Sports talk radio is buzzing. Phone lines are jammed.

Everybody seems to know why Tennessee lost to Florida 16-7 last Saturday in The Swamp.

Everybody has the answers. Fire Fulmer. Fire Sanders. Start Ainge. Start Clausen. Run the football. Pass the football.

UT players can't escape all the talk. Some do their best.

"I don't listen to talk shows and I don't read the papers," linebacker Jason Mitchell said at Tuesday's media day.

Still, the Vols can't help but hear rumblings in the Vol nation. It's on the radio. It's on TV. It's in the barbershop and in the bar.

"I don't (pay attention)," UT offensive guard Rob Smith said. "Even when we had the preseason and all the hype and stuff, you can only go with that so much because when you're on top there're going to be people telling you how good you are, and when you have a loss like this the same people are going to be telling you how bad you are."

UT's bandwagon is a lot lighter heading into Saturday's game at LSU. Fans talking Rose Bowl last week are now talking Peach Bowl.

How the mighty have fallen.

"You can't really listen," Smith said. "You just have to stick with the team and rally the troops and every day try to get better because we're the ones out there playing."

Smith says the Vols are trying to rally.

He says practice was good Monday and he expects more of the same the rest of the week.

"I don't know about the defense, but (Monday) I think we had the best practice we've had all year," Smith said.

Mitchell said the defense responded likewise.

"I think it was a really good practice too," he said. "There were a lot of guys into it. I know the linebackers, we were excited every drill we did. We took pride in every drill, everything we did, and tried to get better and tried to encourage everybody to get better."

The Vols relish the underdog role. They like having their backs to the wall.

They are back in familiar territory this week.

"We had to be upbeat (Monday)," tight end Chris Brown said. "We couldn't come out and have a lackluster practice at all because we can't sit here and go in the tank after just one loss, even though we had high expectations at the beginning of the season.

"There's no way we can let one loss bring our season down and not let us still go after our goals."