Well folks, Joel has left me in charge for the week while he's off on his "working" vacation. As for me, I've got the whole week off from work, which really only means I'll be watching the kids more while the wife works a little overtime. Insert Homer Simpson "whoo-hoo"s and "d'oh!"s where appropriate. Anyway, I'll try to keep to business as usual, such as your daily talking points and live posts for Wednesday and Saturday's basketball games, just with the Official Corn from a Jar Brand touch.
For lack of a better analogy, it's kind of like leaving Otis in charge of Mayberry. Actually, that's a perfect analogy. Let's go with that.
While I'm here, I might as well do some self-promotion: Here's a Fanhouse post I wrote recently about our discussion of Fulmer's "Nine wins is OK at Tennessee" comment from about a month ago and NASCAR driver/Tennessee booster Sterling Marlin's opinion of what should be expected at UT.
Spring practice starts this week. Already? Yep, apparently. It looks like the coaches are trying to lengthen the spring timetable, with workouts three days this week and next, then sporadically throughout March with the Orange & White game March 31st. I'm not sure if that's a departure from normal, but it sure seems more spread out to me. It makes sense, though: keep the kids on football shape for as long as possible throughout the off season.
Does it seem like Bruce Pearl and the boys are getting a lot of technical fouls this season? Well, they are. In fact, UT has 15 of the SEC's 44 Ts so far this season, according to an article from Chris Low. Interesting quote from Pearl:
Check out Areobab's diary on the Lady Vols SEC clinching 56-51 win at LSU Monday night, in which he equates Sidney Spencer to the Blender: