Vols wins against Mississippi St. and Wyoming which would be four. For argument’s sake let’s count Georgia, Alabama and Vanderbilt as losses giving them 6 with two swing games that will certainly be battles. Win both and get to 6-6. Lose both and it’s 4-8 in ‘08. Is this an accurate view?

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So, you’ve made it through Football 101 and have one of two thoughts:

“That was a waste of time; I knew all of that already and got bored and started skimming”, or

“That was helpful, and I FINALLY get it!  Now I don’t feel lost any more!”

Regardless of what your reaction was, today we cover the other side of the ball.  We’ll be going over defensive positions by alignment rather than the offensive positions.

Just like with the offense, a defense can have 11 men on the field at a given time.  Unlike the offense, a defense is not required to have anyone lined up anywhere.  If they want to put all 11 on the line of scrimmage, they can.  If they want to put all 11 sixty yards off the line of scrimmage, they can do that as well.  Neither one would be particularly advantageous, but it could happen.

Defensive players are normally grouped into three positions: defensive line, linebackers, and secondary.  There is no minimum or maximum to how many can be on the field at a time as long as there’s 11 or fewer total.  Now, let’s go through these one by one.

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The Halfcourt Trap.

As I try to contain my excitement about the epic Northern Illinois-Tennessee clash, here are this week’s topics that caught my eye.

1. Failing Arizona. A messy divorce. A mediocre season. An ugly staff purge. Your stud recruit skipping Tucson for Europe. That has been Arizona basketball for the last year. Now, a new problem. Lute Olson offered Reger Dowell a scholarship. Young Mr. Dowell accepted. Abdul Gaddy then decided to matriculate at U of A. Suddenly, Not So Cool Hand Lute told Dowell he should look elsewhere. Good to see desperation and adversity are exposing the lack of character insiders have always known Olson possessed.
2. Billy Clyde, Report To The Principal’s Office(Again). After a thinly disguised shot at Billy Gillispie regarding the recruitment of players prior to high school enrollment, the NABC is taking issue with a tactic used by the UK coach again. Gillispie was smart enough to come up with the idea of using his two hour team practice next week to conduct Big Blue Madness and get a jump on his competition on the recruiting trail. Of course, the NABC must now attempt to protect those in their membership who aren’t creative enough to come up with a such a plan by asking the NCAA to ban the public from the skill development sessions. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been at this blog for a while now.  Usually, during the football season (in both good and bad times) the words come relatively easily; especially compared to the challenge of writing a blog during the summer months when all is still speculation.  To me this week feels a little like a May day.  Nearly everything that can be said has been said.

I do remember what I felt like while writing this blog last summer.  UT had finally hired an OC outside of the Tennessee family.  Phil Fulmer was seemingly saying and doing all of the right things.  The team had come together to quell early discipline issues, and most of us were….dare I say….hopeful. Yes, I said hopeful.  I was living under the assumption that this year Phil had something up his sleeve.   To be brutally honest, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility for me that Phil was setting this team up for a more competitive run this year. Some of you knew better.  I did not.

For Phil Fulmer, I always had a gut feeling that last season was about holding on after early losses.  When he managed to keep the team together and play in the SEC East championship game his relief in front of the camera was more than apparent.  He even gave Mike Hamilton a man hug after the South Carolina win.  The hug and other expressions led me to believe Phil was planning to put his sophomore class on display this year, and that class was going to take this program to the next level. Read the rest of this entry »

More of the Same:

Another week of Tennessee football yields another week of negative talk about a very proud and historic program. Tennessee will be a relevant football program again. The obvious question many fans have is can the current administration get this program back to that elite level or will Mike Hamilton have to make another big hire?

Many think that Coach Fulmer will have beyond this year to turn things into a positive direction. However, the possibility for disaster certainly exists at 1-3 and 0-2. Can this coaching staff keep its players focused while utilizing a similar motivating tactic that they were forced to use last year? How many times will the mantra, “It’s us against the world” work? Can you use that thought with many of the same kids two years in a row?

The first obvious thing that needs to happen is there needs to be a change at quarterback. Jonathon Crompton is a good kid with some potential to be a fine SEC quarterback. However, he is definitely not there yet. I know it, you know it and more importantly his teammates know it. You have to make a change to prove to the players busting their butts to win football games that you are doing everything you can to ensure that happens each week. Even to the untrained quarterback evaluating eye, Crompton does not feel comfortable past one read, there are obvious communication errors and there are big mistakes in key situations. It’s time to give someone else a chance. Crompton simply has not developed as many thought he would have. And that is the most puzzling aspect to the problem at QB for Tennessee, a puzzle to which Nick Stephens perhaps has the solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello class, and welcome to your first day of Football 101.  I am your professor, Ohio Vol.  Needless to say, that’s not my real name, but you don’t need to know what it actually is.

