Ambialence: noun \am-ˈbi-və-lən(t)s\ simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action

The long hard season had finally come to an end.  The 5-7 record could be improved to 6-7 and give the Vols a chance for another bowl appearance.  Questions that began to rise during the season gained more traction throughout the media and uneasy Vol fans looked to the Kentucky game to exercise the 2011 demons or face the onslaught of negativity and numbness.  Kentucky was considered the worst team in the SEC, just behind the Vols, and had recently lost their quarterback to injury.  Rumors spread that offensive coordinator Randy Sanders began game planning to put one of their wide receivers, Matt Roark, in as Quarterback.  Roark had not been QB or thrown a pass since his senior year in high school.  Clearly Kentucky, without a seasoned QB and sporting a 4-7 record (1-6 in the SEC), this would be one of the few chances for the Vols to get things together and boost moral of the team and seniors, who finished their college career at Neyland with a win against the Commodores.

Quickly Vol fans watched as the same lackluster, inept, and unprepared Volunteers took the field against the Wildcats.  Even as the Wildcats searched for positive offensive and defensive series, the Vols conducted the same search but appeared to be more lost than Vol fans imagined.  By the 3rd quarter, that uneasy feeling sunk into a feeling Vol fans were praying they wouldn’t have to face.  At the end of the game, Vol fans looked back and could only point to a couple plays that looked like the Vols of old.  Both were pass plays from Tyler Bray to sophomore receiver Rajion Neal.  One in particular put the Vols inside the 5 yard line giving them the best opportunity to score of the game.  However, the opportunity quickly slipped away as a bad exchange in the “wildcat” formation left the Vols losing yards and coming up short for a touchdown.

Time suddenly slipping away in the 4th quarter it was obvious, Tennessee had lost this game.  Not only letting the Kentucky Wildcats get their first win against the Vols in 26 years but also handing the Vol the first consecutive losing season since the 1910-1911 season.  In case you were wondering, that’s 100 years! Vol fans searching for any adjective that could even closely represent what they were feeling.  Disbelief, Exhaustion, Bewilderment lasted for a few hours before quickly souring into anger and bitterness. The local radio shows blew up with talk of Coach Dooley starting to feel the hot seat and reports of fractures in the locker room and star players being uninterested in their role on the team or team direction.  Past discussions of team season miscues reignite revisiting Dooley and the team’s decision to not review the game film from Arkansas which was arguably the worst performance of the season by the Vols to the outrageous discussion of a large orange dog statue being carted around the practice field in order to motivate players by “feeding the orange dog”.  All this culminates into the Vol fanbase knowing in their gut that something is seriously wrong with this entire program top to bottom.

Despite the horrible season just witnessed or considering the past 3 years of turmoil in the program, I still felt that the school did the right thing in letting Phillip Fulmer go.  Clearly the decline had started on his watch and this year was the direction it was headed.  Most of us can rationalize that crashes like this are unavoidable with any program and better to crash now and get it behind us rather than repeat the mediocre consistency with Fulmer.  What I did not expect was to feel that we missed our chance of a quick recovery with Lane Kiffin.  Dooley’s Vols just seem lost.  A team who could find cohesion with a cement mixer truck of gorilla glue!  An affliction not limited to the players but plaguing the coaching staff as well.

Questions about Dooley’s ability to rebuild the Vols have lost traction with a large portion of Vol fans.  Dooley seems more equipped as a team manager for baseball than a Head Coach for a football team.  What is certain is that Dooley has cashed in all his “this team is so young” rhetoric, Vol fans have had enough.  We knew the team was young and inexperienced but we didn’t know the coaching staff was worse!  Personally having seen any sort of progression during the year would of kept me calm despite a dismal record.  Vol fans saw massive digression which can’t be explained to our satisfaction.  They have now witnessed, what once was the pride of the SEC, sink into the depths of SEC hell.

Can 2012 fix it?  I would say that if Dooley and the team doesn’t show major progression and maturity in season 3, then it will be time to newly hired AD Dave Hart to quit the bleeding, purge the program, and make sure the next hire isn’t #15 on the list of available coaches.  Tennessee deserves better!

