...crying over UGA's loss to Clemson and demanding that Mark Richt be fired.
It got me to thinking about how many teams in the SEC (and all of college football for that matter, but it's more prevalent in the SEC) are absolutely spoiled and should walk a mile in Tennessee's shoes.
And THAT got me to thinking about the people who warned that if Tennessee fired Phillip Fulmer, they might wish they had him back.
Obviously, those doomsayers were correct about Fulmer, but for the wrong reasons. I'm convinced that Tennessee's demise wasn't due to not having Fulmer. Firing him was warranted. If anything, UT waited too long to do something that no one really wanted to do. Tennessee's demise is much more about Mike Hamilton's ego and his desire to find a bargain-bin coach so he could brag about saving money rather than pulling the trigger on a big-dollar hire.
With that said, I was one of those fans whose appetite for wins was insatiable. I think I've said this before, but I first wanted Fulmer to be replaced after the '97 Orange Bowl. Seeing an undisciplined Tennessee team lose yet another game largely because the other team out-coached our team grated on me, and the images of Tennessee players throwing grass and horseplaying on the sideline, obviously enjoying themselves while their team was being boatraced on the field, are still fresh on my mind.
I think I was right in '97. I think it was obvious even then that Fulmer was not a great coach. I think he was the best recruiter Tennessee has ever had, and I think he was one of the best motivators Tennessee has ever had, but I don't think he was a great coach and that's why I think that so many times when a game came down to a grudge match between two evenly matched teams, Tennessee wound up on the wrong end of the scoreboard. In fact, I think you can speculate that if guys like Mike Dubose and Jim Donnan weren't coaching in the SEC in the '90s, Tennessee's "decade of dominance" wouldn't have been hardly as dominant.
But if I had my way, Tennessee would've fired Fulmer in 1997 because he couldn't win "the big game," and we wouldn't have won a national championship. Aren't we fans fickle sometimes?
As we've found out the past 5 seasons, winning national titles and even SEC titles isn't everything. Being relevant and believing you have a chance to beat your biggest rivals is. Sure, there's no one who can do less with more than Mark Richt. But I don't think there's a Tennessee fan anywhere who wouldn't trade the Vols' success over the past 5 years for Georgia's in a heartbeat.