VTTW Board Index

...Ole Miss.  How do I know this?  Because we play them.  And for the past several years, any team we've drawn out of the west division has been "up" in a big way.  You expect it from bammer, but Arkansas?  MSU?  Auburn THIS year?  Really? 

Remember when this season's schedule came out, we saw that we were trading MSU for Auburn, and we thought we were catching a break?  LOL.  It's almost freaky how we never catch ANY of those teams when they're down.

So congrats in advance, Rebs.  You may now officially start making travel plans for the playoffs next year. :frown:

Okay, that just sounds weird. Gonna take some getting used to...

It sounds RIGHT. :dance:

Well, suffice to say that I disagree but there's no sense in launching that tired old debate again.  :laugh:

Well, everyone we play in the SEC is "up" compared to us the last few years. We have become vandy and ky.  :hurl: 

What is amazing is that most Vols fans when crystal-balling our record for this year were counting Auburn and/or Missouri as W's.  Nice job by both of those schools, and hopefully inspiration for the Vols future.  Granted, the talent levels are not equal, but it goes to show that proper utilization of talent can make all the difference.

Well both Auburn and Mizzou were much better than anyone expected.  Going by Rivals ratings, Auburn was much more talented than Mizzou, but both did well.  Of course, rercruiting ratings are not everything, but it does show that development is very important.  And for all their talent, Auburn was still 3-9 last year. 

Definitely goes to show Vols could come back at any time, though I and I think most believe it will be 2015 before we see a big improvement.

There is a big difference between Auburn and Tennessee. When Malzhan was asked did he see this big of a turn around his answer to the media was, "I knew we had some pretty good talent here so we went into the season one game at a time and lets see." The key words there are they had pretty good talent. Fred White on the Locker Room stated that Auburn had two years of really good recruited previously. Nothing turns around pretty quickly. It takes talente, recruting, hard work, and buying in to the program under the leadership of someone who causes players to believe in him and lay it on the line for that leader. Daniel Hood and Marlon Walls both have said that the playesr in the Tennessee locker room would run through a wall for Butch Jones. Tennessee, on paper, turn it around in 2015/ 2016 but not until then.  

Agree with all, but when I said hope for next year, I didn't mean playing for the BCS but maybe that we could be 8-4 in the regular season.  Which I do think is possible if everything clicks.   That's a big step up for us.

Auburn going from 3-9 to a hair of the NC is incredibly impressive.  In addition to all their talent, as you point out, they were actually much, much better than a 3-9 team last year.  From what I understand their players completely quit after a couple games due to off the field issues and I guess Chizak was just a lousy leader morale-wise. 

Whereas in our case, even though we were better than 5-7 last year (or should have been, without Sunseri.... :bird:), I  think for all that what talent we had (quite a bit offensively actually) performed better than Auburn's..FWIW, lol.