If he would keep the ball 2 or 3 times a game, he could gain a ton of yards.  There was one where he could have walked into the end zone.  No one expects him to run and I wish he would pull it back out just  a couple of times a game to keep defenses more honest.  It would open more holes for the RB.

There were several!  I was so glad I was there for this.  No one wanted to leave the stadium!  Seeing the players react to the crowd and the crowd staying.  Seeing Butch lead the band in Rocky Top.  Seeing Butch and Dave Hart react the way they did.  Man it was great!

My wife was at home and said they had a camera on Butch after the kick and she said you could see the emotion in his face.  He has to feel so good.  He has done everything right since he has been here.  He has gotten our previous players back on campus.  He has gotten after recruiting and to finally top it off with a signature win.   We FINALLY have a football coach.  A coach these players would walk through fire for!

And to talk about how weird of a day it was across the SEC.....To everyone across the country...this is why the  SEC is so strong...you have to bring it every week in this conference or you could get beat any given Saturday.

That's why I didn't get all the over reaction in the previous thread.  I started to comment but then didn't.  But here is my 2 cents worth (and everyone is entitled to their opinion).

- Will it provide good viewing for a football game....probably not....but it will be cool.  It will get a ton of publicity and at this point in UT's come back...we need that.  People will be talking about it on and on.

- Recruits love this type of stuff.  Whether we all believe it or not, this age is a different age.  Alot of people didn't like the gray uniforms...but the recruits loved them.  Recruits will talk about this too.  Do I like the rap music in the stadium, no, but recruits and current students love it, so I will adapt.

I have said this for years.  When we don't sell out Neyland, people want to crack on UT.  However, it is happening more and more with all teams...including Bama and other powers.  Alot of the SEC visiting teams are giving ticket allotments back too.  Even UGA didn't bring their full band last week, which I can't ever remember that happening.

I still don't understand why our students don't come and full up the student section???

Dawgs back to within 2.  You knew it would happen. 

This Murray guy is pretty good, by the way.  We'll be watching him on Sundays. 

But of course he's no Freddie Kitchens.   

I saw Todd McShey's list of top 5 QB's in the NFL draft this year and Murray wasn't one of them.  I was shocked.  They guy is good.

To me it is a matter of luck.  Missori was like the walking wounded last year.  This year, the SEC is down a little, and they open with 4 non-conference no names and then get Vandy who is not good and UGA coming off of losing their top 2 RB's and 2 WR"S.  Not to take it away from them, they went to Athens and won, but still alot of games to still be played.

Many of the empty seats in the upper seck were the student section.  I still don't get what our students are doing on a Saturday afternoon besides coming to a football game.....????

I was so glad that they recruits got to see what Neyland is like when it is loud! 

Forgive me, but I stole this from another site but I thought this was too good and for everyone to read.  Here are some facts about our team.  For people to be all over our players and coaching staff, I just don't get it.  Everyone knew going in that this was going to be a tough year.  We all second guess and all get frustuated, but we all need to support them and our coaches.

"Good afternoon, thanks for coming out. To start off where we are at program-wise, a little bit about last week and then moving on this week against Georgia. I think everyone needs to understand, I think we do, but when you are building a culture, when you are building an environment, when you are working on changing habits, it takes time.

"We talk about playing disciplined football, we talk about learning how to play winning football. I think before we really get started there is an inordinate amount of positive things that are going on in our football program right now. I think in the world that we live in today everyone wants to focus on negativity, but let's focus on the positives, I call it `Positive Monday.' First of all Rajion Neal had the most yards rushing by a running back at Tennessee since 2009, he had 169 yards. This football team, Team 117 has had three 200-plus yard rushing games. We had three combined from the span 2010-2012. We currently lead the SEC and we are eighth in the country in fewest penalties, a little over three penalties per game. We lead the SEC and we are fourth in the country in fewest penalty yardage. We are tied for number one in the country for interceptions with 11. We lead the SEC and we are third in the country with 15 forced turnovers. We lead the SEC and we are tenth in the country with points off of turnovers. Our first two touchdowns on this past weeks game were scored by two true freshman, both making their first career touchdown receptions. Right now we have played a total of 14 true freshman and 22 freshman overall.


