Let me give you a tip: go to any Krystal Restaurant between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. today and you can get up to six of the famous burgers for just 25 cents apiece. The “roll back” prices are in celebration of the chain’s 80th birthday and will be much more filling and better tasting than the trash “The Legion of the Miserable” is trying to feed you about Derek Dooley.
There is a great website called outkickthecoverage.com where a splendid writer named Clay Travis has just written the Tennessee football coach will be ceremoniously fired seconds after the Vols lose to South Carolina this weekend but will be allowed to coach for the rest of the season. I have no idea where he gets his information but I can assure him Tennessee Athletic Director Dave Hart has more class than that. I can also assure him I’ll be shocked if Derek Dooley goes anywhere but back to the drawing board at the close of this year’s admittedly-disappointing campaign.
Clay asserts two past Tennessee coaches – Johnny Majors and Phillip Fulmer – were fired following their games against South Carolina but what the writer – and the shallow jerks who howl for Dooley’s head – don’t quite get is that Derek has done precisely what he was hired to do. When he took the job the football program was in shambles. There were more players on the police blotter than would start on offensive in a given game!
Further, Lane Kiffin set the university light-years behind when he knowingly signed a recruiting class that would virtually disappear within two years. No football team in the country can afford to lose an entire recruiting class but Dooley had little choice – his number-one mandate was to erase a stigma where the nation’s media was laughingly branding UT as “The University of Thugs” just three years ago.
Here’s what’s happened since: Vol football players are being held accountable. They know if they play outside the lines they will be sent packing. Dooley’s class and charisma has proven to be the perfect answer to wide-spread embarrassment and shame. Anybody who thought that UT would be beating Alabama, Florida or Georgia right now is terribly short-sighted. Look at Tennessee’s roster and you’ll clearly see the effects of Kiffin’s lost recruiting class. My stars!
The only thing “The Legion of the Miserable” wants to do is create rancor, self-pity, anger, wild speculation and heartache. Don’t fall for it. Better yet, don’t get into a fight with these pigs; you both get dirty and the pigs like it!
A local “sports talk” host just wrote a scathing commentary on Chattanoogan.com about Dooley that was pointless. The last guy on earth UT is going to seek counsel from is a sports-talk wag. I can remember vividly when he told blatant lies about Johnny Majors over 25 years ago. He did the same thing to Phillip Fulmer. In over a quarter-century his stripes ain’t changed!
And his last paragraph was his most telling: “Any way you look at it, Tennessee football is in a deep, deep hole - maybe an abyss. For what it's worth, my radio commentary on Monday noon- 3 p.m. EDT on The Show - with Chris Goforth will be brutal.” Boy, if that isn’t a pathetic way to say “look at me” I never heard it. My goodness, any true UT fan has more class than that.
College football runs in cycles. Right now Alabama is riding the crest of a huge wave but ten years ago the Crimson Tide was lost in the wilderness. Two years ago the “Legion” was on Georgia’s Mark Richt like a cheap suit and Auburn’s Gene Chizik – who won the national championship in 2010 – has found it isn’t far from the penthouse to the outhouse.
I can remember what people were saying about Florida’s Will Muschamp this time last year and, when LSU, now lost to Florida, there was actually a guy in New Orleans who started shouting Les should never be calling any more plays. Face it, we live in a society that is just perfect for “The Legion of the Miserable” and all they want you to do is wallow in their misery.
Don’t fall for it. Instead, you can get a bagful of Krystals for a buck-fifty if you time it right and the heart of Tennessee’s athletic leadership will tell you that Derek Dooley will be just fine.
royexum@aol.com