Tennessee Volunteers

[10ac]

Damn, it's gone.

[Hacksaw]

Vol men beat UCONN. Stokes is even better than advertised. Too bad we'll probably only have him for 1 season.

[Orangefreak]

Wow. Just wow. This team isn't as bad as their record says they are. An extra turn over here, an extra shot there and their record could be a lot different.

Here's hoping they keep digging. If they do, the wins will come.

[Hacksaw]

We didn't even play that well today. Golden was awful and we were crap from the FT line. But we still got a good win against a ranked team.

[Hacksaw]

The East-West Shrine Game was pretty interesting today, too. Tauren Poole won the Pat Tillman Award and former-Vols B.J. Coleman and Lennon Creer were the stars of the game.

Crazy shit right there.

[Orangefreak]

BJ Coleman left UT and went to UTC. He started his first season and put outstanding numbers up the whole time. I really think he would've done pretty good at UT. Shame he had to leave to get some playing time. The NFL combine has invited Coleman to participate. He'll do good.

[10ac]

RIP Stan Mitchell.

[Orangefreak]

I watched the Vandy game the other night. I meant to watch it all but only saw the first half out of fear if I watched anymore I would throw up.

This is the first UT BBall game I've [attempted] to watch this season. It's hard to believe we beat FL and UConn. It appeared we had no clue what we were doing on that court. We were never a threat to Vandy. Bad passes. Pathetic shot attempts. We had several air balls. What a joke. Our coach, who I can't even guess what his name is at the moment, appears unable to get us worked up about anything. Our team looks like if they won a $100 million lotto, they would sit there and yawn or something.

Pathetic.

[bluetick]

You should have watched FL and UCONN.

I think the Vandy crapfest was an anomally, in that our defense was poor (count on our offense to be inconsistent the rest of this year).

Our coach's name is Cuonzo Martin, btw. You'll be more familiar with that name next year I suspect (as well as The Kid - Jarnell Stokes).

[Orangefreak]

Yeah, I did have the opinion after watching that game, and reviewing their record, they are not a good road team which would explain a lot as to what happened during that game. Still, it looked bad. Very bad.

[AlabamAlum]

Former Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton will go down in Volunteer history as a villain to many Big Orange fans.  He fired Phillip Fulmer and replaced him with Lane Kiffin.  He fired Bruce Pearl.

That’s dumb and dumber in many folks’ minds.  And some of those people let Hamilton know about it in a ridiculous manner — with threats.

Speaking to The Chattanooga Times Free Press, Hamilton said he “received several threats and it reached a point that I moved my family out of Knoxville for several days last spring and I was even assigned police protection.”

Surprising?  Not in the least.  Kiffin’s family claimed they received death threats on the way out of Knoxville as well.  Just this past week, San Francisco 49er Kyle Williams received death threats via Twitter after fumbling away his team’s shot at a Super Bowl. 

In the age of the internet, everyone is anonymous.  That cloaked status encourages decent people to behave like children and imbalanced people to behave like criminals.  If booze makes folks feel 10 feet tall and bullet proof, the anonymity of the internet allows some to view themselves as the biggest, baddest asses in the world.

Well, at least the ass part is true.

Hamilton — who’s now working as the president of a Nashville-based charity — says he has no regrets about the way he did his job, including the hires of Kiffin and Pearl.  “Lane was the right person for the job at that time.  I hate how things worked out in the end, but there was no way of seeing that when we made that hire.”

“I know every move I made while I was at UT was made with the best interest of the university in mind.  I have confidence in the decision to hire Lane, and Bruce had an unbelievable run.  Again, I hate how things ended with those two examples.  I’m like anyone else and there are times when you reflect on decisions and what you might have done differently.  In any area of your life, all you can do is your best every day, and some days I felt better about my decisions than others.”

In this writer’s view, Hamilton deserves heat from Tennessee fans because ultimately the buck stopped at his desk.  But in terms of his individual decisions, he wasn’t the clown he’s often been made out to be.

He fired Phillip Fulmer, but Fulmer had had two losing seasons in his last four and hadn’t won an SEC title in a decade at the time of his dismissal.

Had Hamilton hired a good replacement, no one would be claiming today that Tennessee should have held on to its legendary ex-coach.  Interestingly, Hamilton did — it seems — hire a darn good coach.  Kiffin and crew have done an excellent job at Southern Cal so far (though they’re about to feel the brunt of recruiting restrictions and NCAA penalties).

Hamilton’s mistake with Kiffin was not weighing the possibility that Pete Carroll might leave Southern Cal and the Trojans might come after the ex-Carroll aide.  (In truth, though, who at the time would have foreseen all that?)  But that’s exactly what happened and Kiffin left Tennessee high and dry.  And that burned the Vol football house to the ground.  Two years of attrition and a coaching change right before signing day aren’t appealing to prospective coaches.

Will Muschamp turned down millions to replace Kiffin.  Only the likes of Derek Dooley would take such a job.  So while Hamilton is pilloried for “finding” Dooley, in reality, his candidate pool was going to be awfully shallow simply due to circumstances.

As for Pearl, the ex-coach took Tennessee basketball to unseen heights, but he blew his career apart with a lie to NCAA investigators and a phone call to a prospect’s father in an attempt to keep the person quiet about a barbecue.  The idea that Hamilton is to blame for Pearl’s downfall is laughable.  Ditto the notion that UT could’ve kept Pearl and his staff.  Hard to do that when the coach lands a three-year show cause penalty and recruiting ban.

Hamilton oversaw a comedy of errors, yes, but fate and the actions of other people played a large role in his demise.  Had Kiffin not abandoned him after a year and had Pearl not found it necessary to cover up what would have been a secondary violation, Hamilton might still be Tennessee’s athletic director overseeing a pair of healthy programs.

Of course, just for suggesting that, I’ll probably get a couple of death threats.

[Jungle Rat]

What else would you expect from those inbred creamsicle orange loving hillbilly's? Look at the sample we deal with here?

[bluetick]

Radar hired Cuonzo Martin, and I think he'll be remembered fondly for that one in a few years.

Dooley? We'll see...a make-or-break season is coming up. The gaytor game here is key.

[Hacksaw]

I read the first paragraph and the first sentence of the second paragraph and then stopped reading. I have no idea what the rest of that said, but I could tell right away that it was going to be a waste of time.

[AlabamAlum]

Radar reports UT fans issues threats, and such.

[Jungle Rat]

I read the first paragraph and the first sentence of the second paragraph and then stopped reading. I have no idea what the rest of that said, but I could tell right away that it was going to be a waste of time.

That's only because you live under a rock.

[Hacksaw]

Radar reports UT fans issues threats, and such.

Oh, yeah. I read about that. Idiots.

[Orangefreak]

Yep, we are a home bball team alright...

[bluetick]

Texas just snatched away our best LB committ. Two weeks after stealing our soccer coach.

sure glad we saved their sorry asses from Santa Anna

NOT

[Big Orange Junky]

I don't think he was our best LB commitment. He was our 2nd best I think maybe even a little lower than that. He was just a 3 star (but I don't put too much stock in stars, look at Brian Darden and Bryce Brown).