We open today with a moment of prayer for the family of UT Tennis player Sean Karl who passed away yesterday after a battle with cancer. Karl inspired and touched many folks in recent months with his amazing attitude in the face of a terrible diagnosis.
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Don't look now but the Vols are alive and well. It's time to finish strong. Mizzou brings a nice team into a Saturday night matchup in Neyland Stadium. I called the shot early and often in the blog last week and I'm here to tell you right now that Tennessee WILL get it done Saturday night for their third straight win. Can you imagine the feeling after Saturday's game when we realize the Vols have actually turned the corner. Bottom line, a win Saturday over Mizzou would be all I need to proclaim the Vols back. Don't fool yourself, Mizzou isn't great but they aren't Kentucky either. They will make Tennessee earn it. Plus, Mizzou is still reaching for division title. Georgia is 6-2 in the SEC while Mizzou is 5-1, but Georgia owns the tie breaker.
The Tigers have a terrific defensive line and they also feature some serious linebackers. They have a nice defense indeed. This will be the best defense Dobbs has seen since the second half of Bama. The Tigers have a decent offense but should be an opponent that Tennessee will be able to keep in front of them for most of the night. That Tennessee opened as a three point favorite for Mizzou is further proof that Tennessee has turned it around.
A couple of things are obvious to me after UK on Saturday.
1) The Vols are for real. The days of losing to the Kentucky's and Vandy's of the world are long gone. This program has turned the page in year two under Butch Jones. Job well done to all involved. Even better players are on the way. It's going to be on in Knoxville. As you will read below from Eric, pundits are taking notice. Tennessee will be a pre season top 25 team next year.
2) This is Josh Dobbs football team. He may not be the best passer in the world right now but he's one hell of a leader. Josh Dobbs has had a tremendous impact on this football team. They are simply a different animal and his presence is a major reason why. Here's hoping Butch Jones starts calling Tennessee Josh Dobbs' team because that's exactly what they are.
3) Derek Barnett is other worldy and he proves that early enrollment is overrated. I'm all for letting kids be kids. My senior year of high school was great fun. Since I'm all grown up, I have the hindsight of realizing that I wouldn't ever want to give back that time in my life. You're only young once. I think it does a disservice to these kids to encourage/mandate early enrollment. Derek Barnett seems to be handling things just well thank you very much without giving that precious time at Tennessee. His upside is off the charts. At 9 sacks, he's only two behind fellow freshman Miles Garrett of Texas A&M who has 11 sacks and is also nursing an injury. A&M has LSU on Thanksgiving while Barnett has two opponents that should provide ample opportunity for (s)action. Things are getting good on the Barnett freshmen sack record front.
3) I'm thrilled for the seniors on Tennessee's team. These guys are going to etch themselves in Tennessee lore for the heart they've shown in sticking with the program. A win over Mizzou would be so huge for this group of guys. What guts and courage they've shown through this time. This is what sports are all about from my perspective. It's really easy to lionize the championship teams. Anybody can win. It takes perseverance and will to toil in a program with as little success as Tennessee has had. These are special people! We should lift each and every one of them up.
4) Everybody needs somebody to blame, but Butch Jones isn't your guy. Here's the bottom line on Josh Dobbs.....He didn't start the season as UT's QB because he wasn't ready. Now, you could argue that Worley was NEVER suited for the spread option and you will get guff from me. This still doesn't change the FACT that DOBBS STUNK IN THE SUMMER. Nobody wants to hear this but Dobbs WASN'T ready. At the same time, Tennessee should've used a piece of one of the easy early season wins to get another QB ready just in case. You can play the second guess card for the second half of Florida because Worley was awful that afternoon. Also, he was obviously on fumes at Ole Miss. By my estimation, playing Dobbs would've only netted Tennessee one more sure fire win (Florida).
Look, I know it's frustrating because the SEC (L)East is all time bad. I get the angst. Still, in my mind directing it toward Butch Jones and the coaches for not starting the season with Dobbs is misguided. Now, have they handled the Dobbs situation perfectly? Of course not. Not only should Dobbs have seen the field versus Florida, he should have gotten serious time versus UTC. In retrospect, it makes ZERO sense that he didn't play in that game. But, what do I know? Butch Jones is not only going to get away with it and live to tell but he's going to get some serious consideration for coach of the year in the SEC if Tennessee wins out.
