In 15 years, Todd Blackledge will weigh 400 pounds: Talking Points

by Joel Hollingsworth on Aug 26, 2008 7:39 AM EDT in Rocky Top Talking Points

Funny, this world. Brandon Warren will pick up for Tennessee right where he left off for Florida State -- against UCLA in California. Huh.
Stop asking about my groin. Chris Walker, who missed most of last week with a pulled groin, is back to full-speed. He and Ben Martin have apparently "mov[ed] into prominent roles in the two-deep this fall."
Yeah, so. Okay. Cornerback Brent Vinson and defensive tackle Donald Langley aren't going to class. They aren't going to UCLA, either. Vinson's apparently lost the discipline he found while at Hargrave Millitary Academy. Folks are all too often like rubber bands -- you can stretch them, but they tend to return to their normal state -- but that's not always the case. Some do change for good. Here's to hoping this is just a brief relapse for Vinson, who Larry Slade earlier this fall called the best athlete on the team.
Here comes Ramone. Ramone Johnson is sneaking up on offensive tackles Chris Scott and Ramon Foster, even getting some snaps with the ones during last Thursday's scrimmage. The o-line looks to be not only good, but deep. Our maybe they're just pants.
In 15 years, Todd Blackledge will weigh 400 pounds. The SEC and ESPN have signed a 15-year deal, which means heaping helpings of southern fried delicacies for Todd Blackledge, who's now best known for eating prior to football games.
7-5 for the Vols this year? Yep, according to Garnet and Black Attack. He also says Tennessee could be 3-6 going into Homecoming.
The Papa is speaking in ALL CAPS. Coach Fulmer is not happy with the defensive backups, who apparently looked too much like a pachinko machine for the coach's taste. From Inside Tennessee: “We've got a group of guys on the second team that have no idea how to play at this level. They have NO idea,” Phillip Fulmer grumbled. “That's very frustrating, very upsetting because they may be needed.”
Memories. Lots of good stuff from GVX this past weekend on the national championship season back in '98, including 10 plays that shook the season, how John Ward somehow knew that team was special, how a total of 42 players from that team went on to play professionally in some league somewhere, and a reminder that that season had its share of bad news as well.
John Adams says that Oklahoma is No. 1 in the preseason and that they couldn't even win the SEC East.
Fulmer's Belly has last week's Big Orange Roundtable Roundup.

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Tell me another one...

High comedy from Garnet and Black Attack, who gives SC’s secondary the advantage over UT’s.

by spiritofthehill on Aug 26, 2008 8:38 AM EDT reply actions

I think he was a victim of his own blog on that one; his TARGET FILE series demands that he writes about every aspect of every team that Spurrier faces. I’m willing to bet that he got in a time crunch and had to run off memory and a quick glance at the players rather than sifting through all of the training camp news articles.

I’ll go easy on him on that one; he’ll figure it out soon enough.

by David Hooper on Aug 26, 2008 9:07 AM EDT up reply actions

Suspension Policy and its ramifications

The Vinson/Langley suspensions highlight an effect that we should expect to see from UT’s new academic policy. (Remember that the suspension they’re serving is due to a school policy that fulfills an SEC requirement to have a policy; it’s not strictly an SEC policy.) If they miss too many classes in the spring, they must sit out the first game in the fall.

Fair enough.

But I wouldn’t be surprised to see the football program ensure that a cupcake is the first game of the season rather than their annual marquis OOC game. That would have happened this year, too; UAB was originally the first game until ESPN offered the MNF slot to the Tenn/UCLA matchup. We could be discussing the Florida-esque suspension of Vinson and Langley against one of the worst teams in Div. 1A rather than against UCLA (who is down, but should not be considered out).

by David Hooper on Aug 26, 2008 9:03 AM EDT reply actions

On the secondary bit...

If I remember correctly, that was actually the part of the Tennessee preview I struggled with the most. (And while these are meant to be brief glances — no one can actually know before the season starts which one is better or worse — I do spend far more time on each one than on just about any other offseason post I do.)

That said, though, you’re right: I don’t pay much attention to training camp news when I’m putting them together. I look at some articles and previews that come through my RSS readers, but tend to virtually ignore the camp news. That’s not an oversight; it’s intentional.

I’m not overly impressed with training camp news. Is it important? Sure, to some degree. But it’s hard to tell to what degree. I can remember years when coaches thought their team’s offense/defense was really good based on practice, then got to the season and found out that it really came to the fact that the players they were facing were that bad.

(For the record, I don’t really factor in South Carolina’s camp news, good or bad, all that much, either. I’m sure I can’t completely block it out, since I have to follow that, but I try to as much as possible.)

I’ll freely admit I might be wrong about Tennessee’s secondary. We’ll have to see. (And I can see Tennessee winning eight or maybe even nine games this year — I’m going with probabilities as near as I can tell on the record projection.)

by cocknfire on Aug 26, 2008 3:14 PM EDT reply actions

Sounds about right.

And to be honest, all of us might be wrong about the secondary. We shudder at the thought, but it is a possibility.

I tend to agree with you regarding the training camp news. Since every team is busy trying to hide information from their opponents, the information that does get released tends to be watered down and relatively generic. If the media were to report too much in the way of detail, then the coaches would close practices to the media. It’s a tenuous balance between underreporting (where nobody will bother reading) and overreporting (where they lose access), so relying on the camp reports is suspect.

But it’s not like anything else is much better. My big problem with using the camp reports is that it takes forever to get the articles written. If you’re like me, you actually have a job that demands some time, and perhaps a family (or acquaintances) that require time as well. So I certainly don’t blame you for that. And it’s really refreshing to hear a different POV on UT’s team, anyhow.

It was a fun read for me. I’ll be a lot more interested in your mid- and postseason takes on the conference.

by David Hooper on Aug 26, 2008 5:34 PM EDT up reply actions