Down to the Buzzer
To occupy the musical chair that the head basketball coach's post at the University of Tennessee has become, UT hired Michael Jordan's best friend to replace Jerry Green's worst enemy (i.e. Jerry Green).
Buzz Peterson, who played at North Carolina with Jordan and has maintained a close relationship with His Airness, blew in from Tulsa and took over from Green, who managed to demolish his image here while limiting his teams' successes with a lack of attention to discipline and conditioning.
Too early to tell how Peterson will do with the Vol bunch he was left, but they are complaining, mildly of course, about his conditioning and discipline regimen, and his first early recruiting class was ranked highly (in the top 20) by those who are prone to rank such things nationally. All Peterson has to do is convert that to an actual, dyed-in-the-polyester top 20 basketball team, year in and year out, and he'll be just fine. Didn't he say he came for the challenge?
Vol From Grace
Who would have thought that a year that included 10 regular season victories, a win over the much-despised Florida Gators and an SEC Eastern division championship could be so disappointing? All of the above happened to the Tennessee Volunteer football team in 2001, and the results were, in the end, very, very sad. That's because on Dec. 8 in Atlanta's Georgiadome stadium, the Tennessee team played the worst game of its season and lost 31-20 in the SEC championship game, to an LSU team it had beaten 26-18 some weeks before.
The victory cost the Vols not only an overall SEC championship, but also a chance at a national title, as the number-two ranked Vols were in position to play number-one ranked and undefeated Miami in the Rose Bowl had they prevailed over LSU. Slipping to number eight in the polls, the Vols settled for a Jan. 1 date with number 17 Michigan in the Citrus Bowl. There's always next year....
Meow!
There was a football team in Knoxville that won a national title, of sorts, though it was not the one that plays in Neyland Stadium. The fledgling Tennessee Thundercats of the fledgling Indoor Professional Football League won the division's inaugural championship when it ground the Omaha Beef 47-38 in a championship game in early fall.
The Thundercats were 9-4 in regular season play, second only to the 11-1 Beef in a league that included teams from Boise, St. Louis, and Trenton, N.J. Sporting a roster full of players from area colleges, the Thundercats will join the larger and better-known National Indoor Football League in 2001 and compete with more than 20 different indoor football teams from across the country.
December 20, 2001 * Vol. 11, No. 51
© 2001 Metro Pulse
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