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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

July 27, 2007

Phillip Fulmer

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

THE MODERATOR: Our final coach of 2007 media days is Tennessee's Phillip Fulmer.
COACH FULMER: A few statements, I'll be glad to take your questions.
We're very excited like everyone else in the league about our season. Our players have worked extremely hard during the off-season. We had a very physical and demanding, by-design, spring practice, summer program. The guys have responded extremely well.
I'm excited about where we are at this particular time. Certainly don't have all the answers just yet, but hopefully as we go through fall camp and prepare for the big opener with Cal, we'll get closer to where we need to be.
I think after the '05 season, some of you guys thought we would go away. We didn't go away. I'm really proud of our team and the bounce-back year that they had, the attitude, the focus, the preparation, the way that we went about our business in changing.
'05 was a shocking football season to me as a head football coach and to our program. To our credit, the selfishness that had creeped in, the distractions that had come up, we have eliminated those things. Right now our attitude is exactly where it's supposed to be. We haven't had the distractions.
Anything we've had come up, we've felt with quickly and firmly and gone about our business. The kids that are there are going to be totally committed to what we're trying to do. That doesn't mean we're always going to win every football game, but it's going to give us a lot better chance to do so.
We followed the season with a real fine recruiting class. We're expecting a number of those guys to be able to step in and help us. I can't tell you exactly who just yet because we haven't really had a chance to coach 'em yet.
This year's no different than any other in that our goal is to compete and win the eastern division championship first and the Southeastern Conference second. I don't think there's any question that this is the best league in the country.
There's nobody else in the league or in the country that can talk about four coaches that have won national championships. There's nobody else in the country that can talk about, from top to bottom, their league being as competitive as this is.
When you look around the country, there's a lot of great football. I do think things do go in cycles. Couple years ago, the ACC had more first rounders than the Southeastern Conference did.
Year in and year out, this is the toughest league of any in the country. I don't think that's going to change any time soon.
Had a great conversation, Pat Summitt and I are great friends, have been for a long, long time, obviously because we've both been there as a long time as a player and a coach.
This is my 33rd year at Tennessee. More than half of my life has been spent on our campus. Pat has been there, I wouldn't age her or anything, maybe as long or maybe a little longer. We're great friends. We were talking about her nine-year stretch there, as to why she -- why she thought she hadn't won a championship.
She had been really close a couple times. She said it's pretty simple, it's Candace Parker. You have to have a Candace Parker-type player in your program to be able to do that.
A lot of good players around Candace Parker-type players.
You go back and look at Peyton Manning, or Jamal Lewis or Travis Henry or Tee Martin and some of those guys, we've had those people in our program before. You've got to coach them well and not let things happen like in 2005 where things creep into your program that you don't want to creep in.
Do I think that Erik Ainge can be that kind of player? I do. I think Erik Ainge can be that kind of football player that our team rallies around, that he takes the bull by the horns and makes the plays that help you win a championship.
Now, the other people around him also have to play good. When you look at our team coming back, I don't believe that you can win championships if you can't run the football and stop the run. We didn't do either one of those very well last year.
After studying our football team and our running game during the course of the off-season, winter and summer, one of the reasons we didn't run the football very well is the looks that we got. The defensive teams are really good at giving you problems.
When we had the looks we wanted we did pretty well. Averaged right at five yards and a 10. When we didn't have the looks we wanted we weren't nearly as productive as we needed to be.
That goes also to the backs being more accountable for the one guy left, to make that tackle, make somebody miss. If you study the teams that are running the football well, you can see their backs are doing some of those things.
So I've challenged our team to be a better running football team. I've challenged our team to be a better run defensive football team. That's where it's got to begin for us to win a championship.
As you look around the conference, 'cause I know I'll probably get asked about the league and everything, from top to bottom, I can't really sit here and tell you who I think is the best team because everybody is darn good. It gets back to scheduling. It gets back to a few players creating plays that win football games.
You look at us last year. We take the national champions down to the last quarter of the game, last half of the last quarter. We didn't make the plays that won the game, and they made the plays that won the game.
The LSU game, about down to the last nine seconds. Either one of those wins or both of those wins, our season and theirs are entirely different. So that's how close this league is year in hand year out.
Our personnel, I guess that's another question you'll ask. We're obviously going to build our offense around Erik and his abilities. Our runningbacks I think can be very fine players in this league. I admire the way Arian Foster handled the fumble in the Penn State game. Obviously that game was extremely important to us in our bounce-back year. It would have given us our 10th win of the season.
We basically were driving to win the game. The ball comes out and all of a sudden there's a 14-point swing and it just didn't happen for us like we wanted to.
To his credit, ordinarily I'm the last one out of the dressing room because I've got to do the radio thing afterwards. The team is usually waiting on me. As I left the stadium, he's still there answering questions from some of the media people about the turnover. To his credit, he printed that thing, he blew it up, put it in his locker, he touched it every day before his workouts, he touched it every day in spring practice.
In spring practice I saw a different guy. I saw a back that had had some injuries and had ability play like a Southeastern Conference back is supposed to play.
Montario Hardesty will be healthy for the first time since he's been at Tennessee. LaMarcus Coker, you guys that followed us, certainly know he has big-play potential.
Receiver is obviously a question for us as we lost some outstanding players. It's hard to replace a Robert Meacham, a first-round draft choice. I don't think we have anybody on our campus that has played for us that is like that right now.
We do have four guys: Quintin Hancock, Lucas Taylor, Josh Briscoe and Austin Rogers that have played some. I do believe those guys will be in the right place to catch the ball. They'll make the adjustments to the routs they need to make according to coverage. They'll make some plays for us.
But I don't believe they give us the dynamics that a Robert Meacham can give us. I'm very hopeful that the junior college young man Kenny O'Neal or one of the freshmen will be able to come in and give us dynamics when we get press coverage, good etiquette, a chance to catch a crossing rout, make somebody miss, have an explosive-type play.
I'm looking for that from somebody that's not been on our campus before. Our offensive front, we made some progress in the spring. We're not where we need to be yet. I think we have the potential. I can assure you the five guys that go out there will be coming out of -- coming off the ball and coming out of their butt like they're supposed to be for us to be a better running football team like we're supposed to be when we get to the Cal game.
The other tight ends I should mention will be very important to us. Chris Brown and Brad Cottam, Jeff Cottam and Luke Stocker will be used a lot in our system as we use them to create different looks for the defense and we can be a lot of things I hope with those guys being receivers, being slots, or even being in the backfield as we run the no-huddle offense and use those guys to hopefully gain some advantage over the defense.
Defensively it starts up front. Our defensive ends I think will be fine. We pressured pretty good last year. We didn't finish the deal nearly enough from a defensive end position. But Xavier Mitchell, Antonio Reynolds, Robert Ayers, Wes Brown are guys I think will be solid defensive ends and hopefully outstanding defensive ends if they play like they did the last half of spring practice.
Ben Martin is a young guy that I am counting on things, big things, from. Even though he's a true freshman he looks like he's got that first quick step you're looking for. My concern on defense mostly is our defensive tackles. Replacing Justin Harrell, replacing Turk McBride is not an easy thing to do. First rounder and second rounder. Those guys, it will be tough. But we can find guys in there that can play pad leverage and be intent on being good players.
I think our linebackers, most of you probably met or heard from Jerod Mayo. We'll be led by him. He is an outstanding young man, an outstanding leader. He'll challenge his peers. Outstanding football player.
We never really saw our defensive team last year as we thought it would be. Jerod Mayo hurt his ankle in two-a-days in a scrimmage. Obviously Justin Harrell was lost for the season in the second game. Played some against Florida in the third. For the most part, lost in the second game.
Inky Johnson, lost our best corner which really changed the way we had to do things.
Hopefully Jerod will be able to stay healthy, the people around him can stay healthy, and we can have the kind of defense that we want to have.
Started spring practice really concerned about our secondary coming out of spring practice because we lost three guys. Coming out of spring practice, I felt better.
John Hefney returning as an all conference player is a big plus for us. Jerod Parrish has made significant strides as a safety. Our two corners, Antonio Gaines and Marsalous Johnson, are pretty exciting guys the way they played in spring practice. They have to pick that up and continue during the course of fall camp, because there will be some competition from some junior college guys.
We brought in two junior college guys and a couple freshmen we brought in. I'm anxious to see how all that shakes up. But I'm hopeful we'll end up with three seniors and a sophomore in the secondary next year if it stays like it is.
Our kicker and punter will probably be Britton Colquitt at least early, although I will say Daniel Lincoln has made significant strides in spring practice, the summer, that hopefully he'll be able to relieve us from having Britton do everything. Britton obviously is a returning all conference player.
Actually was on some All-American teams last year. I'm pretty excited about what he can do as far as changing the field.
That's kind of an overview of our team and our outlook. I think we're prepared to start camp here August the 2nd, first day of practice being August the 3rd.
Questions.

