Author Archives: Joel Hollingsworth

My regular weekly recap of what happened with Tennessee and its past and future opponents this weekend won’t be up until tomorrow (I don’t expect it to be good news), but here’s your opportunity to use our Vols Win Probability Calculator to see where you’re at after this weekend.

The form is below. Post your result in the comments section as well for discussion purposes.

The Tennessee Volunteers host the UMass Minutemen today at noon in Neyland Stadium. If you can’t be there, be here with like-minded Vols fans. The game’s on the SEC Network.

• Kickoff: 12 p.m. ET
• Online audio
• Live Stats
• TV: SEC Network
• Satellite Radio: Sirius 138 and XM Channel 191

Get your Guessing Game answers in before noon. Root for the Vols to win and hope for no injuries and lots of young guys. Don’t be shocked to see UMass quarterback Andrew Ford do well, but expect the Vols to make the Minutemen one-dimensional. Collectively, we give Tennessee a 95% chance of winning, and the Vols are 28 point favorites.

Once the Vols game is over, shift to watching the rest of today’s college football slate. You can find our weekly college football TV schedule and rooting guide for Vols fans here, and that will serve as our “other games” thread as well.

It’s still mid-September, and the 2007 season is here to tell you that stuff can happen, man. And this weekend is particularly ripe for a good kind of drama helpful to the Big Orange.

Most of the potential chaos is scheduled for Saturday evening, when we’re rooting for Mississippi State to hand Georgia an SEC loss and Kentucky to help Tennessee by making trouble for Florida, narrowing the gap the Vols must close to catch the Gators. We’ll also be keeping an eye on Missouri and LSU to take the temperature of the Vols’ chances against them later this season.

Here’s the Week 4 college football TV schedule, curated for Vols fans. It includes kickoff times, TV stations, and what’s at stake in each game from the perspective of a Vols fan. It also includes helpful suggestions on how to watch everything most efficiently and who to root for in each game.

The full schedule for the entire weekend is also included at the bottom of the post.

Go Vols!

Okay, so some are going to watch this and pine for Charlie Strong, but down that way lies madness. Watch because it’s football and enjoy your evening.

Friday, September 22

Again, this is just an opportunity to hear the sights and sounds of football, for which we all longed most of the summer. These may not get you buzzing, but they are sort of like comfort food. It makes you feel at home.

Gameday, September 23

And then it’s Gameday.

If you’ve already given up hope for the Vols this season, well, we’ll see you for some of the games next year. You likely won’t care about any of this.

For those who remember 2007, though, here’s what we’re watching and hoping for Saturday:

Noon slot

Big win for the Vols, washing away as much of the Gators aftertaste as you can against a team like UMass, and playing a bunch of backups early and long.

Afternoon slot

• We want Alabama to relieve Vanderbilt of some of that building swagger.
• Once that gets boring, switch over to the big national game between #16 TCU and #6 Oklahoma State and root for an entertaining game.

Evening slot

Here’s where it really gets interesting.

• At 7:00, #17 Mississippi State, who just pounded LSU last week, takes on #11 Georgia on ESPN. Vols fans need Georgia to take on as many losses as possible, so root hard for Mississippi State in this one.
• At 7:30, #20 Florida travels to Lexington to take on a Kentucky squad also beginning to find some swagger. Look, I don’t like the idea of Kentucky being good, either, but we need Florida to take on as many losses as possible, too, and we can cross the Kentucky bridge when we come to it.
• Periodically, check in with Missouri, who’s hosting #15 Auburn on ESPNU, and #25 LSU, who’s hosting Syracuse on ESPN2. I don’t think we need to worry much about Missouri, but some insurance would be nice. Also, I know the argument for wanting LSU to be good so a win over them looks better, but right now, we can’t be picky about the quality of SEC wins, so I wouldn’t mind seeing LSU fall completely apart and stumble into Neyland in November.

Complete college football TV schedule for Week 4

And here’s the complete schedule for the week, paginated and searchable!

