As a Knoxville resident and UT employee/student, I’m required to make the following statement. (It’s actually a bylaw of the state constitution — listed right there under the mandatory regressive tax structure and last-in-the-nation per/pupil spending.)
It’s football time in Tennessee!
What can I say? A friend offered a free ticket, and I was more than willing to take him up on the offer. UT won easily, beating Fresno State 24-6 and proving once again that the Volunteers are the most boring football team in the country. I was at Florida State during the Charlie Ward, Warrick Dunn years, when it was not unusual to see my team outscore its opponent by six or seven touchdowns. I remember sitting in the stands at one game, rooting not for a victory over the then-lowly Maryland Terrapins — the victory was inevitable, after all — but rooting for 1,000 yards of total offense. As I recall, we fell only about 200 yards short that day.
You can call it running up the score, you can call it show-boating and unsportsmanlike, but here’s the thing: When, later in the season, FSU needed to put together a quick drive down the field — for instance in the Orange Bowl, when Nebraska took a 16-15 lead with two minutes left to play — that offense knew how to score because they had done it a lot that season. They were confident, they were sharp, and they won the national championship (finally).
I just don’t get the Fulmer/Sanders offense at UT. Against a clearly outmatched opponent, they put up only 24 points and seemed to spend the last three quarters waiting for the game to end. Fulmer’s apologists call it “classic, conservative, hard-nosed football.” I call it boring, counter-productive, and just a little bit embarrassing. The only reason, as far as I can tell, to put a Fresno State or a Marshall (next week) on your schedule is to give your offense an opportunity to learn how to score — to turn a game day into a practice session. Yesterday was another wasted opportunity.
Oh yeah, and UT’s defense was amazing. By my count, they allowed only one first down in the first three quarters, and it came on a circus-act catch from one of Fresno State’s receivers. Simon, Peace, and Burnett are about as impressive as a trio of linebackers will get this season.
The highlight of the game for me actually came up in the stands. Because my friend had gotten our tickets via his job in the athletic tutoring center, we were surrounded by other folks who were at the game compliments of the team, including several families of players. Sitting right in front of us was a proud father, mother, and sister, who floated above their seats for several seconds when their son/brother, a freshman, stepped onto the field for his first (and only, so far) play. Pretty cool. You’ve just got to love college football.