MEMPHIS -- There have been times in Tennessee football coach Phillip Fulmer’s career where he has been optimistic about the upcoming season.

And there have been the years where he has been cautiously optimistic.

Now, he’s downgrading to just plain cautious. A 5-6 season, especially when your team was ranked nationally preseason in the top five as the Vols in ’05, will do that to the best of coaches.

"I have very much a show-me-type attitude," said Fulmer, who was in Memphis on Monday, along with the men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl, at the annual Big Orange Caravan.

While Pearl is still basking in the glory of a stunning 22-8 season and an SEC Eastern Division title in his first year at UT, Fulmer’s decision to go back to the future with David Cutcliffe as his offensive coordinator seemed to pay dividends in spring work that ended Saturday.

Cutcliffe was Fulmer’s offensive coordinator for six seasons before becoming Ole Miss’s head coach in December 1998. He was fired by Ole Miss after the ’04 season despite a 4-1 bowl record, sat out last season after triple-bypass heart surgery and was re-hired by Fulmer in late November.

Cutcliffe has brought to a sagging offense what Fulmer was lacking last year, when Fulmer waffled between shaky Erik Ainge and veteran Rick Clausen at quarterback.

"David has improved the toughness of our team," Fulmer said. "We’re fundamentally better. He has been very demanding of tempo and execution. The daily practice habits improved. Not that we were practicing poorly, but not to the ‘cross-your-t’s-and-dot-your-i’s’ extent that we are now."

Now that Ainge seems to be on the right track — he looked sharp throwing for 210 yards and two touchdowns in the spring game — Fulmer’s biggest concern heading into preseason will be his running game.

Arron Sears and David Ligon are the only two offensive line starters. But the top two projected running backs, sophomores Arian Foster and Montario Hardesty, sat out the spring after off-season surgeries.

It’s imperative that Foster be ready to roll by the Sept. 2 season opener in Knoxville against California. After replacing the injured Gerald Riggs in the last half of last season, the shifty Foster finished with 879 yards after running for at least 100 yards in each of his five starts.

"It’s crucial for us to get everybody back healthy," Fulmer said. "I can’t tell you now how we’ll be able to run the ball. If this spring is any indication, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We didn’t have anybody at spring practice who could break a tackle."

Pearl said he took just a couple of days off after his team lost to Wichita State, in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

But as he did during the tournament, when he and the Vols were the daily focus of ESPN reports giving viewers an inside look at the team, Pearl turned on the media overdrive at the Final Four in Indianapolis. His objective was to expose the Tennessee program to as many potential recruits as possible.

"You can’t put a price tag on what that (ESPN) thing was worth," Pearl said. "And I was shameless at the Final Four. I got my face on every TV station, got on every radio station. I did every interview I could, knowing that it’s going to get us in the door (with recruits)."

Pearl said guard Dane Bradshaw, who Pearl called the "glue" of last year’s team, is getting antsy in his recovery from postseason wrist surgery on March 24.

"Dane’s one of the toughest kids I’ve ever coached and one of the best people God has ever put on this earth," Pearl said. "What’s killing Dane right now, is that he’s not able to train.

"Dane’s play this past season was significant. When he played well in the big games (like beating Florida twice), we won them. I would just point to him in practice and tell the rest of the team, ‘Just play as hard as he plays.’ "

Before the start of the NCAA tournament, Tennessee extended Pearl’s contract and gave him a raise. Just last week, UT graduate Larry Pratt stepped forward and committed $5 million to build a basketball practice facility.

Pearl understands that with great achievements comes greater expectations.

"It’s easier to get it going than to keep it going," Pearl said. "We’re not going to sneak up on anybody. The bar has been raised in the SEC — Florida won the national championship, South Carolina won the NIT and I haven’t even mentioned LSU (who was in the Final Four) or Kentucky yet."