"As we continue to progress, the evolution of this football team is understanding what it is to compete for 60 minutes. It is a 60-minute game. I spoke to our team about this, there is a different between playing the game and competing. We are searching for competitive greatness. High achievement takes place in the framework of high expectations. We have extremely high expectations for every member within our football family and our football program, from the coaches to the players to the support staff. It is our players understanding that every play has a life of its own, you have to play that play to the best of your ability and then snap and clear. But you must have that mindset that every play has its own life. That is part of that mental conditioning, that snap and clear mentality that we talk about all the time. We talk about playing winning football. I understand that that is a very broad term, a lot of things go into it. Our players are responsible for getting themselves ready to play, week in and week out. We live in a society where everything is based on productivity but everyone in our program and everyone in our football organization is going to be held to the highest standard. It is that high level of accountability that we talk about.


"Right now we have some major depth issues and I think it is starting to be revealed, I think it is starting to show itself. We had two individuals who had monumental games for us, A.J. Johnson took 83 snaps at linebacker, Dontavis Snap took 82 snaps at linebacker plus 12 snaps on special teams. Every single rep you take accumulates over time throughout the course of the grind of along season. That is where we are at and we have to continue to recruit and develop depth upon our football team. We have two many individuals playing way to many reps. Both our starting corners were in the high 70s in the terms of repetitions on Saturday. And again throughout the course of a long season that can't happen.


"I thought we had some tough circumstances Saturday, a lot we created for ourselves. At the end of the day our players made the plays that they needed to to win the football game. We had a game winning stop defensively. We had some red zone stops prior to that. We had to run the clock out running the ball, we were able to do that. I thought we had some individuals really give tremendous effort, the first individual that comes to mind is Corey Miller. I thought he played his best, most complete game since we have been here, his effort was outstanding. We have to be high achievers, we have to be overachievers. We have to have '63' effort and strain. I thought the first half we had that. I thought we played pretty well in the first half and then I thought we got sloppy as the game wore on. That is illustrated by the way we played in the third and fourth quarter. We can't do that. Our players have to learn what it takes to play winning football for 60 minutes. I have said it, we are going to be a disciplined football team, I think those are illustrations on how far this football team has come.


"I liked the work ethic, I liked our mentality of our players, I like everything that we are doing but we just have to continue to progress. One of those areas is, we cannot turn the football over. It is inexcusable, that is making good choices and good decisions with the football. I think that has been the one area when you look to in terms of being a disciplined football team where we have to take great strides and continue to move forward. We have been careless with the football when we throw it and we can't continue to have those catastrophic mistakes as we move forward with this football team."

I have told some of my buddies that while Worley is not a great QB...not everything is his fault.  I think some of it is that receivers aren't running the right routes. 

AGree on the FR QB's.  When we were up 31 - 7, we should have giving them a series.  Once it got to be 31 - 24 and Worley was a wreck, we couldn't afford the potential FR QB mistake.

best team in the conference. Glad they all play each other. LSU's offense won't be as awesome against Bama D. I think Bama wins the west. LSU vs aTm will be a doozy. For aTm that will be a must win. As for the national picture does anyone see Oregon slipping up? Stanford will be their big test. Could be a few undefeated teams this year. Ohio State maybe, Louisville probably, Clemson maybe.

I don't think Bama's D is anywhere near as good as it has been the past 3 years.  They struggled with Va Tech and if it hadn't been for Speical teams play it would have been a close game.  Va Tech struggled in beating Mashall in 3 OT's last week.  They just don't seem to be as dominate.  A & M got a ton of yards against them in the second game but A & M's defense sucks bad.  LSU can score some points and has a good D, so it will be an awesome game.

I personally believe he was lieing through his teeth.  First of all, when I was there in the mid and late 90's Gibbs hall was open for not only athletes but students.  We always went over there to eat because a) it was close to fraternity park where I lived, and b) it was the best food on campus.  They had everything.  Yes, his scholarship includes room/board/and meal plan, so his story of going hungry is a lie.

