Will Tennessee and Phil Fulmer Be Better in 2007?

With ten losses over the last two seasons, the Tennessee Volunteers and their coach, Phil Fulmer look to right the ship or face sinking into the sea of irrelevancy in college football's deepest conference, the SEC. After winning a national championship in 1998 and competing for league honors the next couple of seasons, the Volunteers have been on a downward spiral that has hit rock bottom the last two seasons. While last season's nine wins was a good building block, nine wins gets you fired up in RockyTop land and Phil Fulmer knows it. The burning question for him and his Volunteer team is, do they have the talent and speed to compete in the new SEC.

Over the last three seasons, the SEC has revamped itself with coaches like Urban Meyer and Les Miles improving already great teams. And Tennessee killer, Steve Spurrier leading the charge at South Carolina. These teams run up and down the field on offense and defense and have recreated the model for what success looks like in the SEC. Outside of Tommy Tuberville's Auburn squad, the mold for champions has changed to a speed first, high scoring attack that has left other teams in the dust playing yesterday's brand of 21-14 football. Today in the SEC, teams have to score 35 points on a bad day in order to have a chance at winning.

And that may be Tennessee's biggest problem. With the firing of Randy Sanders at the end of 2005's dreadful season, Phil Fulmer was forced to realize that he had to change or the game was going to pass him and his Volunteer team by. An old school lineman, Fulmer prefers the line up and hit your opponent in the mouth style of football. But against Florida and LSU, the Tennessee team was trying to hit an opponent that had already gotten past them, leaving the once proud team in the dust.