NOTE: If for some reason the drive charts below stall, try the larger versions on the Animated Drive Chart page.

Pre-game

To date, the Volunteer journey had taken them from lofty, pre-season fantasies of the Rose Bowl, quickly down to earth against UAB, and through the mire of a special teams debacle against Florida. They had squandered any momentum obtained from one of the greatest comeback victories in the history of college football against LSU by producing an efficient but boring win over Ole Miss. The penalty-plagued field position nightmare against Georgia for their second loss of the season to a team in their own division had placed them not so firmly at the edge of the precipice.

On the home front, the mood had not quite curdled, but it was beginning to sour. Tension between the Knoxville media and quarterback Rick Clausen was mounting, fullback Cory Anderson was being denied playing time because of his complaints about a lack of playing time, and Jason Allen was gone for the season.

Not exactly what we had planned. Instead of 5-0, the team was 3-2 and heading to Tuscaloosa to take on an archrival rising in the rankings with a bullet. The Crimson Tide would be the Vols’ fourth opponent in six games that was ranked in the top 5 nationally, and they were looking for revenge against the neighborhood bully.

The game was really too close to call. John Pennington first picked the Vols, then changed his mind, primarily due to the wake up call the Tide received against Ole Miss the prior week and partly due to the fact that Vols hadn’t played more than one good half of football in five games. John Harris of College Football News picked Alabama to win 21 to 20, but CFN itself picked UT to win 16-13. Subtract 10 from each score and switch the teams, and they’d have nailed it.

Adding to the always palpable hype this year was the fact that Phillip Fulmer had skipped the annual SEC Media Days in Alabama the prior season on the advice of his attorney and the personal jurisdiction implications of Pennoyer v. Neff and its progeny. Fulmer couldn’t exactly phone this one in.

Imagine walking into a room full of people that detest you. Multiply that by a factor of 3,000, and you’ll get a whiff of what Coach Fulmer will experience tomorrow when he jogs onto the field. Venom. Malice. Rancor.

Consider the table set.

The game

The score should have been 17-6 (perhaps 17-3) or, at the worst, 9-6, UT. But unfortunately, it was worse than worst. If you think that’s a logical impossibility, well, then you didn’t see the game.

Note: A larger version can be seen on the Animated Drive Chart page.

Mistakes. Costly ones:

• Second drive, second and one at the ‘Bama nine yard line, and Gerald Riggs fumbles. Inside the ten and not even a measly field goal attempt.
• A muffed punt (identified as a fumble at mid-field on the 2nd half drive chart below) on ‘Bama’s third drive of the second half at mid-field led to the Tide’s first three points of the game:

Note: A larger version can be seen on the Animated Drive Chart page.

And then, The Drive, in the words of GoVolsXtra’s Mike Griffith:

“First-and-goal inside the 5, and it was going good,’’ UT left tackle Arron Sears said. “We definitely could have got it in.’’

On first down at the 3, tight end Justin Reed raised out of his stance early. The penalty led to a spot at the 9, still first down.

Arian Foster was dropped a yard behind the line of scrimmage on the next play, setting up a second-and-goal.

Rick Clausen, scrambling right, appeared to have enough room to run close to the end zone, if not in it. Instead, Clausen chose to throw the ball away – from beyond the line of scrimmage – and UT was penalized another 5 yards and a loss of down.

Facing third-and-goal at the 15, offensive coordinator Randy Sanders called for a screen to fullback Cory Anderson. Anderson sprinted hard for the end zone, but Alabama linebacker Roman Harper got his helmet on the ball. Anderson fell forward as the ball squirted out of his hands and out of the back of the end zone, giving the Tide the ball back at the 20.

Meanwhile, left guard Rob Smith lay writhing on the ground with a rib contusion. The severity of the injury is not known.

“It was like a series of bad dreams,’’ Sears said.

The UT defense finally buckled and allowed the Tide to drive 63 yards for the game-winning field goal with 13 seconds to play.

Gerald Riggs suffering a season-ending injury was just the icing on the cake.

Post-game

The fall out was not good. John Pennington said that Tennessee’s Parade All-Americans looked like Tarzan and played like Jane. Fans started bailing out.

In the aftermath, Scout.com’s Jeffrey Stewart penned the line of the season:

Defending Tennessee’s offense is like encountering a drunk on a shooting spree with a high-powered rifle: you know he will do more damage accidentally than he will intentionally, and if you patiently keep your distance he will eventually shoot himself.