Just like an uncomfortable scene in a movie, a scene that you know at the beginning the main character is going to put themselves in.  A scene that is drawn out way beyond real time to provoke the most uncomfortable, painful feeling the viewer can experience.  The scene could be one of a horror movie, setting up the one good scare at the end or could be a scene in a comedy where the main character self-inflicts the most humiliating of events, the scene could be from a drama that allows the main character to plunge themselves into rock bottom self-destruction.  This is what October has been for the Volunteers!  Not sense 2007 have the Vols posted a successful October campaign.  That year was the next to last for Philip Fulmer, whose was usually 50% at best with October games.  This year proved to be as painful, if not more so, as last year for the Vols and Coach Derek Dooley.  Ineptitude in almost all phases of the game littered the month, field, talk shows, and has fueled fan frustration to the same level as movie goers yelling at the screen “NO, DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!”.

Yet, the door somehow always gets opened, the main character never quits when things get rough but keeps making them much worse, and the Vols continued to take the field looking unprepared, unready, unsure of themselves, and fearful of how bad things could get.  Those characteristics are the perfect concoction for failure, which is the result of October Horror Movie Part 3.  Just like those movies, they are start out good, serene, hopefully, vivid which is how all of the Vols games started.  LSU, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia all saw a competitive Vol team for the first 2 quarters but then the destructive period of the movie quickly came in the form of a 3rd Quarter!  Fans saw their beloved character fall flat on his face, sometimes looking foolish, sometimes looking lost, sometimes looking like they didn’t deserve to be on the field.  Players and coaches looking astonished at what they have produced on the field, just as a main character of a movie looks completely surprised just before getting hit by the bus yet completely oblivious to the fact that they’re standing in the middle of a freeway.

2005 saw the Volunteers go winless for 5 games starting in the second week of October and ending in November with a 41-21 thumping by Notre Dame.  The undercurrent of sentiment that Philip Fulmer has lost his touch quickly was upgraded to shouts and civil discord.  Fulmer’s previous 3 years produced all winning records but fell short with only 1 win out of 3 bowl appearances.  Yet 2005 saw no changes in our coaching staff and little affect of Philip Fulmer.  The following 2 years produced winning records throughout the regular season and a 1-1 record in both bowl appearances.  Just as in the movies, before the bad scene starts various changes in background take place.  The music starts to become more ominous, the scenery more dark, the extras look more menacing, and the camera shots become more quick and jittery.  We all heard it at the beginning of October, the movie gave us a short glimpse into the upcoming scene with the 3rd weekend in September, yet we remained nieve and gullible.

But the scene is far from over, the main character is on his knees begging for relief, a good samaritan to miraculously appear, or some random stroke of good luck.  Does the main character take one more shot before getting back on his feet?  The Vols next few weeks would certainly indicate that is possible as we stare down the remainder of our schedule seeing #7 Arkansas and a very competitive 4-4 Vanderbilt team that just managed to score 28 points in a loss to the Razorbacks.  A losing season for 2011 certainly is possible as disheartened Vol fans see their team struggle in almost every aspect of the game.  While flashes of productivity are seen from time to time but rarely sustained, coaches look for anything at all positive to talk about in deflecting the obvious, we can only sit in our seats continuing to watch and hope that, what always comes at the end of these movies, a great finish, a return of vivid orange colors and an exciting Rocky Top score will soon return to Neyland Stadium.

Knoxville, TN….. There are a wide variety of metaphors that one could use describing a football game.  Watching the Bulldogs come to Neyland stadium incited many emotions as well as commonly used metaphors.  For instance:  3rd and 57 could indicate the number of point the Tennessee Vols have allowed SEC opponents to score during the 3rd quarter!  “Adjustments” is a loose term at halftime for the Tennessee Vols as the team’s 3rd quarter efforts would appear that no or little adjustments were made letting the Georgia Bulldogs score 2 touchdowns with ease.  The offense not appearing any more prepared for the second half as players looked as if they were surprised to be on the field along with the loss of Tyler Bray to a broken thumb.

3rd and 57 could mean the field position of a team.  Although highly unlikely, it was true this game as second half efforts by both Tennessee and Georgia looked more like a foot race to see which team could be more inept rather than a football game.  Yellow flags and reviews were enough to take a 30 minute half seem like a 4 hour horror marathon.  Georgia made so many mistakes that the team actually faced a 3rd and 57 from penalties in the 3rd quarter of this game.  What is even more surprising is the Vols allowed them to get a first down!  You may be asking yourself…… Seriously?  Yes, you would be correct.  Any team that is so grossly undisciplined as to put themselves in a 3rd and 57 certainly deserves the loss that would shortly be handed to them.  However, in this game, that team won!  Because the Tennessee Vols were outplayed and outcoached from start to finish.  The Vols resembled a unorganized Div. 1-AA team coming in for their yearly beating by a top 25 team.

