Tennessee the 7th best job in the SEC (16th nationally)

#26
#26
All this means NOTHING, that junk changes every year. This is a fine job, we have a good coach. Let's just play football, I could care less what anybody thinks about us. Athlon, the media, blah blah blah all I care about is football time in TENNESSEE!!!!! They can go take their predictions and stick where the sun don't shine. GBO!!!!
here we go again
 
#28
#28
A lot of Debbie downer Tennessee fans on Volnation love to post articles about how mediocre Tennessee sports(especially football) is. This is the only message board in the SEC where the posters do dumbsh*t like that.
We don’t have the market cornered on this but the fact that we have more passionate fans who don’t remember hardly what it was like to win makes it seem like we are worse. BVS...
 
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#30
#30
#31
#31
Georgia: “a great place to live”. It’s been a while since I drive through Athens but I never thought it was an ideal place to live. I know Atlanta is an hour or so away and the recruiting base is great. Of the historical SEC powers I’d have to say Knoxville is a top 3 Sec city perhaps the top. Tuscaloosa, Auburn, Athens, college station, even Gainesville - nice campuses but the surrounding cities don’t have much to offer. I guess Vandy and perhaps Baton Rouge are in nice cities.
 
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#32
#32
I agree with the top 4. I think an argument can be made for TN to be at #5, but so could A&M. Only one I find kind of crazy to be ranked below is Auburn, but you can't argue with their track record. They've simply been the better program than UT for a good while now.

Auburn doesnt go cheap for players or coaches. That's why they are ahead of us...
 
#34
#34
I think we are 8th in the SEC in wins since 2000 (sequentially behind LSU, UGA, BAMA, UF, AUB, USCjr, and A&M), so if we want to change perceptions, we've got to start changing scoreboards first.
 
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#36
#36
A lot of Debbie downer Tennessee fans on Volnation love to post articles about how mediocre Tennessee sports(especially football) is. This is the only message board in the SEC where the posters do dumbsh*t like that.

No it’s not. Fans are fans, just like Tennessee fans, at every SEC school. And if you’re going to honestly talk about the state of the program right now and where it compares to the other programs in the conference, there’s gonna be a fair amount of negativity and pessimism.....and any team with the tradition and pedigree that Tennessee has, that has gone 9-15 the last 2 years after losing a school-record 6 games by 25+ points last year, would be seeing the exact same thing from its fanbase. And that’s just based off the last 2 years....throw in the previous 8-9 seasons and it’s beyond understandable why Vols fans post what we do.
 
#37
#37
I agree with the top 4. I think an argument can be made for TN to be at #5, but so could A&M. Only one I find kind of crazy to be ranked below is Auburn, but you can't argue with their track record. They've simply been the better program than UT for a good while now.
Auburn I get. One has to factor in the extra payroll available and their abilities to keep someone eligible under interesting circumstances. Cam?
 
#38
#38
A lot of Debbie downer Tennessee fans on Volnation love to post articles about how mediocre Tennessee sports(especially football) is. This is the only message board in the SEC where the posters do dumbsh*t like that.

Well, they’re right. The team needs to win to change that perception. Fan fiction lost its luster after about 5 years of mediocrity.
 
#40
#40
Is it just me but does anyone else get offended by "the large black population base". A rather racist observation. I'm from Tennessee. Went to college at UT. I happen to be be white.
No, it's just you. That's the problem in today's society, everybody gets offended over nothing. There was absolutely nothing racist about what he posted. Here's a newsflash for you, the vast majority of high quality athletes are indeed, black. Just take a look at professional sports, it's pretty obvious.
 
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#41
#41
Well, they’re right. The team needs to win to change that perception. Fan fiction lost its luster after about 5 years of mediocrity.
Cellar dwelling hardly qualifies as mediocrity. These days a program has to work hard to miss bowl season entirely, and few and far between are the SEC teams that get outscored by their opponents on a cumulative basis. 1-6 against the spread at home is substantial failure regardless of the experience level of the coach. The administration loves the fact that its fans still consider the last ten years to have been "mediocre."
 
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#42
#42
Is it just me but does anyone else get offended by "the large black population base". A rather racist observation. I'm from Tennessee. Went to college at UT. I happen to be be white.
I don't think he meant it that way. Where there is more than one reasonable interpretation of a comment and one is non-offensive, I presume the non-offensive, it makes life a lot easier.

More to the overall point, it is inarguable that the dynamics of the recruiting bases from which college football teams draw their players changed considerably when the sport was expanded beyond whites only. Integration was a good, good development, however objectively, Tennessee's place in the conference pecking order has changed somewhat since then, a lot of that has to do with demographics . The General did not operate under conditions similar to those in place now.

