Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts are heading back to the Super Bowl for the 3rd time in four seasons. Once having the stigma of an outstanding regular season QB who saved his worst for the playoffs (until his first Super Bowl), Manning never looked better in the 2nd half of a 30-17 AFC Title game victory over the New York Jets, completing 26 of his 39 passes for 377 yards and 3 touchdowns with no interceptions. Most of his big throws were to his #3 and #4 receivers, Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie. BTW Garcon was a 6TH ROUND draft pick out of MOUNT UNION COLLEGE. The next game will be in a familiar setting against a familiar opponent. The last time the Colts won the Super Bowl in 2007, they beat the Bears 29-17 in Miami. Miami will be the venue for this year's game, and the opponent will be Manning's hometown New Orleans Saints, whom his father Archie toiled at QB for losing season after losing season back in the 1970s. The Saints ended Bret Favre's dream of leading the Vikings to the Super Bowl with a dramatic 31-28 OT win in New Orleans. These two teams (Colts and Saints) were the best in their respective conferences during the regular season. Both teams started 13-0 and will comprise of the first Super Bowl match up of the NFC and AFC's top seeds since the Cowboys beat the Bills back in 1993. The Saints look on paper to be equal to the Colts, maybe a little better. Saints QB Drew Brees led a high powered offense where he has multiple weapons in the backfield and at receiver to play with. The Saints defense gave up more points and yards than the Colts but forced and capitalized on opponents turnovers more often. Just ask the Vikings, who out gained the Saints almost 2-1, but fumbled and threw interceptions all night long in Saints territory it seemed. The Vikings should really be kicking themselves. Not just for all the costly turnovers, but they are built to beat the Colts. I believe they likely would have, but we will never really know because they will not get a chance to prove me right.

One thing the Vikings do well is pressure the QB. Just ask Tony Romo. They do that much better than the Ravens and the Jets. More importantly, they do it better than the Saints. The Jets got to Manning early, sacking him twice in the first 8 plays, but the Colts adjusted and New York never touched Manning again. The Vikings can put pressure on a QB with a slew of defenders, like ends Jared Allen and Ray Edwards, or linebackers Jasper Brinkley and Chad Greenway. The Vikings can take away big plays better than the Saints, allowing only two plays of longer than 20 yards against the high-powered offense of New Orleans. Manning is going to get his for the most part, but even he would have a lot of trouble making the necessary adjustments over the course of the game against Minnesota often enough. The Vikings D is loaded with play makers, especially up front. To beat Indianapolis, defenses have to do two things that the Vikings defense does well. That is pressure Manning and limit big plays. The Saints defense will not do that as well as the Vikings could have. Their front 7 isn't as imposing. The Colt's defense, led by end Dwight Freeney will get pressure on Drew Brees and slow the Saints offense down to a degree. Manning and Brees will both get yards and points, but the Colts defense will make more key stops when they need it. The Colts will not have as many turnovers as the Vikings did either. This is the most amazing stat about the Colts. They ended the 2008 season on a nine game regular season winning streak. Couple that with a 14-0 start in 2009. In the last 26 games that the Colts tried to win, they have been successful in 25 of them. That includes the last two playoff games this season. The lone exception was the opening round playoff loss at San Diego last season and even that went to overtime. Other than that, the Colts only lost when they decided it would be better to not play their main players in favor of having them ready for the playoffs. The Jets and the Bills benefited as the Colts had already clinched the best record in the AFC and the home field playoff advantage that comes with it. 25-1 in games the Colts played to win. How can anyone pick against that? Prediction: Colts 31 Saints 27.


Coach O: So Coach Orgeron coaches Ole Miss to three horrible seasons, his last team going 0-8 in the SEC in 2007. He gets canned after that and the Rebels win the Cotton Bowl the very next season. Coach O was a defensive line coach with the Saints in 2008. They were a mediocre 8-8. He leaves to come to Tennessee and the Saints make the Super Bowl the very next year. I'll say one thing for him, he leaves football teams a lot better off than when he finds them. So in 2009, the Vols go 7-6. Will that trend continue? Lets hope so!!!