Since this is the first day of class, I’ll tell you a little about myself.  As the name suggests, I’m an Ohio native and currently reside in that state.  I did attend UT and am a longtime Vols fan.  Being stuck in central Ohio is a lot like being in Knoxville right now: what passes for good football locally on a Saturday isn’t good football.  The real difference is that the SEC is strong and the Big MAC is feeble, and UT’s fan base doesn’t believe their team to be invincible and everyone else to be “haters”.

As for my playing career, I can’t honestly say that I was any good.  I am the embodiment of the adage that “Those who can play, play; those who can’t, coach.”  I began my coaching career at age 19, but it wasn’t until I began closely looking at the game more as an economic model than a bunch of X’s and O’s that I really began to blossom strategically and from an interactive standpoint.  I am thankful to have been exposed to high levels of play in Ohio.  Had I been a more valuable player at a lesser school, I probably would have the minimal knowledge that I once did and wouldn’t have ever progressed.  But enough about me. Read the rest of this entry »

I ain’t mad at ya.

I should be, but I’m not.  I guess my expectations have been adjusted.   As sated last week, and proven again this week, this is just a bad team right now.  Thru the 1^st quarter of the season, they’ve shown no reason to think there will be a miraculous improvement.  1-3, 0-2.  Vandy is undefeated and #1 in the East. Alabama is a heartbeat away from #1.  Wake me up from this nightmare…..

To give you a little insight, I usually start these things by simply typing out my thoughts, then going back and arranging them into coherent, orderly sentences and paragraphs (at least I try anyway), and then I read it a few times.  Did I make my point?  Am I rambling?  Does this make any senses?  Would I believe this if I read it?  Anyway, you get the idea.

But tonight, I’m having no such luck.  There are no random thoughts that haven’t already been put out there……by any number of people, on this site, or in your local paper or some other web page.  The only thing that occurred to me while watching the Auburn game was that, in my lifetime, I have not seen worse quarterback play at Tennessee.  And that’s understandable; the standard that has been previously set is pretty daunting. Read the rest of this entry »

A Quick Look Back:

So why would a reasonably intelligent man think that Tennessee could actually beat Florida in 2008? That is the question I keep asking myself. Could my orange blinders have been secured that tightly? I don’t think that’s the answer as I easily thought Florida, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama would throttle the Vols last year. Maybe my UT past defined the answer to a point but not completely.

In a conversation with Tng8tr last week we discussed how Tennessee really had one basic way in which they could beat Florida and that Florida had many ways to get past Tennessee. But, I said before the season that Tennessee would beat Florida at home in ‘08 and I stuck by my pick. Obviously I was way off. But, my season record against the spread this year remains good at this point. (21-13)

What can be learned from the 30-6 beat down at the hands of the Gators? The University of Tennessee football program is quickly trying to assimilate that information with a difficult road test on the plains coming up Saturday. Ultimately, it is what we all know. The separation between UT and the powers of the SEC is great. The Vols’ unlikely run to an SEC East title last year and a blowout win against Georgia in ‘07 aside. The mountain to climb is very tall, the valley they’re in is very deep. Read the rest of this entry »

With local debate revolving around whether or not Phillip Fulmer has outlived his usefulness at UT, here are six examples of legendary hoops coaches who stayed inplace a little too long.

1. Denny Crum. Louisville was one of the true juggernauts in 1980s college hoops. The Cards were regular visitors to the Final Four and took home the big prize in ‘80 and ‘86. However, Crum’s last few years were far below the standards he set and left Rick Pitino with considerable work to do in bringing U of L back to basketball health.
2. Dale Brown. Preacher Dale took LSU basketball from a meaningless sideshow to football to a perennial NCAA Tournament participant good enough to reach Final Fours in ‘81 and ‘86. That said, Brown’s final years on the bayou were marred with losing basketball and the fallout from the Lester Earl recruitment.
3. Gene Keady. The face of Purdue basketball for two decades plus, Keady got as much out of his players as any coach of his generation. The Boilermakers won Big Ten titles and played Bob Knight’s Indiana straight up for most of his tenure. Despite those accomplishments, the end of his time in West Layfayette was characterized by teams operating at a talent deficit coming up short despite great effort. Read the rest of this entry »