Monday, October 31, 2005

Rocky Top Tennessee

The rockiness on good ol' Rocky Top has now taken its first steps towards being alleviated with this news: UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE ANNOUNCES OFFENSIVE REORGANIZATION. In what I have awaited for the past few years, Randy Sanders has now stepped down as offensive coordinator. By all appearances, it was a decision he made himself. It does not look like Fulmer asked him to do so. I want to take a moment to commend Randy Sanders. Yes, I said commend the man. He was a man, and he realized that the buck rested with him. It was his failure as a coach that contributed to our offensive demise of the past five years. This is not to say he was a terrible coach. He expected the best of his players, and held himself and them to a high standard. He simply could not perform up to the standards he himself set, nor to the tradition of Tennessee football which he held dear. He faced this time as a man, and a man is willing to take responsibility when his work falls short. And in a moment of true Big Orange nobility, he showed himself to bleed Orange and White. I will shed a tear for him--he helped bring about this generation of Tennessee football, a generation that included the great Peyton Manning, a national championship, and a program that every year is the team to beat in the Southeastern Conference. But he is not the man to orchestrate a Tennessee offense. With that, we can now turn our attention to the man who made Tennessee offense the feared juggernaut it once was: David Cutcliffe. "Coach Cut," as he was called, must be brought back to Rocky Top. It is the only sensible answer there is. The offense that Sanders ran was developed by Fulmer and Cutcliffe, and Cutcliffe basically wrote the textbook on it after that. We must have our Grand Master back. It is my hope and prayer that he returns.

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