Although most Vol fans lie to your face by stating that they agree it will take time for Coach Derek Dooley to rebuild this program, their secret expectations are that he should of already turned it around.  In the SEC, you are either part of the Upper Class or part of the Lower Class, a middle class does not really exist and Vol fans were expecting only 1 year of dumpster diving.  What they didn’t expect is that the 2nd year would seem to indicate that we have taken a step back rather than forward.  Granted we have lost 2 key impact players but great SEC teams have depth, something the Vols don’t seem to have.  Even if depth exists in the Vols rosters, the coaching seems to be unable to identify and work with that depth.

My thoughts on a 3rd and 57 is this…. I believe that it will be sometime in the 3rd year when we will know whether or not this team will turn around.  Maybe it will be :57 seconds into the 3rd game of the year, usually reserved for the Florida Gators.  Maybe it will be the 57th play during the 3rd year that we finally see a spark from the Vols offense.  Obviously we will just have to wait and see, clearly the second year in the Derek Dooley era is proving to be just as tough if not tougher than the first year.

Going into the game, everyone was aware of another obvious problem of no running game yet it seem to take the coaching staff a considerable amount of time to abandon it.  I’m not sure who thought that no running game against Montana and Cincinnati would someone mystically show with a top SEC rival.  None the less, the Vols continue to try and run.  Adding to this problem was the devestating loss of Justin Hunter to an apparent ACL injury early in the game giving the Vols only 1 proven receiver in Da’Rick Rogers.  The Vols had to open up the passing game each time to widdle down the Gators lead but continuing to return to the run when possible.  Then came James Stone!  The Vols center who, for comfort reasons, made the decision prior to the season starting to start snapping the ball from his left hand to his right.   I need someone to convince me that this was a GOOD decision!!!  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” but Stone’s sporadic snaps started to take a toll on the already taxed Vols offense.

While I believe that most Vol fans went into this game knowing it was going to be a loss, we still had optimism that the Vols could actually pull off an upset.  Plagued by a 6 year drought against the Gators, the Vols are certainly due to start turning the tide against Florida but clearly aren’t there yet as the “oh we’ll get them next year” talk begins.  Will we?  Considering that it was 2003 and 2004 in the Fulmer and Eric Ainge era that brought us back to back wins against Florida (Has it been THAT long?) including one in the swamp, it could be another 2-3 years before Derek Dooley gets the program up to par with the SEC.  Also considering that this was also a Florida team with problems of its own on the offensive side of the ball does cause one to worry if the Vols will ever catch back up to the SEC elite.

With good recruiting classes following the Weasel and Dooley, do the Vols just lack the gameplan to put all these weapons into action?  What’s the fix for a non-existent running game and a passing attack missing one of its largest producers?  The Vols have open week next week then Buffalo to give them some healing and planning time before the feared “Octoberfeast” begins ushering in Georgia, LSU, Alabama, and South Carolina.

Here’s hoping for the best and grimacing against what might actually happen!!  GO VOLS!!

With the upcoming football season getting underway, a bevy of NCAA team and conference stories circling, NCAA sanctions looming EVERYWHERE, and coupled with my geographic location, I’m forced to begin the season not with my VOL brethren in Knoxville, TN but submersed in Virginia Tech Hokie country and fandom of questionable logic.  This year, however, has begun humorously with the Hokie fans polluting the air with derogatory statements about the SEC and most of its conference teams.  Recent news stories involving teams possibly leaving their conference in order to join the SEC has overshadowed an obvious black mark on this college football season….

The ACC!!

So I am still wondering how teams like Virginia Tech and Florida State can be excited when ESPN and gamblers pick them as the favorites to win their respective divisions?  Who the hell else is going to win?

Of course these two teams are favored to win the ACC, they’re practically the only competitive teams left in the conference.  What is more outrageous is that once these two teams start tallying up the win column, they will start getting press and poll votes.  Neither will be deserved. Frank Beamer will be heraled as one of the all-time great winning coaches, Jimbo Fisher will be marked as a man who should of been teaching Bobby Bowden football. I’m sure Virginia Tech will look like a very tough football team when handling the likes of Duke and Wake Forest or Arkansas State on the YAWN Channel! (throwing up in my mouth a little).  Adding insult to injury, these two teams will be guaranteed automatic BCS bowl bids simply for strolling their way up the ACC.