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Orange Throat
'Half credit for you Tony Basilio, you've called a couple of shots this year: Florida which was off, and Kentucky which was right on. Quit while you're even! Then again, I just read above that you're up to it again. Oh well.
So, Florida plays the team (South Carolina) that's been ingenious in finding creative ways to lose, and the Gators take losing to a whole new level of resourcefulness. So, the SEC East's prayers are unanswered. Will Muschamp is no more as the Gators' head coach. Butch Jones can point to a pristine record against Spurrier so far but he was 0-2 against Muschamp.
He won't get a chance to even the score against Muschamp anytime soon, as he will take his $6 million buyout and land a nice Defensive Coordinator job somewhere, maybe at Texas A&M.
Meanwhile,
Florida AD Jeremy Foley, who has failed with two assistant coach hires and hit spectacularly in the short-term with Urban Meyer, now makes what will probably be the last football HC hire of his tenure at UF. Like Tony Basilio on his called shots this year, Jeremy would like to get back to even.
Possibilities:
Florida's offense under Muschamp was like watching paint dry, slowly. Unless
Bob Stoops takes the job, Foley will go for an offensive guy. More about Stoops later.
Foley would love to trot
Chip Kelly into a presser, despite his show cause at Oregon, but I don't see that happening.
Stoops has been at Oklahoma 16 years. He's had great success but the Sooners experienced fool's gold with their upset of uninspired Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and have disappointed this season on the way to probably 9 wins. He wears a visor, like another great Gator coach.
If Foley and Stoops can't get it done, then you can throw a lot of names into the mix:
Dan Mullen, Hugh Freeze, Rich Rod, Art Briles maybe ... who knows?
Our beloved Volunteers fulfilled Basilio's prophecy and spanked the Mildcats. It wasn't much more than a month ago what we were quaking in our shoes at the thought of Kentucky invading Neyland Stadium.
Mitch Barnhart overreacted to the "sugar high" produced by the light schedule and gave Mark Stoops a huge raise in mid-season. I'm not sure he's won a game since then, but his wife has been having a grand time at Nordstrom's. He'll make $3.25 million next year to conquer the likes of the Louisiana Ragin Cajuns, Eastern Kentucky, Vandy and Charlotte. Good work if you can get it.
Orange Throat'
Daniel Lewis of RTI is with The Throat. Mushchamps demise is not a positive development in Knoxville.
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Von Pearson is starting to get it going after an early season injury.
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The reinforcements for Tennessee went off in high school last week.
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What lessons will Jeremy Foley and Florida learn with the mis hire of Muschamp? Interesting article here.
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Florida is still a great job but Muschamp has made it just a good job short term.
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When the would be playoff teams are announced Tuesday, who will be there? Who won't? Why?
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Tee Mail Time! WWE visited SEC Saturday again.
'MSU 20, Alabama 18, Referees 7. Wow. You knew that the refs would help Alabama, but that was beyond atrocious. Perhaps we should be glad the refs only awarded them one TD.
Georgia 34 Auburn 7. I was actually kind of pulling for Georgia in this one. They look to me like the only team in the East that could give West champion a run in the Dome. Just sick of hearing about the west.
Carolina 23 Florida 20 OT. Well, Steve Spurrier CAN win an overtime game. Total implosion by the Gators. Florida linemen blocking each other. Blocked FG. Blocked punt. And here I was kind of hoping that Muschamp would sneak out of the season with his job.
Arkansas 17 LSU 0. Wow. I guess the penance for the sins of Petrino is done now. At one point I saw Anthony Jennings standing near a group of referees trying to listen in on the discussion. One referee was directing him away from the group and Jennings slapped his hands away. No flag. @@
Tennessee 50 Kentucky 16. I knew it was over when . . . When Kentucky tried the reverse with the halfback pass, I knew we had them. I think it was Kentucky's second series. If they had to resort to gimmicks that early in the game, I figured we'd wail.
Dobbs numbers are about what I'd expect to see for him. Less than 100 rushing and doing his damage through the air.
On the SEC Network postgame wrap-up, Greg McElroy thinks that Tennessee is the favorite in the SEC East for 2015. Booger (pronounced Boozhay since he went to LSU) agrees and thinks Dobbs might be a Heisman front runner for 2015. They might be getting carried away. But Greg did say that nobody wants to play this Tennessee team right now. Uh huh.
Key for Tennessee in 2015 will be getting off to a fast start. Typically, Tennessee has started slow, picked up speed, and then finished strong under the banner of "they remember what you do in November." Which always to me seemed to be a convenient way of trying to make you forget what they failed to accomplish in October (i.e. Alabama).
