Posts Tagged ‘Arkansas Razorbacks’

Check out the Full Poll Results at:

Team Speed Kills!

Week 1

Through 7 September 2009

Here’s my ballot for this week in the SEC Power Poll, along with an feeble attempt at explaining why I’m such a moron. Not a whole lot of ways to separate between some of the teams this early on, but at least I thought up some excuses for my decisions.

Here they are, my darlins:

What, you were expecting more?

The Rest of the Power Poll

Now that you have wasted your time looking at my ballot, go check out what everybody else is saying over at Team Speed Kills, where the round-up will appear later this week.

Onward and upward …

– So it goes…

Western Kentucky vs. Tennessee
Postgame

7 Toppers

1 2 3 4 Tot WKU 0 0 7 0 7 Tennessee 0 28 7 28 63 Final

63 Vols

Well, there are so very many positive things to say about this game that it is hard to really know where to start, thus, I’ll just start at the top, here are the stats for the game:

The stats speak loudly.  Tennessee racked up a whopping 710 total net yards.  Last season the Vols managed only 3,225 yards on the season, today they produced over 20% of last season’s total yards in a single game.  They scored more points than they have since the 2000 game against the Arkansas Razorbacks.  Even more surprising was the balance in the offensive yardage between the pass and the run.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: The Tennesseeum is in its infancy, but I hope to eventually develop it into a virtual museum (hence “Tennessee-um”) of rosters, images, articles, and records pertaining to the Vols.  For now, however, it is little more than a landing page for current rosters and a few other items of interest.

If you have any content that you think belongs in a virtual museum dedicated to the Vols, feel free to contact me.

2009 Football Collection:

• 2009 Tennessee Football:

  • 2009 Coaching Staff
  • 2009 Alphabetical Roster

• 2009 SEC Previews:

  • SEC East:

    • Florida
    • Georgia
    • Kentucky
    • South Carolina
    • Tennessee
    • Vanderbilt

  • SEC West:

    • Alabama
    • Auburn
    • Arkansas
    • LSU
    • Ole Miss
    • Mississippi State

Other Collections:

The Cumberland Wing:

Dedicated to the sights, sounds and history of that little collection of buildings along Cumberland Avenue known simply as “The Strip”

• “Sam & Andy’s Forever”: Remembering the legendary hangout that was Sam & Andy’s

The Tennessee Home for the Visually Offensive:

A virtual museum of some of the finest Farks (a/k/a “photoshopped”) images from the world of sports that the web has to offer including the following sub-collections:

• Lawvol’s Masterpieces
• The SEC Collection:
  • Tennessee
  • Alabama
  • Arkansas
  • Auburn
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Kentucky
  • LSU
  • Ole Miss
  • Mississippi State
  • South Carolina
  • Vanderbilt
• The College Sports Collection:
  • Memphis
  • The Big Ten
  • The ACC
  • The PAC-10
  • The Big XII
  • The Big East & Notre Dame
• The Professional Sports Collection:
  • NFL Farks
  • MLB Farks
• The Broad Horizons (Miscellaneous) Collection

This virtual museum is under construction.

New Collections Debuting Soon!!

QUICK NOTE: Before I begin with the last of the SEC previews, one thing I want to point out. If you hadn’t noticed, lawvol has added an extra bullet (“2009 SEC Football Previews”) to the widget just to the right counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to the beginning of the football season. If you click on it, the widget flips over and gives you links to each of these previews that have run here at the Gate over the last week. So it’s a quick link if you need to refer back to a specific preview, in case you need to check something or come back and call me a fool as South Carolina and Arkansas prepare to play for the SEC title. Anyways, now on to the final preview…

Prior to the 2004 season, Tommy Tuberville hired Al Borges to run his offense at Auburn. It’s not that Auburn’s offense was necessarily broken, but Borges – with the obvious help of having Cadillac Williams, Ronnie Brown, Jason Campbell, Courtney Taylor and others – was essential in Auburn’s 13-0 season 2004.

Auburn was 33-5 with Borges running the offense, but things went downhill after Auburn lost those three NFL first-rounders – Auburn’s scoring average went from 32 ppg in 2004 and 2005 to 25 in 2006 and 24 in 2007. In addition, Brandon Cox was outstanding his first year as a starter in 2005, but by the time he graduated after 2007, there were probably a fair share of Auburn fans glad to see him depart.

Then Tuberville decided to hire Troy’s offensive coordinator Tony Franklin. It worked out in his first go-round, a 23-20 overtime win over Clemson in the 2007 Chick-fil-a Bowl.

But that was as good as it got. Franklin’s offense never caught on, rumors abounded of him clashing with players and fellow coaches at practice, and Tuberville canned him mid-season, after Auburn lost to Vanderbilt.

That loss in Nashville – where Auburn led 13-0 at halftime – and the offensive coaching issues sent the Tigers into a tailspin: their only win the remainder of the year was over Tennessee-Martin. The offense was the obvious culprit, as Auburn averaged only 17 points a game last year, scoring more than 22 points three times (UL Monroe, Southern Miss and UTM).