Secondly, my wife played golf at Alabama and she said they received a stipend each month for food/meal plan.  He was getting money.  The question is what did he do with it if he wasn't buying food with it?

Next, now my wife and I disagree with this, but they do get paid already...it is called a free education.  They aren't in debt by thousands of dollars when they get out of college.  They know going in to the scholarship that they don't get paid, so if you don't like it, don't sign the scholarship papers and go pay your own way in school or go to the CFL for 3 years or something else.  The fact is that 98% of the players on scholarship never get the chance at the NFL so they get an education and aren't in debt when they get out.  It is the 2% of the players that are good enough to make it to the NFL that are making all this stink and it makes me so mad because they are the ones that gets millions of dollars on their first contract.  Maybe they should spend some time in regular people's shoes and have to pay for everything (which includes college debt) while making a normal wage.

I personally think this is a ploy between all the players to make these stories up.  If you will notice, all the sudden these are coming out at the same time that UGA, Ga Tech, and another school wrote APU (All Players United) on their gear last week.

I don't know...LSU has been scoring a ton this year.  You go up again a defense that struggles next week.  This game could be 50 - 48.

Thanks for posting this.  I have always been a JFK reader...have read several books about that awful day and the "potential" cover-ups.  It is quite interesting.

I just don't see how this amounts to much of anything.  Like a previous poster said, it happens everywhere...every big time college program.  Coaches can't stop it because they aren't with their players 24/7.  I just don't see how this goes back against the school.

Also, all I heard about on the radio yesterday was about bama being involved.  I truly don't think the NCAA wants to vacate Bama's championship, so I would say this is swept under the rug, especially with the piece that has come out with Ok State this week too.  Based on previous stances, aka Ohio St, Johnny Football, etc, I just don't think this is a big deal.

Well, they had 400 yds of O against us and ran 70 plays!  That's not too good.  Obviously, we cannot always rely on TOs as the method to stop an offense.  What we saw last sat was part freak event, part great aggressive play on D.  Overall we do seem to be better coached, but the D needs to work on tackling and Worley has got to get more accurate with the passing. 

We actually gave up 365 yards.  The amazing thing was we gave up 228 yards in first half and only 137 in the second half.  Plus West Ky only scored 3 points in the second half and were 2 / 6 on 3rd downs.  I would say there were some adjustments at half, which never happened last year.

It was where I normally talkgate except we didn't tailgate this week due to the early start time.

I was there. Student section was horrible! The upper section of student area was completely empty. I don't know what they are doing on a Saturday afternoon instead of coming to the game.

Also last week's weather was brutal and yesterday's was the same. Sept early games are brutal

A stat I saw on another board:  Against Western KY, Ky averaged 6.8 yards a carry.  If UK's o-line and RB's can do that, I would be highly disappointed if we can't do that or better.

I am headed to FL today for vacation and it is killing me that I am not going to be at the home opener!  I am pumped too!

My wife and I found out today that we are having a girl.  Due in February!  Now I will have one of each.  My son and her will be 2 1/2 years apart...yikes!

Those with daughters...give me your advice!

True but Toledo won 9 games last year and his a ton of skill players back.  If they can score points, it could put the pressure on UF.  Here is why I think UF is a question mark:

- QB who can't throw well
- WR corps that is unproven
- Best TE/WR out for season
- Lost their RB from last year and the one picked to replace him hasn't practiced a snap because of having Mono and they don't know when he will be back
- 2 Offensive Lineman are hurt

Yes they have recruited well recently but that is alot of question marks.

I read some of the Bills beat writers and it was his attitude that did him in.  The beat writers were saying he would walk back to the huddle while everyone else that was fighting for a roster spot was sprinting back to the huddle.

Hate to say it, but some people with all the physical gifts just don't get it. IF someone told me to keep clean for 3 or 4 years and have a great attitude and I would get paid a huge sum of money, I think I could do that!

How in the world do you think UF will score 30?  I just think their offense will struggle this year.

Henry co 40 - Liberty Tech 21

Creekwood beat Dickson Co.