The Vols were now more than just mostly dead; they were really most sincerely dead.

And it would only get worse. Steve Spurrier was returning to Neyland Stadium the next week.

VolQuest.com previews the Florida Gators and says that offensive linemen Jacques McClendon, Darius Myers, and Ramone Johnson are the freshmen with the best chance of making an impact this year. Johnson, by the way, has been cleared to attend the second summer session of class. Brent Vinson, on the other hand, is headed toward Hargrave Military Academy, having not made the grade on his standardized test.

Looking toward the season, UT faced some marquee quarterbacks last year, , but QB stability is, let’s say, questionable throughout the SEC this year. (HT: Georgia Sports Blog.) No, this year, says Inside Tennessee, UT’s challenge is facing stellar running backs: California’s Marshawn Lynch, Alabama’s Kenneth Darby, Arkansas’ Darren McFadden, Kentucky’s Rafael Little, and Georgia’s Thomas Brown, all of which College Football News has ranked in their national top 20. Not especially good news if your strength is the secondary and there are question marks with the front seven.

Okay, back in the saddle, but I haven’t yet kicked the horse. No, I’m just yanking on the reins as the thing rears and snorts and seems to want to go in every direction at once. At least I’ve spent two consecutive nights in the same city and the site’s internal links seem to be working. That’s something. If you notice any problems, let me know.

Otherwise, the horse snout is pointing to some things I missed while I was trekking through SEC and Big 10 territory:

Inside Tennessee’s Randy Moore gave a quick rundown of the 2006 Volunteer football season, concluding that the Vols could be anywhere from 10-2 to 6-6. Moore’s hedged prediction is based in part on his belief that there is no pressure on Erik Ainge. Ainge may not have the expectations on him this year that he did last year, but there’s a huge difference between expectations and pressure, and while fan expectations may be somewhere between non-existent and apparition-esque, Ainge certainly has pressure. Practically tangible pressure.

Moore also previewed (1) Alabama, saying that the Crimson Tide is unlikely to approach last year’s 10-2 record, (2) the Auburn Tigers, which he figures will be the class of the SEC West again this year, and (3) LSU, which is facing a situation similar to UT’s last season: a quarterback “situation” pitting the guy who started most of the games the previous year against the guy who won the last season’s bowl game in convincing fashion.

Also, quasi-blogger John Pennington said that UT Athletic Director Mike Hamilton deserves every cent of the raise he recently received, and not just because he hired Bruce Pearl. Agreed.

College Football News has selected the 75 most anticipated college football games for next year. Tennessee has six of the 75:

• 45. Tennessee at Alabama, Oct. 21
• 40. Tennessee at South Carolina, Nov. 28
• 30. California at Tennessee, Sept. 2
• 28. LSU at Tennessee, Nov. 4
• 22. Tennessee at Georgia, Oct. 7
• 10. Florida at Tennessee, Sept. 16

College Football News has the Tennessee Volunteers ranked No. 9 in its Pre-preseason poll. Here’s how the Vols’ 2006 opponents stack up in the same poll:

• California — No. 12
• Air Force — No. 89
• Florida — No. 2
• Marshall — No. 88
• Memphis — No. 73
• Georgia — No. 21
• Alabama — No. 20
• South Carolina — No. 35
• LSU — No. 4
• Arkansas — No. 34
• Vanderbilt — No. 72
• Kentucky — No. 78

According to Scout.com (subscription required), Tennessee is losing the recruiting season, ranking 33rd nationally and ranking below No. 1 Florida, No. 3 Georgia, No. 9 LSU, No. 14 Auburn, No. 20 Mississippi, No. 21 Alabama and No. 27 Kentucky. (!)

The game’s not quite over yet, though, as the Vols could finish in the top 20 or top 15 if they get some of the prospects still on their list.

Still having intermittent problems with the blog, both on my side and on my host’s side. Sneaking this in before the window of opportunity closes again.

