Summitt the sport’s winningest coach career ends with a 1,098-207 record, 16 regular season Southeastern Conference championships and 16 SEC tournament titles. She also led the 1984 Olympic team to a gold medal.

During her time, Tennessee never failed to reach the NCAA tournament, never received a seed lower than No. 5 and reached 18 Final Fours.

The game will miss her but at the same time the SEC coaches will feel better with her in the stands, not on the court.

Once again today the sources have provided us with cannon fodder for a rant against Tennessee and the NCAA. Teflon Lane is cleared and gets to go home and tell Layla “honey I’m home”. Tennessee gets to breathe a sigh of relief after avoiding the lack of institutional control penalty.

I’m real disgusted with the NCAA right now. There is no doubt Pearl deserves what he is going to get, but once again Tennessee seems to slither through the cracks of an investigation. I don’t know about you guys but I’m tired of Tennessee fans trashing Kentucky and ignoring their sorry record of keeping coaches who cant go to to media days because they might be arrested. Pushing the blame off on pawns for writing papers for players. Failing to educate their players about whats expected of them when out at night, or at a gas station.

We on the other hand catch the crap from them for being dirty and the NCAA is just waiting to hammer us.

Ain’t it grand to be a Big Blue fan.

This story got my mind running around trying to think of something to write before settling on this.

If the Dallas Cowboys are Americas team, the 1992 olympic team was the original “Dream Team”, O J Simpsons lawyers were his “Dreaming Team”, and Johnny Depp is in many a middle aged maidens dreams, why shouldn’t BigBlueRules and Dream be in the same sentence.

We here at BigBlueRules dare to dream and we dream big. Compromising photos surface of Pete Thamel doing his interviews in a turkish bath house. Jerry Tipton retires and goes on a tour to promote his new book “A Writers Guide to New Trucks”. Tennessee hires Fulmer as AD and he immediately grabs a broom and when he lifts the carpet to clean house he finds Linda Bensel-Meyers who’s dreams he destroyed.

Remember its good to dream big so don’t settle for a quick dream like Karen Sypher did. Dream a big dream like we are. 10-2 baby, 10-2.

“Four hundred years we have waited”, said Joshua in the Ten Commandments in 1956. It seems like its been much longer than that for Tennessee fans waiting for their athletics department to be brought under control by the administration who has backed them for years no matter what their athletes did.

This incident is probably the proverbial straw that broke the camels back as far as the athletic department is concerned. If they don’t step down hard on this group of young men who didn’t even have the balls to go one on one man to man style there won’t be a person left in the country except for those who figure that they are being racially mistreated.

Derek Dooley worked quick. Sophomore safety Darren Myles has been dismissed from the program after his second arrest in three months and sophomore defensive tackle Marlon Walls and sophomore linebacker Greg King were both suspended indefinitely by Dooley, who backed up his dedication to discipline with swift action less than 24 hours after two players were arrested outside Bar Knoxville on Cumberland Avenue.

The Bar of Knoxville is going to feel a lot of heat over the lack of surveillance video and the owners saying that things like this don’t happen there. A quick search on you tube found a video out front of it from 2008.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqvReON_12g

Throw in the fact that one of the students arrested was only a freshman and another a sophomore and unless they spent a few years in the 5th grade they weren’t old enough to play in front of the bar at that time of night much less than be in the bar. OK, OK I know they could be out front but kids as immature as they acted should be put to bed at 8pm.

Tennessee fans are upset, ashamed and defiantly angry from what I have read so far on twitter and at various forums. I would feel sorry for them except for the fact that it was their university who really let them down by ignoring forgiving multiple offenses by the same player and covering up things for years. As Popeye once said you’s is who you’s is or something along those words.

My biggest regret about this is that this didn’t happen on Lane Kiffins tour of duty.

But the Cinderella Vols believed they could win, and for 30 minutes the glass slipper fit in Rupp Arena.

Thats the way the story starts at govolsextra.com.

Its a given that Tennessee played a good game against the Cat’s and its a given that barring a complete collapse by the Vols and a few more arrests they will be playing come March Madness time.

I don’t mind giving credit where credit is due but calling them the Cinderella Vols is stretching the amount of credit I’m really able to extend them.

Don’t they know the story of Cinderella? For those of you who haven’t read it or at least heard of the story I will tell it to you.

Once upon a time there was a basketball team that lived in a conference call the SEC. They cried because they couldn’t win a national championship and a low and behold a fast talking coach magically appeared who promised them they could dance with the trophy.

Now there were a couple of problems for the coach to overcome before this could happen. They didn’t have any designer clothes but that was easily fixed by trips to the mall and the county clothing store. They didn’t have a ride to the big dance so he would turn a pumpkin into a shiny city car come time for the dance and low and behold their problems were solved.

Sadly their two wicked step sisters Kentucky and Vanderbilt wanted them to stay home the evening of the dance so they resorted to judicial magic to escape. The pumpkin changed into a beautiful car with pretty flashing lights and their rags turned into beautiful orange jump suits.

Of course we all know how the story turns out, one and done. It would be a sad story but they got to keep the beautiful orange jump suits.

I know I know its not that good a story but desperation forces a man to write something like this to compete with story like Cinderella Vols. Cornell advancing to the final four would be a Cinderella story but calling Tennessee a Cinderella is a sign or increasing desperation.

Has there ever been a faster talking SEC coach? The fast talking old balls coach at South Carolina couldn’t come close to matching Kiffen’s speed with his mouth and Spurrier at least is willing to give a school his best. Kiffin on the other hand is willing to give a school his dads best shot. If it wasn’t for his dads defensive coaching what would Tennessee have done this season.

Has anyone seen a reason he should be described as a good head coach? I thought not.

He spends not even a year with the Raiders, has a losing record and is fired and called a liar by Al Davis. And you betcha he is a liar as Tennessee fans and players will tell you. All you have to do is watch his lips move to know that.

He wins barely half of his games and hes considered a good coach at Tennessee but his lips were moving there all the time too.

Hes an embarrassment to not only Tennessee fans but all of us SEC fans as well and USC fans will find that out quickly. Thanks Lane and your dad would be ashamed of you but hes watched your lips move your whole life and knows not to get involved watching them and forget whats hes doing.

About the only thing left for Tennessee to do is put the head coaching job up for auction and let the fastest auctioneer get the school a new coach in record time.

There are plenty of reasons UK fell down in the UT game.  The D could not stop the run once again, but they’ve had trouble with big strong backs all year so this wasn’t a big surprise.  UK did find a way to put enough points on the board, but I had that, “doomed” feeling when I felt UK needed to produce on demand in OT.  The reason was at quarterback.  Newton hasn’t performed all year, never seemed to grow at all, and especially not to a level that you would expect from a future savior.  The bottom line with me comes down to what I consider to be the huge mistake at passing over Fidler.  First, UK simply GAVE the kid a job he did not earn, and the players never seemed to play as hard for him.  He never seemed to have their respect and was lost in most games and was totally lost in the entire UT game.  All the while, Fidler read defenses much better, and let’s face it, reading anything at all was light years better than Newton.  Fidler’s passes were more on time and on target, his decisions were that of a fourth year guy, the team played for him and he ran just as well as Newton.  Of course if your end goal was to run Fidler off, I say mission accomplished as he was honored on senior day following his announcement that he wasn’t coming back next year. 

Most people think UK error by not going to the Wildcat more in the UT game, which is completely an error in judgment if you ask me.  The Wildcat is a wrinkle set designed to give the other team something else to prepare for.  What those calling for more Wildcat fail to understand is all UT had to prepare for was the Wildcat and they bottled up every single option once they had a chance to see their guys defending it one time.  There is a reason Cobb had twice as many fumbles in the UT game as all the others combined (and his other fumble was actually a backward pass he dropped).  UT almost forced two other Cobb fumbles but he was able to pull it back in long enough to go down.

I love all the UK players, but when it comes to Newton, I just don’t know if he’s going to be a fit.  He’s the reactional type QB in a pro style offense that requires a thinker as much as a drop back passer.  Trading a number two position in the SEC for getting him some reps was a horrid mistake in my mind, especially considering he’s of the same mold as Pulley.  People might point to this year, where Pulley did finally have passing numbers in a lower division, but let’s also consider it took him five years to finally get numbers in one.  UK simply can’t waste two more years of dismal QB play to get one OK year and blowing this year on Newton was the worst coaching move of the year.

