An Outside View: Chalk one more up to Saint Steve

Well, Saint Steve did it to Tennessee again. No, he was nowhere to be seen at Neyland Stadium last Saturday. He wasn’t disguised on the sidelines as the Gator mascot giving advice to new coach Ron Zook. And for you conspiracy buffs, no, he wasn’t somehow radioing in plays to his former quarterback, Rex Grossman. Spurrier put the whammy on the Vols in January when he announced that he would be leaving the University of Florida to pursue greater challenges in the NFL. On that wintry day when news of Spurrier’s departure echoed through these hills, Vol fans danced and sang, "Ding dong, the wicked coach is gone." In short, the Vols had eight months to develop an acute case of overconfidence. The signs were there but they weren’t properly diagnosed. Words like "dominance" started being used around The Hill. Coaches weren’t cautioning the Vol faithful against their lofty expectations and we heard talk of how relaxed and confident Fulmer was in his new role as the dean of SEC coaches. He would now emerge from Spurrier’s long shadow and finally be recognized for his own coaching talents. W e heard people saying this could be the best Tennessee football team ever. Players walked and talked with a swagger never before seen around here. A trip to the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl was almost a certainty without Spurrier blocking the way. But a funny thing happened on the way to the national title. What happened Saturday had an eerie familiarity to it but only different. In years past, the Vol players seemed to wilt under the media hype and hoopla of the fans. A wise-cracking Spurrier turned game week into psychological warfare and by game time, the Vols were too tight to execute the simplest of assignments. This year the players apparently bought into all of the media talk. The Knoxville news media all but pronounced the Gator rivalry dead. The talking heads on television said that the Gators had lost their edge without their main man and his visor on the sidelines and predicted the game could get ugly. Players and fans thought it would be easy and they looked forward to an old fashion Gator stomping. By game time, the Vol players lacked the concentration or intensity to execute even a simple center – quarterback exchange. The result was typical Tennessee – Florida. The Vols were outplayed and out-coached and as we have become accustomed to over the years, the team with the lesser talent won. But this time, the Old Ball Coach wasn’t to blame. Ron Zook, the brunt of so many Vol jokes in recent days, was calling the shots. No one is telling Zook jokes now. To show just what an impact Spurrier’s departure had on the Vols, a Knoxville News Sentinel poll asked Vol players in a preseason poll who will be the toughest opponent on the schedule. Only three players said the Gators. Can you imagine only three Vols rating a Spurrier led team as their toughest opponent? Florida was in the same company as South Carolina and Georgia. The Vols were looking past the Gators and pointing to a November encounter with the Miami Hurricanes to determine who really is the best team in college football. Everything until then was nothing more than a formality. The thing that makes this loss so much more painful is how the Vols lost it. They showed no discipline on either side of the ball. The offense and Casey Clausen seemed confused much of the time. The tackling was worse than horrendous. TV commentators counted more than twenty missed tackles. Coach Fulmer summed it up nicely when he said that it was the worse exhibition of football that had been played around here in a long time. No argument there, Coach. The question now is how will the Vols respond to this embarrassment? Will they go on and prove that they are a great team that just had a bad day or will they show us that they are just another overrated football team? How will the players react to charges by the media and fans that this team lacks the mental toughness to win through adversity? How will they react to being booed by their own fans even if it was deserved? How will the coaching staff respond to critics who say the Vols were ill-prepared and not disciplined? The answers to all of those questions remain to be seen. The Vols still have a lot to play for this season. The SEC championship is still a realistic goal and the men in orange aren’t out of the national title picture. At 12-1, Tennessee would still have a good chance of playing for the national title. But this depends on the Vols’ psyche getting healthy. Was Saturday’s thumping at the hands of the hated Gators the perfect medicine for a case of overconfidence? Maybe, but what are the side effects of the medicine?