This Saturday’s game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the UMass Minutemen should give the Big Orange an opportunity to find out more about their second-tier players. UMass is struggling mightily out of the gate at 0-4, and with the Vols trying to get their minds right after the bitter Florida loss and also prepare for an even more important game next week against the Georgia Bulldogs, the game plan for Tennessee should be to seize control early and get their backups in quickly for an extended look.

Here’s a quick look at UMass’ strengths and weaknesses, along with the Minutemen to watch.

UMass strengths and weaknesses

From this, it would appear that for all of its problems, the UMass offense is pretty good on first down and is not bad at all in the passing game. That said, their numbers scream “ONE DIMENSIONAL.” If that’s the case, the Vols’ defense should be able to contain the run game and then tee off on passing plays. Tennessee’s defensive line should have a good day wreaking havoc behind the line of scrimmage, as the Minutemen are giving up A LOT of sacks and TFLs.

Not that the Vols should pound their chest about it much, but the UMass defense starts off at mediocre and gets worse from there. Tennessee’s run game should be able to control this one out of the gate, and when it is time to pass, they should be just fine.

Again, not much to worry about here for the Vols.

Players to Watch

If the passing game is the thing to watch, then it all starts with junior quarterback Andrew Ford, who is 90-of-140 for 1,204 yards and six touchdowns after four games so far this season. He’s thrown only one interception.

Ford does a good job of spreading the ball around to his three favorite targets: senior tight end Adam Breneman (24 receptions for 369 yards, but no touchdowns), junior running back Andy Isabella (20 receptions for 306 yards and three touchdowns, and sophomore wide receiver Sadiq Palmer (17 receptions for 239 yards).

When they’re not passing the ball, they’re handing off to junior running back Marquis Young, who’s rushed for 225 yards this season on 60 carries. He’s had four touchdowns, and he’s also caught 12 passes for 71 yards.

On the defensive side of the ball, senior lineman Da’Sean Downey has three sacks and three tackles for loss on the season. The team’s leading tackler is senior linebacker Bryton Barr, and the secondary’s best defender so far appears to be sophomore Isaiah Rodgers, who has three pass breakups and an interception.

If the NCAA’s official field goal stats can be trusted, freshman kicker Michael Schreiner is 0-4 so far this season. He’s also only had one touchback on 17 kickoffs, so watch for Ty Chandler or whoever else is back there to maybe have a big day returning kicks.

Below are the results from our survey of the GRT community on how last weekend impacted our collective expected win total for the Vols this season. We opened this week’s Win Probability Calculator for business on Sunday at noon, and the last entry was Tuesday. The room temperature was hottest Saturday night and cooled over the course of the week, so if temperature affects reporting of expectations, keep that in mind.

Here are this week’s results:

Lots of 50/50 games in there in South Carolina, Kentucky, LSU, and Vanderbilt. Folks are considerably less confident in the Georgia game, but still think UMass, Southern Miss, and Missouri are safe. While adding up the percentages only equates to barely over seven wins, being right on each game would mean the Vols would win eight games, about what the fan base collectively expected before the season began.

The third game of the season. A humiliating, embarrassing loss to a hated rival. Folks immediately calling for the coach’s head on a plate.

It was Saturday night, September 15, 2007, and Vols fans were livid. Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow, Percy Harvin, and Brandon James had just flat-out dominated Tennessee in The Swamp, 59-20. They didn’t just win the game, they ripped the hope for the entire season out of our hands and curb-stomped it.

There was no way Tennessee could recover, no way the Vols would be able to compete for the East.

It was not a happy time on Rocky Top. The Big Orange was now 1-2 after three games, and fans everywhere were busy making jokes about Phillip Fulmer responding to the adversity by “working like heck,” to get it fixed. A win over Arkansas State the next week did little to dull the sharp edges, and a bye week after that only gave it additional time to fester.

And then #12 Georgia came to town the same day an article appeared in the local paper that was extremely critical of coach Fulmer and ostensibly relied on quotes from anonymous former players to drive its points deep. The whole thing was going off the rails.

