govolsxtra.com Accounts

What you fail to realize is a baseball scholarship is hardly the scholarship a football or basketball player receives. The NCAA allows Division I schools 11.7 baseball scholarships a year.

Most of those scholarships are divided two or three times over so everyone on the team can get a piece of the pie.

I'd rather a kid walk away from it now than wait until the fall. This way the UT staff can at least try to sign a player to fill his spot.

Wake up and smell the coffee, Golden can't go to a junior college as he has used three years of college eligibility at Tennessee.

If it is grades, and he can get in another school this summer and get his grades up in time for basketball season, he is still limited to a Division II option or lower. If he sits out a year, he can play as a senior in the 2014-15 season.

You are comparing apples and oranges when comparing the bowl situation in football to the basketball tournament.

There are 120 DI schools in football and about 30 bowl games. By the time you figure it out almost every team that has a winning, or .500 record has to be eligble just to fill the bowl spots. I don't like it, but that's the way it is.

Basketball has more 340 Division I teams so even when you throw in the NCAA and NIT less than half the teams playing in the post season.

There are positives and negatives with the early signing period and this is kind of situation is definitely one of the negative things.

When a school signs a kid early it takes a chance that he might have a less than stellar senior season and then are stuck with the player or forced to release him from his scholarship as happened with Landry.

The kid doesn't have the numbers that indicate he would be successful against Southeastern Conference competition. Cuonzo Martin is in a no-win situation here. If he honors Landry's scholarship some fans are going to be crying about wasting a roster spot. And by cutting him loose other fans are saying Martin isn't showing any class.

This is the very type of situation that could create similar problems, only worse, if there was an early signing period in football.

If Cutcliffe had coached Bray, maybe Bray would have been a first round pick or maybe Bray would have warmed the bench because he couldn't get his act together. Cutcliffe wouldn't have put up with the beer bottle throwing last summer and he wouldn't have put up with the jet ski incident. The truth is we will never know how Bray would have responded to Cutcliffe's coaching.

I did see the segment of Bray with Jon Gruden on ESPN and Bray's football IQ looked to be somewhere in the idiot category.

And please, don't say I'm one of those Bray bashers, because I haven't been. I'm just stating my observations based on the segment on ESPN.

This guy is a Kentucky fan that comes on to stir the pot.

Try not to let your enthusiasm get in the way of things Sunshine. Nothing like calling the race over before it ever starts. I'm not predicting we will win 10 or 12 games this year, but we will be improved.

I didn't see the Orange and White game, but I was able to watch the Alabama spring game and their offense didn't look too good either. Saban even said he was unhappy with they way the Tide ended the spring.

There's no doubt we have a long way to go to get back to being the Tennessee football team that is one of the feared squads in college football.

Given time I believe Butch Jones will get us back in the hunt for SEC and national championships. No, it won't happen this year, but I believe we will be improved in 2013 even though it might not show up in the record.

Get on the Vol Train because it's leaving the station without you.

If ignorance is bliss, you are rolling in your happiness. Blackburn came into the UTAD under Doug Dickey and has been a great addition to the program.

You have to love it when Peyton says he recruits to one school and one school only, The University of Tennessee. Peyton understands the business aspect of the coaching profession, but no matter who is calling the shots on the sidelines Peyton Manning is a Vol For Life.

Great honor for Bernard and well deserved. However while King's 1,962 points were second behind Grunfeld at the time King left, he's now seventh in career scoring for the Vols. Alan Houston leads the way followed by Grunfeld, Tony White, Chris Lofton, Reggie Johnson and Dale Ellis. It should be noted that the six guys ahead of Bernard all played four years and King left after three.

King still holds the school record for points per game with 25.8 for his career.

Here's a thought, UT could give Martin an extension without upping the amount of the buyout if he is fired over the orginal buyout. By doing that Martin would have the security of telling recruits he's under contract through 2017 or whatever and UT can get rid of him at no additional charge if he doesn't get the job done.

I don't see why so many Vol fans constantly complain about stories on other SEC teams on this site. It's a free service and nobody is being deprived of anything when a story about the Gators, Alabama or Georgia shows up here.

I enjoy reading some stories about what's happen with the opposition. I like being a well informed fan without having to go to everyone else's web site.

With all due respect to the Lady Vol soccer team, I'd rather read about Florida or Alabama football.

I have a simple solution for those of you who don't want to read a story about another team, skip over it and read only stories about the Vols.

You have to remember that most of the people on this board weren't alive in 1976 when Battle was forced out at Tennessee.