BEFORE 1972, from 1869-1971, here are the SEC win totals:

Alabama, 480 (10th overall)
Tennessee, 470 (12th overall)
LSU, 428 (23rd overall)
Vanderbilt, 426 (24th overall)
Georgia, 413 (28th overall)
Missouri, 399 (32nd overall)
Ole Miss, 394 (35th overall)
Auburn, 389 (37th overall)
Arkansas, 385 (40th overall)
Kentucky, 382 (42nd overall)
Texas A&M, 379 (45th overall)
Florida, 329 (64th overall)
South Carolina, 316 (69th overall)
Miss State, 307 (73rd overall)

SINCE 1972, which was the first fully integrated season, with all teams being integrated, here are the win totals since that time (from 1972 to 2018):

Alabama, 425 (4th overall)
Georgia, 406 (7th overall)
Florida, 395 (10th overall)
Auburn, 378 (16th overall)
LSU, 369 (17th overall)
Tennessee, 368 (18th overall)
Texas A&M, 362 (19th overall)
Arkansas, 329 (27th overall)
South Carolina, 293 (47th overall)
Missouri, 281 (56th overall)
Ole Miss, 277 (60th overall)
Miss State, 256 (71st overall)
Kentucky, 234 (79th overall)
Vanderbilt, 180 (99th overall)

Look at the ascendance of southern teams in general, and our rivals in particular. UGA moved up 21 spots, as did Auburn, and Florida moved up 54! In the last 6 decades, we have finished in the Top 10 in overall wins once (the 1990's), our other top 10 finishes are in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. The rest of the time we have been in the high teens/twenties. That's baseline for Tennessee in modern times, this decade we are far below our baseline, we are 71st overall in wins, which is historically bad for Tennessee. We got too big for our britches when we fired Fulmer, we were still at our baseline at that time, now we are far below it. Now there are a lot more good teams than there were in yesteryear, first we've got to get back to our baseline, and then wait for a power vacuum (i.e. some of the other teams being down), that's how the 90's happened, that's the road back.
 
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#43
#43
Gainesville is an arm pit......

I would think a place like Duke where coach Cut has been for YEARS would be one of the best jobs .....stable.... pays decently..... a lot less pressure to win in football..... less death threats... less rented moving vans parked on your lawn ...etc....
 
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#44
#44
Cellar dwelling hardly qualifies as mediocrity. These days a program has to work hard to miss bowl season entirely, and few and far between are the SEC teams that get outscored by their opponents on a cumulative basis. 1-6 against the spread at home is substantial failure regardless of the experience level of the coach. The administration loves the fact that its fans still consider the last ten years to have been "mediocre."

Poor choice of words on my part. Shameful or hopeless would have been more accurate.
 
#45
#45
All this means NOTHING, that junk changes every year. This is a fine job, we have a good coach. Let's just play football, I could care less what anybody thinks about us. Athlon, the media, blah blah blah all I care about is football time in TENNESSEE!!!!! They can go take their predictions and stick where the sun don't shine. GBO!!!!
*couldnt care less
 
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#46
#46
Is it just me but does anyone else get offended by "the large black population base". A rather racist observation. I'm from Tennessee. Went to college at UT. I happen to be be white.
No. I don’t get easily offended but then I come from a generation that lived by “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”.
 
#47
#47
If we are talking currently then they aren't wrong. We've been in a slump for 10-15 years. Historically we are top 10. If we win then we are relevant. Simple as that.

No it’s not a slump. It’s a 20 year downward trend. We haven’t been relevant since 2001.
 
#48
#48
This stuff is so fluid. 20 years ago zero people would have rated Georgia over UT. 15 years ago you could have copy and pasted what was said about us (except SEC record) for Bama. We are a hot shot coach away from being a top 5 job (like most power 5 schools that support football are).
 
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#49
#49
The only thing that matters is....Can this university (insert name here) win at the highest level?

The answer is yes in the case of Tennessee.

Is it easier at other places? Yes

The other factor is “how low can you go?” And I think that is effecting these rankings. It’s hard to imagine any school ranked ahead of Tennessee on the list having a decade like Tennessee just had.

JMO
Alabama had a string of 10 years from 98-07 where their record is 47-54. Of course there are 19 vacated wins in there but even with those it wasn’t a great 10 years. They also went 50-48 in the 1950s. Most teams have had tough times at some point. It’s just a matter of when and for how long.
 
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#50
#50
LSU Football Records from 1989-2000:

1989: 4-7
1990: 5-6
1991: 5-6
1992: 2-9
1993: 5-6
1994: 4-7
1995: 7-4-1
1996: 10-2
1997: 9-3
1998: 4-7
1999: 3-8
2000: 8-4
Total: 66-69-1 (Tennessee's record from 2008-2018 was 67-70)


Yes, I've noticed this before, and I am hoping LSU is the right comparison. They were worthless in the 90s, but recovered nicely the next decade. Another model for UT's decline would be Ole Miss. They were one of the leading programs in the 40s, 50s, and part of the 60s, but then went into decline for 30+ years. It wasn't until Cut recruited Eli that they had some decent seasons. I truly hope we follow the LSU model, and not the Ole Miss model. If so, Pruitt is the man. He has to be.
 
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