What Tennessee has at tailback is a well-stocked young stable.

What Tennessee has at tailback is a handful of question marks.

You could make a case for both scenarios.

Offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe on Saturday set Aug. 20 as the date he hopes to settle on some answers.

That would be the day following the Vols' second full-scale preseason scrimmage.

"(By then) we'll have a pretty good feel about where we are,'' Cutcliffe said.

"We'll meet as a staff and talk a lot about substitutions. From that point on, we'll start getting ready for Cal with that substitution rotation in mind.''

With one year of college under their respective belts, Arian Foster, Montario Hardesty and LaMarcus Coker all have their eye on being in that rotation, if not at the top of it.

And they're not alone.

Since Cutcliffe and new running backs coach Kurt Roper arrived, the only two fully healthy tailbacks they got to evaluate in spring practice were David Yancey and Ja'Kouri Williams.

"I don't think I have any set thoughts in my mind as of yet,'' said Roper, who coached at Kentucky last season.

"There were guys who went through the spring and did a heckuva job every day and built a lot of trust with me.''

The next two weeks will be, in the words of head coach Phillip Fulmer, a "very intense, very serious time" for winning jobs in general. That certainly applies to the tailbacks.''

Foster has a leg up after starting the final five games of 2005 and gaining more than 100 yards in each.

"Experience is the greatest teacher,'' Foster said. "You put that experience in your back pocket and run with it.

"And I'm in the best physical condition I've every been in in my life.''

Two clean-up surgeries kept the Californian out of spring practice and on campus all summer to rehab.

The knee injury that curtailed Hardesty's freshman season qualified him for a medical redshirt but prevented him any contact in the spring.

"Once we get the pads on I'm ready to go back and show what I can do,'' Hardesty said.

"I'm wanting to get hit. I told everybody that's what I want.''

Coker redshirted last fall and also had a no-contact spring to rehab a shoulder injury.

"I'm trying not to make many mistakes at all,'' he said, "to show the coaches they can trust me on the field.''

Yancey, a senior, has put on extra muscle for his last go-round. Williams, who contributed on special teams last year, is playing with a chip on his shoulder.

"All the talk has been about other people,'' said Cutcliffe, "and I can tell he took it as a challenge and went to work.''

Cutcliffe was out of coaching last year and used the time to evaluate UT's personnel and execution week by week.

He says he's open-minded on how the tailback scenario will play out. But he has a preference based on past experience.

Cutcliffe was the running backs coach in 1989 when Reggie Cobb and Chuck Webb posed a lethal one-two punch.

"How to use them was something we discussed and went in with a plan,'' Cutcliffe said.

He was also on the staff in the early 1990s when James "Little Man" Stewart, Charlie Garner and Aaron Hayden shared the load effectively.

"That's when we've been at our best,'' he said. "Do we have that now? I don't know.

"That's what you'd like to do and make it work. I like unselfish football players.

"Not everybody is able to handle that but all the really good ones I've been around handled it.''

Cutcliffe and Roper agree on one thing: There's no such thing as too many candidates.

And they agree on another, too: It's going to be fun sorting it all out over the next few weeks.

"It gets back to who's making the plays,'' said Roper. "There is a reason we go to practice.

"They've got to take that challenge, that everything is being viewed, everything is being dissected.''