I was a freshman at UT that fall and I remember his statement well.

He said, "If the Gay Street quarterbacks, and every two dollar bettor that got upset when Tennessee didn't beat the spread, knew half as much about their business as he did about his business (football), they would be working on Wall Street instead of Gay Street."

The way the press was coming down on him and the fans were treating him at that time I don't know if I wouldn't have reacted the same way. He was still a very young head coach and may have made that statement to draw some fire towards himself and away from the team that also was getting raked over the coals pretty well.

With the downward turn the team was on under Battle and the success Johnny Majors was having at Pitt at the same time, athletic director Bob Woodruff and the powers that be had no choice but to pull the plug on the Battle Era.

That led to my favorite Battlism when he said, "Class is when they run you out of town to make it look like you're leading the parade."

As someone else pointed out on a story last night, Louisville loses seven of their last 11 games and makes the tournament and Tennessee wins nine of their last 11 and doesn't make the tournament...something is wrong with that picture.

The committee has supposedly always put an emphasis on how well a team is playing at the end of the season, but that doesn't hold water with Louisville in and Tennessee out.

I think you underestimate and short change not only young Mr. Dobbs, but several other young men and women that have competed at the highest level at UT and while being among the top students in their major.

Our football program has produced young men that were in prelaw or premed disciplines and went on to law school and medical/dental school.

Bob Johnson was an All-American center in the 1960s and at the same time was one of the top students in his discipline of engineering. Darwin Walker, a starting defensive tackle on the 1998 National Championship team, was a mechanical engineering major.

Yes, there are plenty of football players would go into, what many people might think of as an easier major, but every major has classes that separate the students from those pretending to be students.

I majored in Speech Communications and I had several friends in other "more challenging" majors tell me they would stick with engineering or math.

The young people that were top students in high school usually do well in the classroom at the college level. They've already learned the keys to time management and multi-tasking.

I believe Mr. Dobbs is one of those students.

This isn't about Butch Jones, this is about the University of Tennessee. I do support Jones and I haven't said anything as he's brought in coach after coach that has coached with him at Cinncy and Central Michigan.

In my 45 years of following college football I've never seen a coach bring this many coaches with him to a new staff.

I think we now have two coaches on our staff that have ever coached in a SEC football game for a SEC team and this does concern me.

I don't care if the coaches Jones brought with him get upset it the next RB coach makes more money, it's about the Vols, not about the coaches. They are making more at Tennessee then they would at most places and they should be happy to get that Big Orange check.

LSU beat Alabama in triple OT and Georgia beat South Carolina in OT.

The local SEC network station here stayed with Alabama-LSU through all three OTs so I only saw the last three minutes or so of the first half. I guess they more than made up for it in the second half with the four overtimes.

This was a great gut check win for the Vols and it shows the kind of mental toughness Cuonzo Martin has instilled in this team. Tennessee is a reflection of the coach...unflappable and as tough as nails.

Football is the ultimate team sport and your statement about mobile or non mobile quarterbacks is a bit incomplete.

Heath Shuler was a mobile quarterback for Tennessee and he didn't even win a SEC championship. Jimmy Streater was a guy that could flat out run and throw, but there were no titles during his stay as the UT starting quarterback. Condredge Holloway was a one-man show running and passing, but he didn't win a National Title either.

Tee Martin was a great quarterback for us and he had an outstanding run as the starter. There's no doubt he did some things with his legs that put us in a position to win some games in 1998, but without Al Wilson leading the defense or the timely kicking of Jeff Hall in clutch situations Tee might have suffered the fate of Manning and the others.

Alabama has won under Saban with dropback passers. Yes, the guys can move out of danger, but they aren't going to blow you away with their ability to run the football.

With linebackers running 4.4 and 4.5 40s and defensive ends running the 40 in 4.6 or 4.7 quickness and elusiveness is as important as pure speed because the great defenses recruit speed guys that can catch the fastest quarterbacks a large part of the time.

Ask me in three or four years how I feel about this class. In 2009 I was very excited about the class the current USC coach assembled while he was working for Tennessee, but by 2010 I wasn't getting the warm fuzzies about the class.

One of the reasons behind Auburn's current recruiting success might stem from the relationships the previous staff had with coaches in the state of Alabama. Dooley's staff apparently didn't do a good job of working with the coaches in Tennessee. Butch Jones and his staff have spent a large part of the recruiting season building the relationships with high school coaches that were ignored by Dooley.