Georgia

But then, the thing that nobody said could possibly happen, happened. The unranked Vols beat #12 Georgia. They not only beat them, they did to the Bulldogs what Florida had done to them three weeks prior. Tennessee won 35-14 in a game that wasn’t even as close as the score made it look.

Meanwhile, Florida had lost the week before to Auburn and then lost to LSU on the same day that Tennessee beat Georgia, and Tennessee was now ahead of Florida in the race for the SEC East. Georgia, which would lose only two games the entire year, was also looking up at Tennessee when the sun set on October 6, 2007.

Alabama

So, flared tempers settled for a couple of weeks. The Vols took care of business against Mississippi State, and then the team traveled to Alabama on October 20. This was Nick Saban’s first year at Alabama, before he was NICK [FULMERIZED] SABAN and Alabama went on a decade-long (so far) rampage for the ages. The Tide would lose six (SIX!) games in 2007.

But they wouldn’t lose to Tennessee. And, in keeping with the theme for the season, they didn’t just beat the Vols, they embarrassed them, 41-17. Forget what you know about Alabama right now; this was a terrible loss to a terrible team, and it dashed the Vols’ hopes for the SEC East. Again. Florida was now 3-2 with the tiebreaker over the Vols.

South Carolina

The next two weeks did little to diminish the fury that had reloaded, rebuilt, and set up headquarters on Kingston Pike. With #16 South Carolina coming to town, the newspaper published a photo of the Grim Reaper at coach Fulmer’s door, and TV guys were saying that the only thing the program had left to look forward to was signing day and the NFL Draft. Fulmer used it to rally his guys, and they beat the Gamecocks in overtime.

Georgia beat Florida that same day, tying everything up in the East, but few cared. The Vols were certain to lose another game along the way, especially with the Arkansas Razorbacks and Heisman-contender Darren McFadden coming to town two in two weeks.

Arkansas

This time, though, those supporting Fulmer were on to the newspaper’s tricks. Nearly 200 former players, including Peyton Manning and Albert Haynesworth, went on record by actually signing their names to a letter of support and paying the newspaper to publish it as a full-page advertisement. The Vols went out and handled McFadden and the Razorbacks easily that day and won, 34-13. A defense that “couldn’t stop anybody,” held the SEC’s best rusher to 117 yards on 22 carries and his team to a mere 13 points.

Vanderbilt and Kentucky

But the drama wasn’t over. Florida won that day, and Georgia beat #18 Auburn, so Tennessee needed to win the rest of its games to keep ahead of the Gators and hold of the tiebreaker against Georgia, and many remained unconvinced that they’d be able to do it. They squeaked out a one-point victory over Vanderbilt on November 17 when the Commodores barely missed what would have been a 49-yard, game-winning field goal with 33-seconds left.

The following week gave us the epic four overtime game with Kentucky, which the Vols finally won 52-50. This game will always be the Fiddler on the Roof game to me, and to this day it remains one of the most entertaining things I’ve ever seen. After everything that had happened, it was an all-or-nothing game the Vols needed for a trip to the SEC Championship. In keeping with the rest of the season, the Vols got behind early, it was close the rest of the way, and they pulled it out in the end.

The SEC Championship Game

After having backed in to the championship game, the Vols certainly had no chance against #7 LSU, right? Wrong. They were one fourth-quarter pick-six away from winning the game and the conference.

The 2007 season was part heartbreak and part thriller, all rolled up into one. I often wonder, though, how many may have missed the thrill because they were filled with dread before every game, certain that more heartbreak lurked around the corner.

I hated 2007. I loved 2007. I’m glad I didn’t let the former spoil the latter.

Where are we now?

Third game of the season. A humiliating, embarrassing loss to a hated rival. Folks immediately calling for the coach’s head on a plate.

The rest of the season may be heartbreaking. It may also be thrilling. Probably, it will be a combination of both.

No one can know for sure until it happens. But if there’s something good at the end of this path, we won’t want to miss it.

P.S.

Chaos didn’t limit itself to Tennessee and the SEC East in 2007. The entire college football landscape was turned upside down. For an animation recapping much of that, see the old 2007 Animated BlogPoll.