What do North Carolina State, Southern California, San Diego State and the Tennessee Titans have in common?

Aside from the obvious, they've all had equal billing on the marquee in Tennessee's film room this year.

The Vols' offseason film study for Monday night's season opener at UCLA (TV: ESPN, 8 p.m.) had a little bit of everything to get a feel for the Bruins' personnel and new coaches.

"It's kind of like a scavenger hunt, to tell you the truth," sophomore safety Eric Berry said. "We've really just been . . . trying to figure out what we need and been putting the pieces together."

Those pieces are far flung.

To get a feel for UCLA's first-year offensive coordinator Norm Chow, UT's coaches and players have watched film of his last three stops - N.C. State (2000), Southern Cal (2001-2004) and the NFL's Titans (2005-2007).

To get a look at UCLA's starting quarterback, Kevin Craft, they had to view San Diego State's 2006 games and Mt. San Antonio College's 2007 film.

And that, of course, is all in addition to the usual study of UCLA's 2007 games to scout the Bruins' personnel.

Tennessee's search for film is a bit unusual, but then again, openers are uncertain ventures.

"First games are hard, because you really don't know what you're 100 percent going to get," UT coach Phillip Fulmer said. "But that goes both ways."

This year it does.

In addition to the questions that accompany a season opener, the Vols have a brand-new offense, run by first-year coordinator Dave Clawson. And the Bruins, no doubt, have spent time watching Clawson's offenses from Richmond and Fordham as well as UT tape to scout players.

Clawson said he doesn't put much stock in any potential advantage the Vols' new offense might bring.

"I know what we're going to do, so I'm not worried about that," he said. "I try not to read into that too much. I'm sure they've watched film of Tennessee last year for our personnel and I'm sure they've been watching Richmond film for things we did last year. I'm sure it's a guessing game on their end, too."

Come Monday, it'll be an adjustment game.

Defensive coordinator John Chavis, who has spent the last 19 seasons at Tennessee, says the key to facing the unknown is to leave plenty of room for adjustments.

"You have to be able to adjust, and that's what we're doing," Chavis said. "Our game plan has a lot of adjustment in it. We're going to try to be as flexible as we can obviously without confusing our kids because the best thing that we can do is let our players go out and play."

That's what it's about for Clawson, too.

He said Tuesday that he wants to focus on parts of the playbook his group is comfortable with, which makes the inevitable adjustments that much easier.

"There is going to be a look, a blitz, a coverage that UCLA's going to run that we didn't see on film last year," Clawson said. "I think that's important in any opener that the players are comfortable with the plays you're running, they're able to play fast and if you do that stuff when new looks come up, you can fix them."

But the only certainty on Monday night is uncertainty, even if there aren't as many secrets as there used to be.

"Systems are systems," Fulmer said. "There's so much technology out there that there's not a bunch of secrets, unless you just all of a sudden change to the wishbone. Which we're not going to do."

Drew Edwards covers University of Tennessee football. He may be reached at 865-342-6274.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.