Fulmer not resting on his success
Vols on rebound after losing season
By CHRIS LOW
Staff Writer
KNOXVILLE Tennessee Coach Phillip Fulmer wasn't sure how quick a fix it would be back in the offseason.
Nowhere in his own personal coaching manual was there a chapter on bouncing back from losing seasons.
At Tennessee, some would say it's a chapter reserved for former coaches.
But now that the Vols are back in a New Year's Day bowl and gunning for their ninth
10-win season in 14 full seasons under Fulmer, he's still not ready to say they're all the way back.
What he is convinced of is that they're pointed in the right direction.
"I think we made a lot of strides, and we took a very proactive approach to changes," said Fulmer, whose Vols returned to practice last Saturday in preparation for their Outback Bowl matchup with Penn State on Jan. 1 in Tampa.
"We were very intense on our attitude being what it had been prior to last year. We challenged anybody that crossed the line in any way. The team responded accordingly. You lose to three Top 10 teams, and you don't like any of them. Florida, if we don't get the (roughing the passer) penalty and LSU if we get the fumble that we got, then it's a hell of a year.
"I like this team, and I like where we're headed."
AD wants next step
Fulmer's boss, Tennessee Athletics Director Mike Hamilton, would tend to agree.
"I think we got back this year to what quote, unquote a good year is in Tennessee football," Hamilton said. "Certainly, I always talk about us being in the mix to play for the championship.
We're two plays away from being 11-1. I feel like we made strides. I think we had a good year. Now, we need to take that next step."
That next step is clearly a Southeastern Conference title, something the Vols haven't won since their 1998 national championship season.
What's more, they haven't gone to a BCS bowl since playing in the Fiesta Bowl following the 1999 season. Since that trip to the Arizona desert, 31 other teams from around the country have made BCS bowl appearances.
By Tennessee's standards, it's been a while, and fans are growing restless.
The fear is that everybody else in the SEC is passing the Vols by, especially with Florida winning the title this year in Urban Meyer's second season on the job and now headed to the BCS national championship game.
Vols have been in mix
Tennessee's meltdown in 2005 didn't help matters, either. But for the most part, the Vols have been on the SEC championship radar the last decade as much as anybody.
They just haven't won it.
Since the 1998 season, they've never gone longer than two years and not played for it. They lost to LSU in 2001 and lost to Auburn in 2004.
If that pattern holds true, they should be back in Atlanta next season.
"We should have won it in 2001. We absolutely should have," said Fulmer, the hurt from that loss to LSU still very much evident five years later.
"In 2004, we fought our butt off to get there and lost to a better team, but we might have beaten a couple of teams that were better than us during the year. I absolutely expect us to play for it regularly, and I'd like to win it. We're going to win it. That's what we're here for."
Doing so will almost certainly entail getting better in both lines of scrimmage.
Fulmer agrees that the biggest difference between the Vols' most recent teams and their strongest teams in the 1990s can be traced to the guys up front both offensively and defensively.
He said his biggest concern is the defensive line, although some of the Vols' numbers offensively the last two years would suggest that they haven't been as good up front on that side of the ball, either.
The Vols averaged just 110.1 rushing yards this season, their lowest output since averaging 83.9 yards in 1964. That's after averaging 128.2 yards on the ground in 2005.
Not since 1958 and 1959 has Tennessee averaged fewer than 130 rushing yards in back-to-back seasons.
Fulmer in for long run
Fulmer, who didn't receive a contract extension for the first time in his career following last season's 5-6 finish, deflects any talk about how that will all shake out this year.
Hamilton was evasive when asked if Fulmer might get a raise and extension before the bowl game.
Fulmer's current deal pays him $2.05 million per year, which places him among the top five to 10 highest-paid coaches in the country.
And while some fans are becoming more vocal about whether Fulmer can bring another title to Tennessee, he sounds as committed as ever to making that happen.
Fulmer, 56, said last weekend that he might coach another six to eight years. He's sixth all-time with his 89 SEC wins. Most of the guys ahead of him Bear Bryant (159), John Vaught (106) and Ralph "Shug" Jordan (98) have stadiums named after them.
"I feel great, and I think there's a lot more to do here," Fulmer said.
"You hate to go through what we did (in 2005), but it could have done us all a world of good, because I think we were spoiled a little bit. We assumed too much, and now nobody assumes anything."
