Adams: Retreat from elite

You're probably thinking, "What can you say nice about a 5-6 season?"

The most obvious answer: In six more days, when UT kicks off another season, its mishaps of 2005 will officially become history, displaced by a new team and season. But if you allow me to play fantasy football for a few paragraphs, you might appreciate another positive aspect of a season that was characterized at best as disappointing, and at worst, downright disastrous.

Suppose last season had been merely mediocre. Suppose South Carolina's Josh Brown had missed that 49-yard field goal with 2:45 to play. Suppose Jay Cutler hadn't completed that 5-yard touchdown pass with 1:11 to play.

UT would have finished the regular season 7-4. It might have even won a bowl game.

But fans still would be bemoaning the drop-off for a team favored to win the SEC championship and contend for a national title. They would be lamenting a program that couldn't win big games, couldn't finish in the top 10 and couldn't live up to the expectations it created in the late 1990s. They would be saying their program was in a rut.

And, then, if the Vols won another eight or nine games this season, the fans would still refer to their program as "in a rut."

One awful season has changed all of that. If the Vols win eight or nine games this season, many fans will be encouraged by the dramatic turnaround, and 2005 will be viewed as an aberration, no different from the 5-6 season of 1988.

Remember what happened after that? The Vols won their first five games in 1989 on the way to an 11-1 season, capped by a 31-27 victory over Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl.

So let the pessimists refer to 5-6 as a disaster. Optimists could call it a good omen.

But if you really want to see the beauty in 5-6, focus on the lowered expectations. That's another good omen. When you expect more of coach Phillip Fulmer's teams, they often give you less. When you write them off, they prove you wrong.

The Vols won the national title in 1998 with less talent than they had in 1997. And with enough talent to win back-to-back national championships in 1999, they lost three games.

After an 11-2 season in 2001, big things were expected of the Vols in 2002. They responded with a five-loss season that included four losses by 17 or more points. Then, with lowered expectations for 2003, they won 10 games, including one on the road against Miami.

Greatness was predicted for the Vols in 2005 - not just by the fans and media, but by their coaches, who raved about their deep and talented corps of wide receivers and an offensive line that could rank with the best in school history. The raves ended when the season started.

The Vols were so bad in 2005, they aren't even making everyone's preseason top 25 in 2006. They were so bad in 2005, they can't help but be better.

But I'm not sure how their improvement will be received.

Was last season an aberration? Sure. But UT's decline in football prominence is no fluke.

It hasn't won an SEC championship since 1998. It hasn't played in a BCS game since the 1999 season. It hasn't finished in the top 10 since 2001. It's no longer an elite program.

Maybe that's OK with some fans. Other fans wonder why a program with so much going for it can go eight years without winning so much as a conference championship.

Prediction: An 8-4 regular season, third-place finish in the SEC East and a bid to the Peach Bowl.

Eight victories and a Peach Bowl bid once qualified as an off year. Now, it's called progress.

Sports editor John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knews.com.