1. Texas

2. Southern Cal

3. Penn State

4. West Virginia

5. Ohio State

6. Georgia

7. Louisiana State

8. TCU

9. Virginia Tech

10. Alabama

11. Oregon

12. UCLA

13. Notre Dame

14. Wisconsin

15. Auburn

16. Florida

17. Boston College

18. Miami

19. Texas Tech

20. Louisville

21. Florida State

22. Clemson

23. Oklahoma

24. Nebraska

25. California

Head Coach Phillip Fulmer believes the root cause of the 2005 losing season was over-optimism and lack of emphasis on the details:

“You go back to the great optimism everybody had in August and how excited everybody was about our football team,” he said recently. “It’s up to me to do a complete audit. We’ve done a lot of good things and had a lot of success before this year. So, you go back and look and say, ‘Why did things change? Why did we lose 6-3 (to Alabama)?”

After replaying all 11 games in his mind, Fulmer now admits the Vols weren’t as disciplined or as detail-oriented as they needed to be.

“As you study it, it goes back to individual drills, individual meetings, getting the message across as far as discipline and consistency,” the head man said. “I don’t think it was that we didn’t play hard or that we didn’t have great work ethic.”

Basically, he thinks the Vols bought into the hoopla about how good they were going to be in 2005 and conveniently forgot how much hard work is required to reach such lofty goals.

As Fulmer put it: “This season reflects some of the assumptions that were made: ‘Oh, we’re going to have a good football team,’ and we didn’t take care of the little things well enough as a team.”

I’ve said for some time that over-optimism is the Vols’ biggest enemy, and I started referring to the problem as The Spotlight Effect back in early October, 2005.

1. Texas: UT gets nod over USC only because of USC’s would-be loss to Notre Dame
2. USC: Basically neck and neck with the Longhorns
3. Notre Dame: Two bad calls on final two plays cost them victory over USC
4. Georgia: SEC champ
5. LSU: SEC runner-up
6. Florida: Lost three games, but beat both SEC champ and ACC champ
7. Penn State: Only one loss, but docked for not having to play a championship game
8. Ohio State: Only losses to Texas and Penn State
9. Florida State: Yeah, four losses, but still champ of tough ACC conference
10. Virginia Tech: ACC runner-up
11. Georgia Tech: Four losses, but beat both Auburn and Miami
12. Auburn: Stumbled out of the gate and lost to SEC runner-up LSU, but beat SEC champ Georgia
13. Miami: Throttled ACC runner-up Virginia Tech
14. Alabama: Only losses to SEC runner-up LSU and number 12 Auburn
15. Oregon: Only one loss, but docked for relatively weak conference
16. West Virginia: Received a BCS berth while never cracking the top ten
17. Michigan: Beat Big 10 champ Penn State, but lost four games
18. UCLA
19. Clemson: Beat ACC champ FSU, but who didn’t?
20. South Carolina: Wins over Florida and Tennessee not as impressive in hindsight
21. TCU
22. Northwestern
23. Iowa
24. Iowa State
25. Louisville

Is Tennessee’s 5-6 season an anomaly or a harbinger of things to come?

Penn State fan The Nittany Blog offers perspective from someone who’s been there:

What exactly went wrong at Tennessee? I don’t know. I can only offer an outsider’s point of view. However, as a Penn State fan who watched our proud program crumble to nothing from 2000-2004, I have a fair idea of how something like this happens. And unfortunately for the Vols, the conclusions are not pretty.

* * * *

The downfall of a traditionally successful program typically occurs because of one or more of the following- poor recruiting of late, poor coaching, NCAA violations and just bad lcuk. Penn State’s downfall was caused by the first two and the last. The Nittany Lions strategy of taking the first players they offered and not waiting on the “big fish” were what produced the 2003 and 2004 seasons. The 2000 and 2001 seasons were just a lot of bad luck. There was more talent there than on the 2003 and 2004 teams. Poor coaching has already been tabbed as a contributing factor after Randy Sanders resigned as offensive coordinator. Obviously bad luck has contributed to it as well. The fumble near the goal line against Alabama and the touchdown by Vanderbilt late in the fourth quarter were two of the biggest.

I think Fulmer will right the program and Tennessee will get back to a bowl next season. There’s too much talent at his disposal to suffer another disappointing season like 2005. A couple years from now, 2005 will just be looked back upon as a hiccup, not the new norm.

I wonder, what was Joe Paterno’s response to the losing season? Did he shake up the coaching staff like Fulmer did? It sounds like he started recruiting differently, and I’ve heard that he started coaching differently, at least by utilizing star freshmen sooner rather than later. But how soon did he react? Did it take four or five years to recover even though he acted immediately?

Coach Fulmer has responded swiftly to the Vols’ losing season.

But was it the right response, and how long will it take to see results?

Time will tell.