Tenn has some a couple things going for it, they are within 3 hours of Atlanta, Nashville and Charlotte. Yes, they still have a massive recruiting budget that has to bring in players from other areas... cause they have to. Remember when they played the California schools and Oregon... totally for recruiting. Too bad they went something like 1-5 playing Cal, UCLA and Oregon. Memphis, the state's population center is recruited more by Ark, Ole miss, Bama, Missouri and others than by Tenn. Another major negative is name the most famous Tenn player... Payton Manning... from NOLA, next Josh Dobbs... Atlanta. Eric Berry... Atlanta. You have to go to Jason Whitten and all the way back to Reggie White to find people who were born and raised in Tennessee and played there. As mentioned above, Atlanta, Nashville and Charlotte, you are likely to be second fiddle or a lot worst now in all of those markets. Head football coach at Tenn ain't an easy job.
Tennessee has good high school talent. Many of their HS are better than most in Louisiana. I live here and go to a good bit of HS football games and they have talent. I think the problem is coaching at the next level as you can’t win CFB with just high school talent, they have to coach up these guys and that’s not happening. The High schools here pull from a large area because there is only one high school per county which gives them a large pool to pull from. The parish I lived in when I was in Louisiana had 6 high schools which watered down the talent pool. We never had a rep in the state championships because the talent was divided up among 6 schools. Here the surrounding counties are in the state championships every year, much like John Curtis so it’s got to be coaching at the next level. Fulmer did it, they just have to find the right guy by opening the checkbook.
Opening the checkbook is kinda right, they need Trooper Taylor with some Randy Moss magic, "straight cash homie," dropping bags off to players.
Nebraska had a great walk on program under Tom Osborne. All the huge cornfed linemen would walk on and be developed in a state of the art for the time weight training program. Their RB's were usually from out of state. I think Rozier was from New Jersey. And they didn't need a good passing QB to run the option offense. These days I don't think that kind of approach would be effective and building a team that could compete for national championships the way they did in the past. Today's game is as much about speed as it is about bulk.
Tennessee is a poor state for hs talent and the main city with talent, Memphis, isn't a huge UT city. But they can get talent - this isnt 1992 - and people arent set on staying home like they used to. Butch Jones was able to get a lot of talent . Just get someone who cana actually coach and they can compete for the East.
What I never thought I would have to admit is how SEC in last three years has turned to crap. Ark Tenn Ole Miss even Gayturds have become total suck ass. I used to enjoy watching league whoop ass on bowl Days. Now we get about as many teams in bowls in January as we get bb tourney teams in March. Whu happin??
