The CheckerBoard

the recruiting was so bad, Tennessee played in the SECCG in 1997, 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007.

Majors was the first to really start recruiting outside of Tennessee's region. He used his contacts in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio to get some really good players to come to Knoxville. When Fulmer took over, he really expanded the recruiting area and also proved to be an effective closer. He was taking top level talent out of Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia. However, he wasn't exactly recruiting against the best coaches. What really happened to Fulmer was Spurrier/Zook/Meyer, Saban/Miles, Richt, Saban in Alabama and Spurrier in South Carolina. Suddenly it got a lot harder to pull the talent out of those states. Fulmer was still getting some top level talent but the quality below the top tier was really falling off and that's when the results began to show that. Many claim that Fulmer in his later years was on cruise control, but I really think the level of competition just got better.

true. we never understood how outstanding a job those earlier classes were either. Why I have every game from that time frame recorded. We are likely to not see that quantity of talent roam Neyland in the future. For sure I want, I don't have that much time left

I got you, toak.

agree, the rest of the league has advanced considerably, and UT started to fall behind.

Fulmer's classes from 2002 - 2008 according to Rivals (who I have trusted over the years more than others):
2002 - #2
2003 - #18
2004 - #20
2005 - #4
2006 - #23
2007 - #3
2008 - #35

Big dropoff in 2008 obviously but I'm guessing any of us would take 3 top 5 classes in 6 years (with all 6 in top 25) at this point. It did seem like the talent wasn't being developed the last few years as much as it was in the 90's/early2000's. I do wonder just how jaded we all were at that time though and how that effected our opinions/expectations in a changing SEC.

Big miss on Cobb (and in hindsight on Willis) but to be fair no one thought Willis was that great (if I remember correctly Ole Miss was his only "big time" offer). Sanders knew enough to get on Cobb early and we just offered too late. I have scratched my head watching both many times and wondered what if though.

If he didn't think Willis was that good then that says a lot!!!!! I saw the guy play in high school and he was a BEAST! Unfortunately for him, he played at Bruceton, a 1A school. For some reason many big time college coaches won't even look at small school talent, which is crazy! Most of those kids can't help that they live in a small town or community and play lesser competition. It certainly doesn't make them less of an athlete. Cutcliffe (the true brains and reason for Fulmer's success) saw his potential and scooped him up for Ole Miss.

Some believe Fulmer didnt capitalize on the National Title like he should have in the 1-3 years after that. Maybe that is the case a bit but we were still good. JMO it all came crashing down slowly after the 2004 SEC title game. Losing Cutcliffe both times damaged this programs focus and discipline. Losing him IMO the 2nd time is what got Fulmer fired.

The thing that is easy to see is that the 2007 class fell apart and the 2008 class had little in it and then the Fulmer/ Kiffins class of 2009 fell apart too. The thing that destroyed UTs program were these 3 classes and the attrition but also the lack of Oline and Dline and LBs in those 3 classes.

On top of the lack of big uglies as I mentioned above.....once Kiffins playmakers left and the 2009 and 2010 SRs the program actually fell again where Dooley had only a few upper classmen that were SEC worthy to start and the rest were true FR or true Sophs in 2011.....and then you have experience, maturity and strength issues.

Just think.........Dooley had only the 2011 class to fix all those issues unless you want to blame Dooley for not beating top 10 programs with recruits that he had to get in 2.5 weeks in Jan. 2010 or that were true FR/ 1st year SEC players from the 2012 class.

Sure he should have won 2-4 more games but 1 class to fix all the issues of 3+ years was never going to happen.

Another thing that killed this program is the turnover in assistant coaches from 2007-now......start counting the OCs and DCs and HCs and then switch over to the 30+ position coaches and you will see why recruiting has suffered and relationships and our players inability to getting "coached up" is from all the different schemes and language and styles year after year for 5+ years.

Ha! I only go back as far as Battle and I know he wasn't really recruiting very well (I remember Majors telling a story of finding a closet with hundreds of reels of unwatched tape of high school prospects). But you are right, Neyland did pull them in from everywhere and I've heard Majors talk about his culture shock of meeting kids from various places outside of the South.

Chris if you look further into those recruiting rankings you'll find that UT lost lots of 4-5 star studs due to attitude,grades,off field
antics, etc., in short more than our share of duds which is not shown in the surface rankings.

This is a good rundown of 2008. But the recruiting rankings you see posted above had more flame outs than he had during his 1993-2001 run.

IMO, Fulmer continued to get great talent, but didn't have the assistants to capitalize on it and the attrition rate started to climb. Pat Washington is a good example of the harm a bad position coach can do. Could Fulmer recruit like the 90s forever? No. Especially as the SEC started to upgrade the various coaching staffs. But with those recruiting rankings, we should have had better teams. I think Fulmer was comfortable and cared too much for his friends/assistants to inject enough fresh blood into the system.