AJC > Sports > Blog > Archives > 2008 > November > 03
Monday, November 3, 2008
Replacing Fulmer won’t be easy for UT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Five things we learned over the weekend:
1. Tennessee will find it tough to replace Fulmer: It will become official at a press conference this afternoon, but Phillip Fulmer is out after 16 full seasons at Tennessee. He will leave with an average record of 9-3 and five trips to the SEC championship game and a national championship in 1998.
I have told my Tennessee friends this and I will repeat it here. The search for a new Tennessee coach will not be an easy one. Tennessee will want to hit a home run with this hire but getting an established head coach to leave his current job to come to Knoxville will be a tough sell. We’ll write more on this Tuesday morning after more details are available. .
2. We could have the best SEC championship game ever: In the new BCS Standings Alabama (9-0) is No. 1 and Florida (7-1) is No. 5. Alabama could certainly run the table against LSU, Mississippi State, and Auburn. Florida will be favored in its last four games at Vanderbilt, South Carolina, The Citadel, and at Florida State. If both teams win out we will have, at least on paper, the biggest SEC championship game ever. The SEC has had a No. 1 team in the game before (Tennessee in 1998) but the opponent back then was No. 23 Mississippi State. The best set of rankings came in 2003 when No. 3 LSU met No. 7 Georgia. If that happens, once again the BCS focus on Championship Saturday will be on the SEC title game. And for the third straight year and the eighth time since 1992, the winner could be headed to the national championship game. But having said all that I have to admit that….
3. Texas Tech is good enough to run the table: I didn’t think Texas Tech could beat Texas. The Red Raiders roll up a lot of points with QB Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree, who has convinced me that he is the best receiver in college football. What I didn’t realize until I watched the second half of Saturday night’s game is that the Red Raiders play tough, physical football on defense. Because the offense is virtually unstoppable, Texas Tech has a chance to win every time they play because they finally play decent defense. Texas Tech will struggle with Oklahoma State on Saturday because so much was invested in the Texas game. The most likely stumbling place is at Oklahoma on Nov. 22. But after that we saw Saturday night, who’s to say that Texas Tech can’t win them all?
4. Georgia is good, but the Dawgs aren’t Florida/Alabama good: For a big-time game with so much on the line, Georgia’s 49-10 loss to Florida was a pretty disappointing effort for the Bulldogs. It could have been a competitive hangover from the trip the week before against LSU, but the fact is that Georgia got beat, and beat soundly, by a superior football team that was highly motivated. Georgia got a bunch of yards but made a ton of mistakes and wasn’t mentally tough enough to play through them. The Florida defense challenge Georgia to run the ball and the young offensive line again played like a young offensive line. The red zone problems defy description. Still, Georgia can finish 10-2 and go to a New Year’s Day bowl. After a lot of preseason hype about the SEC (and yes, I was a part of that), there are really only two elite teams (Florida, Alabama) this season. Georgia is not among them.
5. Florida may be the best team in college football: Remember when Florida lost to Ole Miss and Tebow gave his emotional post-game talk to the media saying that no one would play harder than him the rest of the season? Well, he’s backed it up. In the four games since Ole Miss, Tebow has completed 52 of 75 passes (69.3 percent) for eight touchdowns. Florida has scored 201 points in the last four games. With the way Tebow is playing right now, backed up by an improving defense, Florida just may be the best team in the country.
Services »
