This is one of the best pieces of journalistic work I have read in a while:

http://www.ihoneida.com/opinion/2015/10/to-be-a-young-sports-fan-again/

I am not going to be one bit surprised if Tennessee goes to Gainesville and lays an eggs but, my goodness, the defeatist attitude kills me.

I'm still trying to get over the old geezer that said that Neyland was too loud!  And if he wasn't a really old guy, for shame!

Glad Football is back
liking what I am hearing
No more Little John!

Offense looking good
Defense looks a bit porous
Cover # 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnkzRLb8R5A

Well, crap, I still don't know how to post a video but here's the link to Hoodoo Gurus "All The Good Times We Had Are Back Again"

I liked the dude that had the orange Gilligan hat with the white power T.  Not sure who that was (could have been a student)

Since my sister and her family live on the other side of Boone Lake from the racetrack, I may try to go.  My BIL works for Eastman and can sometimes get tickets for their luxury box.

Lovingood showing on the list now.  He may be up next.

Outstanding!  I see I'm not gonna get crap done at work today.     Except these morons that work here are running around hollering and laughing and I can barely hear the war room and interviews.   

We were coasting.  Now you may say that we should never do that and I wouldn't disagree with you but when we gave Butch the Gatorade shower with 2 minutes left, I knew we were just dicking around.  Great game though.

I can't wait until next year!  I'd forgotten how much fun it was to win (and dominate) a bowl game.

I'm very happy with Butch Jones as our coach.  He came in trying to clean up the flaming bag of dog crap that Dooley left on his front porch and I think he's done a damn good job.  His recruiting classes have been first rate.  Watching a Vols game, you can see that they are very talented but young.  Against Oklahoma, I saw a lot of good things.  I also saw a lot of blown assignments,  This happens with young players.  I am very enthusiastic about our future chances with Butch.  Yeah, losing that game tol a lame FL team made me sick, but beating the head ball cock twice more than made up for it.

I didn't sign the petition, but I understand why many of those who did sign it felt the need to do so. 

That said, how in the hell can you say that Double Live Cuonzo was "run off" when the powers that be offered him a half million dollar raise and an extension to stay based primarily on one month of work out of 3 years that he was here?  He did essentially nothing for the other 35 of 36 months.   If that's being run off, where to I sign up for that one? 

And it's good to see you, Jethro.   

Good to see you too, Herb but you know as well as I do that that petition was a slap in the face, regardless of whatever contract extension he had available.  Who would want to stay at a school as a coach when the fans have thrown you under the bus, regardless of your status with the administration.

Bruce Pearl wasn't coming back last year, and Cuonzo Martin isn't coming back now. He's happily the coach at Cal and the past is past. This issue was long ago embalmed, put in the casket and bedded with the worms.

(Besides, Donnie Tyndall is a better coach than Cuonzo Martin.)

I haven't seen anything yet that makes me think Tyndall is a better coach than Cuonzo.

I'll trust Butch who suspended them.  If there was nothing to it, they would have told Butch that and they would still be on the team.

I haven't been around much lately and I hate that my re-entry is beginning with a negative rant, but I gotta do what I do.  (Next rant will be positive about Butch).  I will present the pros and cons of the petition, but I've made my thesis statement clear. 

Pros:

1) I loved the Bruce Pearl era.  The enthusiasm that he brought to the program and the school was unbelievable.  The last Vols b-ball game I went to was with Clockwork, Volznut and BDV and it was against Texas when Kevin Durant was there.  This was the best college hoops game that I've ever been to.  The excitement in the arena was awesome.  Pearl may be the best coach that UT has ever had.  Ray Mears was a good coach but he coached in an era when only 1 team went from each conference every year and usually that was Kentucky.  The Bernie and Ernie years were awesome.  Don Devoe was a good, maybe great, Xs and Os coach, but he couldn't recruit worth a crap.  The Jerry Green years were fun but as I've stated before, it was fools gold. 

