Comment on this story

Does Fulmer know something we don’t?

by Tony Basilio

With both the presidential election and the college football season fast approaching, fans are as divided over the fate of the 2004 Vols as voters are over the Bush-Kerry question. The media depicts Tennessee as a program in decline, while head coach Phil Fulmer preaches a message of hope, of a team closer to national championship contention than many realize. Although some UT fans are juiced by Fulmer’s platform, early returns show that not everyone is buying into the spin.

Mark Schlabach of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of the most influential college football writers in the South, proclaimed on my radio show a few weeks ago: “I hate to tell you this, but your Vols, Basilio, are one of [the] teams in college football that I see as being on the decline.... They are just a mediocre SEC football team.”

When I responded that the University of Tennessee still has the winningest coach in college football at its helm, Schlabach countered, “Yeah, and he’s now the third best coach in his own conference.” Ouch!

It seems that everyone is getting in on the act. CBS Sportsline’s Dennis Dodd dropped the Vols five places from his pre-spring rankings, noting that LSU and Georgia are now the flagship programs of the SEC. Not a single game has been played, and the Vols have already fallen in his eyes.

And Dodd’s number 20 ranking of the Vols seems kind when compared to CNNSI’s complete omission of Tennessee from its top 25. How could Tennessee have fallen so far so fast in the eyes of the national media? Will 2004 indeed provide further evidence that Tennessee is a program in decline? Or does Fulmer’s optimism have some grounding in reality? As our brethren in the political arena might say: Let’s look at the numbers.

College football programs vying for upper echelon status are defined by how they fare against the game’s elite. In the SEC, the elite programs include Alabama, Florida, LSU, Georgia and Auburn. From 1992 through the national title year of 1998, Fulmer posted an impressive 16-6-1 mark (.695 winning percentage) against those teams. Since then, UT has slipped to 9-11 (.450 winning percentage) versus the same group. While the overall record remains a respectable 25-17-1 (58.1%), the polls show us slipping. Which statistic is more indicative of what’s to come for the University of Tennessee—the overall record against the SEC’s best, or the lack of success since ’98? And what caused the apparent slide?

One popular explanation is that Fulmer has been too loyal to assistant coaches who haven’t produced. And topping the under-achievers list in most fans’ eyes is offensive coordinator Randy Sanders, the number one scapegoat in Tennessee’s apparent downward spiral. Sanders had a tough act to follow in Big Orange Country. From ‘92 through ‘98 the Vols maintained an astounding 29 points-per-game average under offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe. Cutcliffe—who also had the luxury of talent such as quarterbacks Heath Shuler and Peyton Manning, along with stables of NFL-bound running backs and receivers—parlayed that flashy portfolio into a head coaching gig at Ole Miss. Since then, Sanders’ offensive squads have averaged a mere 22 points per game, a nearly 25 percent drop in offensive production.

It has also been suggested that the Vols’ slide reflects less about UT than it does about other, newly ascendant SEC programs. Some of the teams of note on Tennessee’s schedule are markedly improved; both LSU and Georgia are regarded as consensus top-10 coming into next season, and they also happen to be the same two teams who played for the league title last year, with LSU winning and then claiming a subsequent share of the overall national championship. And though Florida and Alabama have both fallen in the polls in recent years, the magnitude of their decline is less than that of the gains made by the ‘dawgs and Tigers.

Vol fans still haven’t come to grips with the fact that Tennessee is no longer an up-and-coming program. The SEC’s newly risen stars are LSU and Georgia, programs that have also beaten UT head-to-head the past two recruiting seasons. Schlabach might be right, and Tennessee may be a team in decline. Then again, football fortunes often shift as dramatically as political ones do. It is an election year, after all, and maybe Fulmer’s team of pollsters know something the rest of us don’t.

Tune in and talk sports with “The Tony Basilio Show” each weekday from 3-6 p.m. on the network (670 WMTY-AM, 850 WKVL-AM, 1140 WLOD-AM, 1290 WATO-AM, or 1400 WGAP-AM)

May 13, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 20 © 2004 Metro Pulse