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Fulmer Takes Hits, Continues To Stand Tall

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By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 1, 2008

Updated: 12/31/2007 10:57 pm

TAMPA - If you feel the need to pinpoint a moment that defined Tennessee's season, go back to Halloween weekend. The Vols were 4-3 following a 41-17 whipping at Alabama the game before and, well, things were bad. Coach Phil Fulmer was under siege like never before.

He was being skewered on radio shows and Internet message boards. The venom reached such a level that 191 former Tennessee players, including Peyton Manning, took out a full-page ad in the Knoxville News Sentinel to support Fulmer.

And then there was the Grim Reaper.

A cartoon in the local paper showed a kid dressed up as the Grim Reaper, standing outside Fulmer's door at Halloween, being egged on by Steve Spurrier. A lot of coaches would have wilted. A lot of coaches would have gotten angry. Still others would have gotten defensive.

Fulmer laughed. He even made a joke about it to his team that night as they walked to the stadium for the game against Spurrier and South Carolina. Don't fear the Reaper. Don't fear anything.

And when they beat Carolina 27-24 in overtime, it started a five-game winning streak that propelled them to the SEC Championship Game - which they narrowly lost to LSU.

"I told him on the plane coming down here about that very thing. I told him I thought he just did the best job he had ever done," UT assistant head coach David Cutcliffe said.

"After the Alabama game everything outwardly seemed to be falling apart. It was being dismantled, dissected and criticized, but he never wavered. He was the most resilient man in the United States. Players look to leaders and he was absolutely in charge. It wasn't fake. He didn't sit and talk about the negative or look intimidated or ruffled. He was what a leader is supposed to be. He was at his best."

Never Wavered

Fulmer is completing his 16th season at UT and he has the kind of resume that should earn him a break from this kind of foolishness. Except, of course, no college coach is immune from the Internet wackos and the microphone-screamers who exist to revel in the shrillness of their own voice.

A record of 146-45 in those 16 seasons isn't good enough for some. He has two SEC championships and one national title. He has six divisional crowns. This is the 15th time he has taken the Vols to a bowl game. He is one of only seven coaches who has won at least 100 more games than he has lost.

Yet, when they began this season 1-2, including a 59-20 blowout at Florida, the criticism was withering. The demand for change at the top seemed to be reaching avalanche proportions.

"If somebody really, really knew what they were talking about, they wouldn't have been saying what they were saying. I'm talking about the bloggers, the people talking in restaurants, those people saying Coach Fulmer should be fired," Tennessee quarterback Erik Ainge said.

"Those people don't watch the film and see that on third-and-3 that we threw the ball because there were eight guys in the box and they blitzed the free safety, so there was nowhere to run."

It would do no good to tell them that anyway. Why be patient when it's so much more entertaining to scream?

"We knew it was still early in the season and we could still reach the SEC Championship Game," defensive tackle Dan Williams said. "That's what Coach told us - play hard, stay focused, everything will work out. It's a 12-game season. You should wait until all 12 games are played."

That's when Cutcliffe dropped in an observation.

"He's a former offensive lineman. When you get whipped, you get back up and go to the huddle and come back. It doesn't matter if you're bleeding or you're muddy - you go play," he said. "People just look at Phillip and they get it all wrong.

"People that haven't been around enough football don't understand offensive linemen. You look at Bo Schembechler and some guys through the years who were guards, you look at their teams and the resiliency of their teams, and that's what Phillip Fulmer is."

Here They Are

Fulmer has always had an image problem in this state because of the way Spurrier used him as a punch line so many times during his Gator days. The image is wrong. Fulmer stands as tall as nearly any coach in America. He has endured and his teams have a way of taking the punches and rising again.

Kind of like this year.

"A lot of people wrote us off this year, but a lot of people don't know what he does for us," tight end Chris Brown said. "For people to sit there and try to say he wasn't getting the job done any more was crazy. And when they put that Grim Reaper thing out there, we stood behind him because he stands behind us."

So bear that in mind today when the Vols take on Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl. This season could have gone a lot of ways for them, but somehow it wound up like it often does.

Here they are, still playing, still standing. And the Reaper has gone looking for easier game.

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