2)  Like all of you, I agonized about all of the terrible losses that happened under Cuonzo.  I remember getting swept one year by a terrible Texas A&M team.  That 39-38 loss to Georgetown was almost unwatchable.   In addition, the Vols played a boring style for fans, the Georgetown game being a great example. 

Cons:

1)  When fans started that petition, there were still 6 games left in the regular season. / http://www.wbir.com/story/news/local/2014/02/17/bring-back-bruce-petition/5564031.  As it turned out, the Vols went on a run after that and acquitted themselves quite nobly in the SEC and NCAA Tournament.  The fact that many fans had given up on them already was sad. 

2)  Bruce Pearl was never coming back.  I remember seeing posts by Herb, who is as much an insider as anyone here, that the UT admin was never going to let him back after all of his shenanigans.  He was absolutely right.  He was a great coach at UT, done in by his arrogance and hubris.  I didn't really worry about it when he did all kind of minorly disgraceful things ( cheating on his wife and getting divorced, getting thrown out of a West game for making an ass of himself, etc).  And the rule he violated was admittedly a chickensh*t one.  The NCAA has many of those.  But, as Martha Stewart or Richard Nixon (and your mama) could have told him, it's the lying that gets you.  Saying as you're committing the violation "I'm not supposed to have juniors at this BBQ but I'm sure you won't tell anybody, lol"  That was the arrogance and foolish because who in their right mind would trust a teenage boy with a secret?  So, OK, it's a minor violation, but then the NCAA came around and he lied about it.  And he continued to lie about it until he couldn't lie about it anymore.  This is not a little thing.  He got a 3 year show cause penalty which only happens to the worst offenders.  No way UT was going to hire him back after disgracing the school.

3) Cuonzo was a good guy and a pretty good coach.  He didn't have an offensive style that was pretty but he did enough to get us in the tourney.  The run they went on after that petition I think shows how the players felt about him.  The fact that a couple of players transferred after he left and we lost the entire incoming freshman crop that Cuonzo had already recruited shows that as well.  I'll briefly bring up the racial aspect even though I don't think that was a major thing.  I think some if not all of the kids that transferred and decommited did.

4)  It was a crappy ting to do to a coach that had worked hard to be successful at UT but had had mixed success.  I know some UT fans that said "It doesn't matter that we won't get Pearl.  We'll get Greg Marshall from Wichita St.  Wrong.  Coaches stick together and there is no way Marshall or any other highly respected coach would have come here after doing our last coach that way.  It just made the fanbase look bad.

Conclusion:  We embarrassed ourself for no reason and ran a coach that got us to the Sweet 16 last year off.  I'm not anti-Tyndall, but he was the best we could get after all of the good coaches were gone.

Well, I've been trying to teach myself how to post a video so it's mostly been the blind leading the blind.     Hope this wasn't Germans or that will really suck.  He has one from last year if I'm not the only one that just saw it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99_g5oCQ664

Y'all don't do anything I wouldn't do!      

There's a fine line when it comes to fan irrationality. I wanted Cuonzo gone myself. But one guy told me last week that if Hart hired anyone other than Gregg Marshall or Ben Howland that he would have to answer to the fans. That irrational.

Bashing a guy because he coaches at the same school as a failed football coach is not just irrational, it's foolish.

Ironically, by all those fans signing the petition to fire Cuonzo, we paradoxically made it impossible to hire Marshall or Howland.  I guarantee you that every college coach in the country is on Counzo's side here.  So the guy from USM figures the career advancement is worth the risk but forget about high profile coaches after the petition debacle.  No high profile coach will take a job at a program like that.

I heard her recently on WNCW out of Spindale, NC. 

www.wncw.org

Consider he went to Cal, which is a horrible program with low expectations

  Don't they have a natty?  (Yes, in 1959 under Pete Newell (which was an awesome year for other reasons  )  And when Jason Kidd was there they beat Dook in the second round of the NCAA tournament in 1993.  Pretty decent resume right there.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNPLKhe7Q