- GVX taps Montario Hardesty, Chris Walker, and Janzen Jackson as the Vols' mid-season MVPs. Hard to argue with that, but I think you'd have to include Berry over Jackson. His stats may not be the same as they have in the past, but Monte's using his best player in the best spot week-by-week, which has to account for much of the defense's success so far this season.
- Wes Rucker notes that the plan to use Gerald Jones's shiftiness, Denarius Moore's speed, and Austin Rogers' experience was thwarted by injuries and that getting Jones and Moore (as well as Quintin Hancock) back up to speed was largely responsible for the success the offense enjoyed against Georgia.
- With Alabama overtaking Florida as the nation's best team (according to the AP), Tennessee will have the honor of playing two No. 1 teams in the same season for the first time in its storied history. While the numbers show that Tennessee has made much progress over last season, the bye week called into question some of its earlier performances (duplicate link). In any event, this weekend's game against the Crimson Tide is shaping up to be much like the Florida game (success means being competitive) but without the pre-game End of the Earth meme.
- 3SiB gets Tennessee-Alabama week rolling with a primer on responding to Alabama's many lies, a video that speaks for itself, and a story that will surely be added to the Record of Wrongs later this week.
- Coming up later today (and the rest of this week): a post in four parts on the history of the Tennessee-Alabama series that I originally wrote for the Maple Street Press 2008 Alabama annual. The first part goes up at 8:00 this morning.