If I'm CBJ, then I make Florida my must win at all costs game next year. That is the doorway game that unlocks every goal Tennessee could hope to reach in 2015.
I just can't wait to see what this team looks like with some additional punch in the backfield and depth on the lines. Holy snap!
Missouri 34 A&M 27. Mr. Hyde showed up and found a way to get it done at College Station. So I wonder if Missouri gets ranked? Hell, their record is better than Auburn's. They beat A&M on the road (where A&M had just come into Auburn and won). They lead the SEC East ahead of a Georgia team that is a legit top ten bunch. The Tigers have snuck into the top 20 (#20 Coaches Poll). Yeah, I've got my ulterior motives. I wanted Missouri to be ranked when they come to Knoxville and lose to Tennessee.
Eric S, Knoxville'
Something for Johnny? Who's in? I like this idea...Can we work together to get something like this done. Are you interested?
'I have been thinking about this for a while & would like your thoughts. Obviously Coach Majors is a true living legend & I would like to put together a grass roots fundraising campaign to have a Legends Plaza built near Neyland Stadium with a statue of Coach Majors as the focal point. Basically an area similar in style to what was built for Coach Summitt. We could have annual additions of bronze 3d plates added to the background walls of former TN players.
I think the best statue of Coach would be a 2 sided standing image with the front half of him as a coach holding up his right hand with his index finger up saying "go for 1" after a touchdown & as you walk around to the back half he becomes a player with his left hand raised in the air saying "we're #1. I wanted to open a bank account with multiple people listed so no monies can be withdrawn by a single person. Thru social media & hopefully your help & guidance, I want to ask Vol fans for only $1 donations per family. Basically I think if we can get around $20,000 raised it would be enough to get the University to take this seriously & get some corporate sponsors to help.
I figure a small initial plaza would require aprox $150,000 to build. Once we get University approval then hopefully they would take over the project & responsibilities of funds. I think if the University agrees we could have various donation locations outside of the stadium for the Orange & White game & hopefully collect a lot of $1 donations. If there is anyone that deserves this honor its Coach Majors & the Majors family. I am positive it would be easy to get TN fans to donate $1 each to this cause. Any additional funds could go for future additions to the legends plaza. I would love for him to be honored before he is no longer with us.
I have no interest in receiving any acknowledgement or notoriety, but this has been weighing on my heart for a while & I believe it's time. Please tell me what you think & if you like it, your advice on how we can make this happen. I am not afraid to take the lead on this & present it to the University but I honestly don't know if I can make this happen without your knowledge of how things work within the athletic department & the politics that go along with it. We have never met but me do know you & believe you understand how important this is.
Thank you,
Marc M'
If you want to get in touch with Mark, shoot me an e-mail and I will interface you with him.
'Tony,
Thought you might find it interesting that UT will NOT appear on CBS at all this season with the announcement of Mizzou being on either ESPN or SECN and Vandy being on SECN (last 2 weeks of TV schedules listed below). Don’t quite understand how CBS picked an Ole-Miss vs. Ark game with no consequence over Mizzou-UT which will have a huge impact in determining the SEC-East champ AND I don’t think there has ever been a year that UT didn’t appear on CBS multiple times.
Reds,
Matt'
I'll tell you this Matt...Next year Tennessee will have at least 3 CBS National TV games. Book that....Florida, Bama, Georgia will all be CBS games next year. Tennessee could be in the serious hunt next year in the East and Dobbs will be a major reason why...
I hate FSU...HATE!!! Jumbo Fisher is shameless.
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Jumbo Fisher really is shameless.
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Do you know why the running back position in the NFL is devalued? Here's exhibit 1. 'Jonas Gray became 1st player to rush for 4 TD after entering game w/ 0 TD since Herb Henderson of Evansville Crimson Giants on Nov. 27, 1921'. (Courtesy ESPN)
The NFL is a complete mess behind the scenes. When the DEA is conducting surprise searches on you, you're in serious doo...I'm not even talking Adrian Peterson, labor unrest, Ray Rice or the hit piece in yesterday's NY Times. Here's the story on the DEA raiding an NFL locker room or two...
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Here's an account of the cozy relationship the NFL shares with local police. I've always maintained that anything we hear about is the tip of the iceberg.
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Final thought: Aren't you glad today that you don't live in a place like this where college football is a foreign language?
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Have a great Monday...
Tony
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