Thursday Ramblings

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this all hurriedly, so lay off me if there are errors in grammar, spelling, etc.

It’s Thursday, and in about 32 hours, I will be driving out of the East Tennessee mountains to head to the plains of Auburn.  I am a lot more nervous than last week, because last week I actually thought we were going to show up and win.  I had convinced myself that UCLA, and to some extent UAB, were just growing pains for this team.  Now, I find myself doubting what’s going on.  We have the same record as we did last year and lost to the same Florida team and a crappy Pac-10 team.  That Vols team last year spun the season on it’s head and roared back to make a successful season of it, including representing the East in the SEC Championship Game.  I believed that team could do it last year, even after the shellacking we received at the hands of Florida (59-20), but I just don’t feel that way about this team.  Everything is going wrong right now other than some of the players on our defense (that means you Mr. Berry and Mr. McCoy).  Maybe we can employ the following strategy this weekend in Auburn even though it didn’t work against Florida:

From Sports Illustrated by way of EDSBS

As if things weren’t bad enough with our current roster and coaching staff, our hope for the future, Josh Nunes, has changed to a soft commit to Tennessee and has reopened his recruitment.  Wonder why?  He cites distance and family, but is there more to it than that?  Did he see an uninspired and ineffective Tennessee team on Saturday?  Was it the boos?  Was it the mass exodus that occurred continuously through the second half?  Maybe it was the fact that they had him hanging out with Crompton the whole weekend.  Only the kid knows, but one thing that I know is that this is not good news for Tennessee.  The people that run the airlines must be Alabama fans is all I know:

Tim Nunes said his family had flight delays on both trips to Knoxville — in late July and last weekend.

“We thought it was just an easy jump to the airport,” Tim Nunes said. “It’s a bummer but he said, ‘I can’t put everybody through this.’ ”

Continuing on this depression-related thread, Bill Duff’s Love Child (BLDC) now has a baby blog. The best post to date is this one, where he talks about how college football has changed over the years and how Tennessee for whatever reason has failed to aggressively adapt wtih the changes and with the rest of the country.  BDLC essentially is ready for Phil to go and for Tennessee to finally go out and find our answer to the programs that have passed us by:

I want a sideline stalker, someone that will snap your head off for inexcusable mental errors … I don’t want my head coach to be a player’s best friend or surrogate dad.  That model worked at one time, but it is out of date, and those coaches are losing football games.

Speaking of being done with Fulmer, Home Sweet Home at Gate 21 has made his feelings known: “I’m Done”:

That’s coaching, people. And for Tennessee to return to the level of being able to compete legitimately in today’s SEC, there’s going to have to be a change. Coach Fulmer has done more for this University than just about anybody else and deserves that credit. But it’s time for him to step down.

The level-headed Lawvol, proprietor of Gate 21 (who incidentally is one of the best bloggers out there), has also written an epic post entitled “An Open Letter to the Vol Nation: A Manifesto on Past, Present, and Future.  It is huge, but you have to read it.  Go now.  Seriously!

Also, if you are bored and want to reminisce about the good old days, check out Weller and Bryan’s Sports Blog to look over their All-Time Tennessee team.  It is a great list, aside from the absence of three of my top-ten greats in Tennessee football history: Johnny Majors (Heisman runner-up to Paul Hornung), Gene McEver (led the NCAA in scoring in 1929 with 130 – that record is still the most points in a season at UT), and George “Bad News” Cafego. If nothing else, they should add McEver to the RB list and make a “best all-around” section and put Majors and Cafego in it because they could both do it all.

CHANGING GEARS

Elsewhere in the college football world, the NCAA hasn’t busted one major college football program in fifteen months (via Deadspin).  “Big deal,” you might be saying to yourself.  Fifteen months isn’t all that long, right?  Well check this:  That is the longest stretch that all teams have been compliant (or at least haven’t been caught) in the last 46 years, and it is the second longest stretch in NCAA history.  Either teams are finally realizing that they shouldn’t be cheating, teams are getting better at it, or the NCAA has just simply given up trying to police it.  I think maybe it is somewhere between the first and second ones.  NCAA basketball is going on two years without a major infraction.

Check out the quote that Spencer Hall (Orson from EDSBS) found by the assistant coach from The Waterboy Alabama’s strength and conditioning coach that expresses his feelings about Georgia’s blackout this weekend:

They’re wearing black because they’re going to a motherf***in’ funeral.

Good loooooord! I am glad I picked Alabama now.