The CheckerBoard

yeah, i understand that we will have a lot of critics, and I'm okay with that.... We are a big boy program, and people are going to insult us while we are down..... Tennessee can take care of itself and people shouldn't feel sorry for us....But that comparison is absurd in my opinion, but i can at least understand what he is saying....

My main problem with his comment is the cheap shot about dooley....

#1 i think his intent was to be insulting and was a deliberate cheap shot.... The caller asked him about Illinois Bball, not why Dooley got hired....

#2 Tennessee hired Dooley less then two weeks before signing day, consequently UT did not have a lot of options.... Illinois fired Webber before the NCAA Tourney and has had all the time in the world to find and interview replacement candidates.... Completely different situations....

I agree that King is entitled to his opinion, and if he wanted to compare both schools and programs, that's fine.... But the only reason he made the comment about dooley's name and agent (i'm not even sure if dooley has an agent), was to insult dooley and tennessee..... The funny thing is, i listen to his show every day and enjoy it, but i thought that comment was unessescary and deliberately insulting.....

+1.....I agree with you on those points, i just did not like the dooley comment.... It was in poor taste, IMO.....

I agree. It ticked me off too. I think point #2 in your post above is spot on.

You're right. King was comparing oranges to grapefruit. Looney Tunes, IMO.

I agree. I still think this can work, because his junior class is as good or better than most of the teams he will play in the SEC

Beat Florida to get the year started and it could be avreay special year ESP w all our off weapons this year

Interesting discussion, but I don't think Illinois basketball is comparable to Tennessee football, for many of the reasons you gave. They haven't won a national title, they are not one of the top two or three teams historically in their conference, etc.

As to Tennessee's place in history, if you look at our total 100 plus year record, it is a no brainer that we are one of the top 10 programs of all time. We are in the top 10 in games won, 10 win seasons, NFL players produced, bowls played, etc. We are ridiculously consistent, even in down years. Ohio State is the only other program never to have had an eight loss season. We have only four official 7 loss seasons, though painfully three of them are in the last four years. We have two consensus national championships and claim parts of six overall (the others are from that goofy era when multiple polls were considered credible and champs were declared before the bowl games). We are second only to Bama in SEC titles won and we are the last team to win back to back SEC titles. Any way you slice it, we are historically excellent.

But we have to fight to stay there, because I think in recent years we have arguably been surpassed. It is hard to say Florida hasn't been better than us in conference the last twenty years or so. LSU is in the midst of their best stretch of football in their history (you have to go back to Neyland to show where we had a better one). Plus, you tack on other late bloomers that have been stellar in recent decades like FSU, Miami and others. Once you do that, I still think we are in the top 15 over the last twenty five years, but it is a much harder argument to make, especially given how long of a stretch we have had outside the top 25 the last few years...

Sorry for the long winded response, but I recently was in a debate with a coworker about this who laughed when I said Tennessee was a top 10 program.