Even though a long standing Virginia Tech tradition has been to have a completely unsuspecting team catch the Hokies with their tailfeathers down like James Madison in 2010 you still have 2 or 3 teams on this schedule that would look like a good game if it were not for all the off-season press, turmoil, and coaching changes which will obviously set teams like UNC or Miami into the “rebuilding” year talk.  Clemson?  A team that has consistently folded during big games.  Boston College or Georgia Tech?  Do they even have coaches?

Yet, with all this considered, the Hokies are awarded a pre-season ranking of #13 in the nation on both ESPN and AP/Coaches Poll.  Obviously the pollsters have seen that Virginia Tech is going to walk its way into the ACC Championship game and possibly a BCS Bowl, so why not just let them.  Here’s why!!!  Because they don’t deserve it.  Virginia Tech may be a top #25 team pre-season but certainly their schedule gives them very little to be proud of.   Similar to the Boise State discussion of last year where the idea of beating up on unworthy opponents kept them out of contention for a national title, this too should be the discussion about Tech’s season.

The smack talk of the SEC and comparison to the Vols schedule is at first glance laughable.  While the Vols haven’t been the pride of the SEC for a while now, they are still good competition and improving.  It’s hard not to improve when faced with a schedule like the SEC teams face.  6 Top #25 teams, 4 of them in the month of October!  Only 3 games on the Vols schedule can you point to with the “they should win that” attitude compared to a minimum of 7 games or 60% of the Hokies schedule!

Strength of Schedule Rankings via Congrove Computer Rankings (www.collegefootballpoll.com)

With a Strength of Schedule ranking that is right along side college powerhouses like Airforce and Louisiana-Lafayette, the Hokies should have to rely more heavily on their bakery and tons of yeast this year to even keep them rising in the media’s National Championship discussions.  In the end, just like with any fluffy cake fresh out of the oven too early, it is bound to fall flat.  The National Championship will be given to a team from a real college football conference, such as the SEC which is in line for its 6th straight!  So for all you ACC fans out there,  the countdown begins…… for TIPOFF!

Today’s college football landscape has changed drastically.  Gone are the days of simply calling football games and letting the teams play it out.  Now, with the country overwhelmed by media sensitivity, each game, play, press conference, pre-game, post-game, and sports show is about ONLY one thing…… DRAMA!  This week’s college football bowl games were plagued by one play on one game and one official call.  Syracuse vs Kansas State was a game that literally no one watched.  Called the “Pinstripe” bowl (I had to look that up) one call towards the end of the game sent shockwaves throughout the apparently limited IQ of sports commentators and pundits.  O.J. running out onto the field waving a gun and shooting players probably would of garnered less attention but in today’s climate, anything sports reporters can do to blow up a situation and negatively affect college football is done.  Every commentator on every college football game this weekend was talking about Syracuse and Kansas State.  While they may feel they now have something meaningful to talk about, they are unable to see past their own inabilities and realize that most people watching college football wants to do just that….. WATCH college football.

They don’t want to hear controversy and speculation, they don’t want to hear inflamed opinion or debate, especially during an unrelated game.  I have a good question:  Why talk about allowing the referees being allowed to make judgement calls on the field in order to correctly assess penalties when the commentators and sports reporters won’t actually allow them.  Every rule is questioned, every touchdown scrutinized, every catch played over and over again.  At what point do we as fans say “enough” and stop letting the bean counters and lawyers control what was once a great sport and reduce it to flag football?

Athens, Georgia:  Volunteer fans worst nightmares were realized on Saturday as they watched their Vols play against the Georgia Bulldogs.  Both teams having a horrible start to the 2010 season and both needing a SEC win desperately.  The vols, however, were happy to ablige the home team and gave a performance that was easily one of the worst we’ve seen in recent memory.  Continued to be plagued by costly and key mistakes in the game, Tennessee showed that improvements won’t be coming nearly as fast as Vol fans hoped.  Obviously experience is key on this team that starts more true freshman than any other SEC team but even experience can make the same errors if the coaching staff is not keying in on seemingly fundamental thinking in key situations on the football field.
Coach Dooley has tried everything to motivate and drive his young team adding a half time speech of “I’m enjoying all the competition but we’re here to win some games”.  His message largely falling on deaf ears as the young Vols team quickly lose gas and retreat into the “deer in headlights” look on the field once the bulldogs made any type of aggressive play.