So Lane Kiffin never had a Tennessee drivers license. Neither did his father and DC Monte. Neither did his wife Layla, or Kiffin's mother. So Lane Kiffin wrecks a car one night after he "fell asleep at the wheel driving home late one night to see his family that he hadn't seen in several days due to working long hours in the football complex" without a valid Tennessee drivers license. That's outstanding. And believable too.

Mike Hamilton just admitted to the KNS that Lane Kiffin was a poor cultural fit at UT. Hamilton tells Austin Ward that Kiffin wasn't here long enough to understand the community. HELLO! So with all due respect, why the H... did you hire the guy in the first place? I guess there are things in hindsight that Hamilton can see now that he couldn't in the interview process. There were so many outstanding coaches that would have come if offered, and Hamilton had plenty of time to find one of them due to cutting Fulmer loose in early November. So that proves even more that the hire had nothing to do with how qualified Lane Kiffin was. It was due to how qualified Ed Orgeron was as a recruiter,and how qualified Monte Kiffin was as a long time NFL DC. Lane Kiffin told Mike Hamilton that they both would be on his staff.

In retrospect, it may have been better to keep Fulmer one more year. He would have certainly been fired after the 2009 season, and Derek Dooley could still have been hired. No, the recruiting class would not have been as good as the one Kiffin assembled. I have to ask, how many of those kids in the 2009 signing class really had much of an impact anyway? Other than Janzen Jackson. Yes, 2009 tickets would have been a tough sell for UT and many would have been available for the fans. But I have to ask this. Was the Kiffin hire worth it to all those who work in UT's NCAA compliance department? Their job is a heck of a lot easier today than it was a month ago, and that's a fact. So I ask Mike Hamilton, if Lane Kiffin was the best you could come up with, would keeping Fulmer around made the program a whole lot worse than where it is today? Not really.

I'm not sure I would have hired Derek Dooley if I were the AD. He probably wouldn't have been my first choice, but next to the Kiffin hire, I'm not opposed to hiring Coach Dooley at all. I'm not even sure if Dooley will succeed at a high level here.However, It will be hard to make a judgment after the 2010 season about him. But at least he won't go around acting like he had won big games or had accomplished anything at all when he hasn't at any level, like the coach that came before him did. Lets face it, a lot of fans were so tired of Fulmer that they would have embraced Bin Laden if he were hired to replace him. Dooley has accomplished more in his career already than Lane Kiffin has in his.

The UT football program isn't where we want it to be. Its at about the same point it would have been had Kiffin never been hired. A lot of coaches could have put up a 7-6 record, so no I don't think his coaching was all that.

At least Mike Hamilton and his compliance staff can now forget about the Kiffin era, which wasn't really that impressive. Just a brief, bad dream.

I was irate. I knew it was a bad hire. A university like this can do a whole lot better than a 33 year old unemployed football coach who was turned down by Clemson and Washington and if not for who his Dad was would do good to get job at a MAC school. A list a yardstick long was full of coaches in division one that would love to have this job. But Mike Hamilton settled big time. He settled for a 33 year old who had never been a head coach in college. He was out of work after being fired by the Oakland Raiders, with a 5-14 record while not even making it through his second season there. He had interviewed for the Clemson job but they ended up promoting from within. Clemson thought that was a better idea than hiring a 33 year old with no head coaching experience on the college level. Mike Hamilton took a chance, not because he saw potential. It was who this 33 year old could hire on his staff. His father was a longtime NFL defensive coordinator at Tampa Bay. Ed Orgeron failed big time as a head coach at Ole Miss but was a heck of a recruiter. If not for his promise to bring those two with him to Tennessee, this 33 year old with no head coaching experience in college would be 34 now and still have no head coaching experience in college. Mike Hamilton gambled, made this very questionable hire, and this is the thanks he gets? This guy was out of work, wasn't going to get a job half as good as UT, had nowhere else to go, coaches for one 7-6 season, then UT isn't good enough for him? I was against this hire, strongly. I expressed this with Paul Maxwell on the Push when the hire was made. Paul didn't like this either and we tried to tell everyone. But we had to accept it and tried to support this program while hoping that it would all work out for the best. I certainly in my wildest dreams couldn't figure he would have a chance to bail out of here in one year after a 6 loss season. That was not one of the many reasons why I thought he wasn't qualified. Tennessee is better off in the long run. USC, he is your problem now.