Freshman defensive back Nyshier Oliver was cited for theft after shoplifting at a Knoxville mall on Nov. 7. Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin emphasized Wednesday morning that defensive back Nyshier Oliver was not arrested in his first public comments since news broke. Apparently cited and arrested are two different ways of going to court. Way to split hairs Kiffin, you do it as well as phat Phil did over academic fraud.

Four days after Oliver’s run-in with the law, Lane Kiffin went on the SEC coaches teleconference and outright fudged when he praised his team for not having any arrests in 11 months.

I mean what is it about Tennessee that causes such behavior. Their former coach was afraid to go to Alabama because he might be served papers. There present coach fudges when talking to the fans. They were involved in massive academic fraud that by the way wasn’t investigated by the SEC till almost two years had elapsed. Probably as a present to phat Phil for his ecstatic cooperation over the Alabama recruiting scandal. During a four-year period Tennessee has tallied 21 arrests, make that 25 now with 10 of those being felonies. Still behind Georgia’s 30+ but who’s counting when its Tennessee.

And don’t get me started on how the Tennessee cheerleaders improve the face of the Tennessee football program.

I’ve been to Tennessee its a beautiful state. It sent a scoundrel like Andrew Jackson to the White House and a handful of volunteers to the Alamo. Its also the home of the country music recording industry and a first rate university named Vanderbilt.

On one visit I stood on a railing looking down into the water at the beautiful green glow of a atomic reaction at Oak Ridge and realized that if God really loved Tennessee football he would have made the glow Orange.

Keep up the good work Tennessee. Louisville and Rick Pitino thank you for keeping them out of the spotlight.

On the way back to our hotel, driving in our bulletproof car, we passed under a bridge on the highway and noticed one lone Mexican man happily swinging a flag back and forth. He had to have been 45 minutes from the stadium. There was nobody around him. He just kept swinging that flag with a joyous grin on his face. I remember thinking to myself, “Nobody in America will ever care about a sport that much.” And we won’t.

Obviously he has never been to Kentucky to know how much our fans care about the sport. Of course we Kentucky fans would never throw bags of urine at Indiana or Tennessee fans or Coach Calipari would walk off the court hiding a smile hopefully.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090817

And just as obviously we American love the beauty of the sport of soccer as much as anyone in the world. So much in fact that our passions boil at the thought of the game.

What shouldn’t surprise anyone is that there are no Big East teams ranked to start the season. Cincinnati, Pittsburg, W. Va, Rutgers and S. Florida all got votes. Its hard to see anyone besides Cincinnati or W. Virginia making a climb in to the top 25 due to the strength of their non-conference schedules.

The MWC and the WAC have four teams in the top 25 and a fifth Nevada got a few votes. Its easier to see some of them staying in the top 25 since they have teams that stand a fair chance of winning games against the BCS teams on their non-conference schedules.

USA Today Poll

1. Florida (53) 0-0 1,466

2. Texas (4) 0-0 1,386
3. Oklahoma (1) 0-0 1,358
4. USC (1) 0-0 1,321
5. Alabama 0-0 1,134
6. Ohio State 0-0 1,126
7. Virginia Tech 0-0 1,020
8. Penn State 0-0 988
9. LSU 0-0 917
10. Mississippi 0-0 889
11. Oklahoma State 0-0 861
12. California 0-0 711
13. Georgia 0-0 707
14. Oregon 0-0 694
15. Georgia Tech 0-0 559
16. Boise State 0-0 542
17. TCU 0-0 461
18. Utah 0-0 404
19. Florida State 0-0 371
20. North Carolina 0-0 293
21. Iowa 0-0 257
22. Nebraska 0-0 236
23. Notre Dame 0-0 194
24. Brigham Young 0-0 178
25. Oregon State 0-0 165

Others Receiving Votes: Kansas 138, Michigan State 136, Texas Tech 114, Cincinnati 90, Pittsburgh 64, West Virginia 55, Rutgers 51, Miami (FL) 46, Missouri 44, Illinois 38, Clemson 30, South Carolina 18, UCLA 14, Auburn 12, South Florida 11, Nevada 11, Kentucky 9, North Carolina State 7, Wisconsin 6, Arkansas 6, Northwestern 5, Southern Miss 4, Wake Forest 4, Arizona 3, Boston College 3, CENTRL MICHIGAN 3, East Carolina 3, Colorado 2, Maryland 2, Navy 2, Tennessee 2, TROY 1, Minnesota 1, Michigan 1, Houston 1.