Q. Every year at least one or two teams has a veteran quarterback that has gone. You've got to bring in a new guy to take his place. Curious what you and your staff did with Tee Martin that first year after Peyton left, all the things you had to do to kind of foster him along, get him ready.
COACH FULMER: Why would I stand here and tell somebody from LSU what we did to help Tee Martin win (laughter)? No, I'm kidding. I'm really not, but I'll answer your questions (smiling).
We didn't really ask a lot outside of what Tee Martin was capable of doing from a physical standpoint early in the season. If you go back and look at a little bit of that history, we thought Peyton could have left as a junior. He would have been a first-round pick anyway. Tee would have stepped in when he was actually a sophomore.
Tee had been preparing himself very well to be the quarterback a year earlier than he actually got the opportunity. We had had plenty of time to think through and plan through how to use Tee.
He was different as a junior than you would have been as a sophomore. Early in the season we limited what we asked him to do. He had a great arm. He could throw the out, could throw the deep crossing rout, could throw the deep ball.
But as far as going through a whole bunch of reads and things that was complicated, we stayed away from that. We told him it was kind of is he open, is he open, run with Tee because he was a guy that could make some plays with his feet.
As he progressed and as things went along, he was able to progress in his reads and his experience and he became a complete quarterback. But early we limited what we asked him to do.