Even if Jones misses on a lot of the high-star guys, he has gotten Tennessee back in the conversation with them.

I think we will get Bell and there are always one or two surprises in every class. If we end up with a Top 20 class this year Jones will have been successful.

When we have a good season next year it will pay off on the recruiting trail next year.

But as I said at the start of this post, ask me in a few years what I think of this class.

People that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The proper use of "to dumb" is actually "too dumb." And the proper spelling is Sherrill.

It is true that many junior college players aren't physically ready for the SEC or Big 10 when they graduate from high school and nobody is suggesting Butch Jones go out and recruit a 250-pound JC offensive tackle. Some kids mature physically later than others and the junior college option allows them to bulk up and grow into their adult bodies.

Academically some kids do lack the discipline to succeed in high school or they don't realize it until it's too late or they don't get good advice from their high school coaches about the academic requirements they will need to meet to go to college. A junior college is a place kids can go and develop strong academic habits needed that will translate to a four-year school.

In many ways JC players are less of a risk than high school players. A JC player has already been away from home and won't deal with the homesick issues. They have played a level of football above the high school game so they are, in some ways, easier to evaluate as players. Most junior college players also have worked through the academic issues that often hinder freshmen in their first year of school.

Really, the only drawback to signing a junior college player is they only have two years of eligibility.

I he had a good record, he'd still be coaching and wouldn't need a temporary gig.

By the way, what's a "lawer?"

Yes, we missed on Cobb and some of the other guys you mentioned, but others on your list were stretches from the beginning.

Oher, if you saw the movie, The Blind Side, chose Ole Miss basically because the Touhy that adopted him off the streets were Ole Miss grads. Barrett Jones was an Alabama legacy who's dad had played for the Bear. Yes, he lived in Tennessee, but he was closer to Tuscaloosa in the Memphis area than he was to Knoxville. Harrison Smith was torn during the recruiting process between Notre Dame and Tennesssee, but the kid is a Catholic kid that attended Knoxville Catholic, and I believe his dad is a Notre Dame grad so it was going to be tough to keep him out of South Bend.

UT recruited Tate pretty strong, but he just chose Notre Dame.

You also listed a handful of 2-star kids that had Tennessee heavily recruited them, the fans would have gone through the roof.

As another poster pointed out, we will never lock down our borders completely. The big thing is to keep the kids that are great players in Tennessee and grew up dreaming of the Vols in the fold. We also must get the Tennessee kids that might not have been Vol fans, but are great players on board about playing for the home state team.

OK, it all has to do with professionalism. It would be one thing for him to make the comments sitting around the local pub with some friends, but when you are doing a national television broadcast there are certain limits.

I work for a small newspaper and I have to be careful not to make reference to the "attractive coed" or the "cute blonde point guard."

Would Musberger made a similar comment if he had been doing the women's basketball championship game and one of the star players was dating a body builder that was the reigning Mr. Arizona? And would those of you defending Musberger think he was right to say that Mr. Arizona was hot?

Musberger over stepped the line of professionalism and he at least should make a public apology for those that he might have offended. ABC/ESPN should then put him out to pasture.

I was born and raised on SEC football. I'm first, and before all else, a Tennessee fan as UT is my alma mater true. But I have respect for the great programs in our conference that have continually risen to the top of the mountain in recent years.

I will not let a few obnoxious Bama fans keep me for pulling for the Crimson Tide tonight. Alabama is Southeastern Conference Family and even if you don't alway like your family members you stand with them against outsiders. As far as I'm concerned there is no school that is more of an outsider to the SEC than Notre Dame and with that in mind I'm pulling for the Tide to come in once again.

Mike, with all due respect, you are showing your Kentucky roots when you make your debate for basketball being better than football.

Football has big hits, the two-minute drill, spring football, the Heisman watch and, this year, Johnny Touchdown. Football is playing in 90 degree weather in September and snow in November or December. Football requires being able to adapt and adjust not just to the other team, but, with the exception of games played in dome stadiums, the elements as well.

Football is the ultimate team sport when the offensive linemen play their entire careers knowing that by design they will never touch the ball or score and the only time they will hear their number called by the PA guy is when they are guilty of a penalty.

Football is Steve DeLong, Steve DeLong and Keith DeLong...the Majors Brothers, Archie Manning at Ole Miss, Peyton at UT and Eli at Ole Miss.

Yes, football only has one game a week, but that too is part of the beauty of the game as the anticipation builds for Saturday and afterwards fans have a week to talk about what went well in victory or what went wrong defeat.