Tennessee now goes into a much needed bye week before dealing with the national champion Alabama Crimson Tide who were just handed their first loss in 2 years by South Carolina.  WR Julio Jones is questionable suffering a broken hand during the game.
Clearly with Alabama and South Carolina on the Vols docket for the remaining two games, it will be no surprise to anyone if the Vols finish out the month of October winless and possibly closing in on another losing season like the 5-7 2008 season which ushered out the Phillip Fulmer era.

One would of never scripted what came out of Baton Rouge, LA after the Tennessee / LSU game Saturday evening as the Vols had their hearts ripped out from them after the game had ended.  What Vol fans feared as the first of 4 October games and possible losses suddenly changed into optimism and jubilation as the Tennessee Volunteers put together a full 4 quarter game against the LSU Tigers.  Up until Saturday Tennessee had only been able to hold it together for the first half of its ranked opponents and struggled with the ones that were suppose to be easy but, out of no where, comes the LSU game which showed the Vols fighting to the bitter end.

The Tennessee fans knew this would be a tough road test but did not anticipate we would of won the game.  In the middle of an all out VOL celebration, the victory was snatched away from us by the referees who decided to review the last play once the game had ended.  Giving LSU one more chance to score against an already wore out Tennessee defense.  And score they did….

The call the refs made was the correct one, Tennessee mistakenly had 13 men on the fieldduring a frantic flurry of substitutions by the LSU offense .  More troubling was that the refs did not look at the LSU side of the ball and assess any penalties as well.  They sole concern was making sure that Tennessee was legal.

Of course this game will be debated all year and referred back to in the next couple years (or anytime there is a Tennessee LSU game!) but one thing seems to escaped a lot of the noise surrounding the game.  Tennessee actually played the full game against LSU and won!  The Vols also so the offense start to produce in the second half what we have been missing since the season started.  First downs, pass plays, and successful run plays peppered the second half as LSU realized Tennessee wasn’t the cake walk they thought it would be.  In what was certainly going to be a year that we constantly refer to as “rebuilding”, Vol fans did get a taste of real solid improvement with the Volunteers and Coach Derek Dooley.  The season may still be a black eye on the record books but we can at least have some hope to hold on to.

The University of Alabama Birmingham provided the Tennessee Volunteers players, coaches, and fans a lot to ponder upon looking forward.  Historically the Vols have had a reputation of playing to the level of its opponents with obvious inferior teams, coming into Knoxville and being allowed to stay into a game which usually would be a foregone conclusion.

Not only did the Tennessee Vols keep the UAB Blazers in the game, they actually showed UT fans that they are no where close to being a competitive SEC football team.  UAB looked like a quality opponent making plays, first downs, and great defensive plays.  Had the Blazers actually had a quality kicker, Tennessee would of been looking at an embarrassing scoreboard notifying everyone that the Volunteer football program was “on the ropes” and ripe for all SEC rivals to come in and dial up a win with little if no effort.

There were very few things that the Volunteer Football program could do right against the Blazers.  The offense showed complete ineptitude while the defense helped us understand the definition of dysfunctional.  First downs came as easily to the UT offense as grabbing the winning powerball ticket on a Tuesday!

Now October comes as all Vol fans clinch their teeth and try and keep at least one eye open!

It is a horrible feeling when one see hope fly away.  That’s exactly what happened to the Volunteers on Saturday night as the Oregon Ducks came to down and showed Coach Derek Dooley and the Vol fans that we were just playing in the wrong dang pond!  The Vols started the pond race with vigor and gusto surprising everyone both at Neyland and those comfortably watching from home but the race would abruptly come to an end as the Vols completely ran out of gas at halftime.
Not only did the play calling seem to change but the kids playing quickly changed as well.  The minute the first Oregon touchdown was made, the game was over!  You could see the punch drunk Vols grasping for anything they could to stop the slide but nothing would work.  What promises the first half brought fans, the second half showed them that they were just a bunch of suckers!
With only 1 seemingly easy opponent in the following six weeks, the Vols had better regroup, get their strength and conditioning coach out of the closet, and get ready for a long long long stretch!