Rumors swirled about Tuberville’s job, and he eventually resigned after ten years on the Plains. Auburn then hired Gene Chizik, much to the anger of their own fanbase and the comedic relief of everybody else. But Chizik’s quietly gone about hiring a solid staff and trying to raise Auburn’s recruiting profile to compete with Nick Saban and Alabama. So things are a little brighter than they were a few months ago – how will that translate on the field for the Tigers this fall?

Read the rest of this entry »

Raise your hand if you had Arkansas – in their first year after losing Darren McFadden, Felix Jones and their top six tacklers – winning five games last year.

If you aren’t an optimistic fan in a Hawg hat and your hand’s up, you’re lying.

The first five games of the Bobby Petrino era in Fayetteville were bleak. The Razorbacks needed minor miracles to beat I-AA Western Illinois (Arkansas converted a late fourth and ten and scored with 1:49 left) and UL Monroe (down 24-6 in the third quarter, Arkansas rallied and got another late fourth down conversion) before getting blasted at home by Alabama (49-14), at Texas (52-10) and at home against Florida (38-7).

Arkansas then went to Auburn and stunned the Tigers, before falling by a combined three points to Kentucky and Ole Miss. After losses to South Carolina and Mississippi State, Arkansas got the type of win that can jumpstart a program.

Down 30-14 early in the second half, much-maligned senior Casey Dick came off the bench and led the comeback, throwing this TD pass to London Crawford with under 30 seconds left for the win and a wave of offseason optimism.

But how much noise can the Razorbacks make in a top-heavy SEC West with a difficult schedule?

Read the rest of this entry »

Are YOU Ready?

With the conclusion of SEC Media Days today with our very own Lane Kiffin, Montario and Hardesty and Eric Berry (all the coverage you want from the SEC website and a look from Joel at Rocky Top Talk, representing all of us here in the blogosphere), the opening of fall camps around the South are just a couple of weeks away. So I’ve taken it upon myself to take a late July look at the 2009 SEC team-by-team to get you ready for the season.

Starting Sunday and continuing through next Friday, I’ll be giving my thoughts, observations, concerns, etc. on the 11 SEC teams not named Tennessee and the prospects for each for this upcoming season. I probably won’t be breaking any new ground or giving any earth-shattering information, but it’s certainly going to be a different look.

I’ve structured these previews a little differently than last year, when I took it upon myself to preview every SEC team and every Division I conference on my own site before joining the Gate. I’ve done this for a couple of reasons: first, to make these previews ever-so-slightly different from the others thousands you’ll find on the internet. Secondly, I had to structure them, otherwise I would babble on – likely incoherently – for about 2,000 words and thus defeating the purpose.

Anyways, here’s the five areas I’ll be highlighting in these previews:

• Schedule Breakdown: I’ll be taking a look at each team’s schedule – one of the most important factors in my opinion in being able to assess a team’s odds of success a month before a season starts. What games can said team expect to win? To lose? Which games are the key to the season? I’ll take a look at that.
• STUDS: Who’s each team’s best players? I’ll take a look at three players or pairs or groups of players from whom you can expect big things in 2009.
• X-Factors: Every team in the SEC outside of maybe Florida has some questions marks, areas of concern. I’ll make my picks for those keys in determining the difference for a team’s season being good or being great.
• What’s New, and What’s (Not Necessarily) Improved: For it’s been a offseason of serious change for three schools (Auburn, Mississippi State and our own Vols), each team in the SEC will be featuring some new things from last season. And just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s going to be better. I’ll be focusing on these things in this section.
• On-the-Record Prediction: Yes, believe it. I’ll be putting my credibility and reputation on the line and to stay in the Gate 21 archives with a basic prediction for each team. I won’t be picking individual games – I’m leaving myself some wiggle room with these – but I’ll forecasting a number of wins that you can expect. If you disagree with my assessments, by all means feel free to tell me how silly I am.

I’ve been working rather feverishly on these profiles the past couple of days to get them done. To prove how dedicated of a writer I am, I’ll be posting these from Gulf Shores, Alabama, where I’ll be vacationing next week. Hence why I’m working on them now as opposed to next week…

Here’s the schedule – one East school, one West school each day (sans Auburn):

• SUNDAY: Kentucky and Mississippi State
• MONDAY: Vanderbilt and Arkansas
• TUESDAY: Georgia and Alabama
• WEDNESDAY: South Carolina and LSU
• THURSDAY: Florida and Ole Miss
• FRIDAY: Auburn

… to me.

Well, I spent most all of my day involved in a matter before the appellate courts here in my home state, thus I haven’t really had a chance to put anything of substance together for today.

My client—a fan of the Arkansas Razorbacks and an alum of the University of Arkansas—however, passed a little something along to me which, though short, seems more than worth passing along.  So, here you go:

How are maggots and the Alabama Crimson Tide similar?

They both can live off a dead Bear for twenty years…

Heh!  But judging from this most recent photo, looks like both Alabama and the maggots may be looking for a little more food soon.

The "Bear" in all his glory...

Yep, the Bear is looking a bit picked over…

– So it goes…

Image(s) Courtesy of:  SoonerFans.com