Q. Most pre-season all SEC list at quarterback will have either Erik or Andre' Woodson on the first or second team. What are your thoughts on Woodson? Where do you think Erik ranks not only in the league but also in the nation among quarterbacks?
COACH FULMER: I think Woodson is an outstanding quarterback. We tried to recruit him actually. I think Randy Sanders has just done a tremendous job of coaching him and getting him to the point where he is now.
If you looked at Kentucky, as I see it, they probably have the best backfield and receivers in the whole conference as a group. So he has a lot of guys to work with.
Comparing he and Erik, I think they're very similar. They're used very similar in the systems. Erik through for 67% last year, which was a record at Tennessee. Was an outstanding year for us. I don't think if Erik -- I think if Erik hadn't gotten hurt, missed two or three ballgames, statistically he would have been either right there. He was right there anyway, but maybe as good as Woodson.
But this conference always has outstanding quarterbacks. With those two coming out, big, physical guys that can see the field and throw the ball like those guys, it should be real interesting to watch those guys develop.
I may have said this earlier. I've talked to so many people today. We did an evaluation on Erik. He came back as a late first, early second pick. I think if he has a big year he could help himself a lot, as well as helping us win a championship.

Q. Can you talk about two players, the maturing process of center Josh McNeil and also the confidence that you have in Jonathan Crompton, the quarterback, if you have to have him?
COACH FULMER: I'll go with Jonathan first. I got all the confidence in the world in Jonathan. If you go back to where we were a couple of years ago when Jonathan chose to come to Tennessee, Erik had just had a fabulous freshman year. We won the division, played Auburn for the championship. Jon chose to come anyway.
At that particular time, you know, it very easily could have happened that Erik left after a junior year. Jonathan has been working to get himself ready to be our quarterback really since he came into our program.
Unfortunately he came in with that shoulder injury and missed a lot of time on the field, but mentally he's continued to work at it. He had the experience last year against LSU, which he gave us a chance to win. Had the experience at Arkansas. A tough loss on the road last year that will benefit him as he goes forward in his career.
If needed, he'll certainly be ready to be called upon. So I have good confidence in Jonathan.
As far as Josh McNeil, Josh, again, came in with a shoulder problem from high school, has done a great job of getting himself ready physically. Was a freshman All-American last year. I think one of the most important spots on the field in the center position, because he starts every play, makes a lot of calls in our offense.
I think Josh is ready to kind of have the breakout kind of year because he's really matured. He was somewhat immature in the way that he handled things when he first got to Tennessee. He thought he was God's gift to football; he knew everything. Now he realizes after playing against some of the people that he played against, it's a different world and he's learned how to work and prepare himself for a much better fashion.

Q. In the first 10 years that you were the coach at Tennessee you lost just five home games. In the last five years you've gone 23-11, but your road record has been very consistent. Can you explain why you're losing more home games than before?
COACH FULMER: It's probably because of who you play, I would say, and how you play. I don't know if we've got this exactly right. In my career at Tennessee, we've played 93 home games; won 77 of them. That's 16 losses in 14 years at Tennessee at home. That's not terrible, I don't think.
The big game is the one you lose.

Q. Could you elaborate on Erik Ainge's strengths, what having such an experienced quarterback means, especially in the SEC? Could you talk about your take on the rules changes, specifically kicking off from the 30, how that might affect strategy.
COACH FULMER: When you have a veteran quarterback, you hope to be able to build your offense around him, particularly when he's got the ability of an Erik. I mentioned the no-huddle a few minutes ago. Erik ran it as a freshman actually. We did it a little bit differently than what we'll do it this year.
But his experience, his ability, his ability to get the ball out quickly and on time, understand where it needs to go, will give us a head start on being a good offensive football team.
Again, the people around him, particularly the runningbacks who are veterans and the tight ends who are veterans, are going to have to do a great job while all those receivers and everybody catch up.
I expect big things from Erik starting with the Cal game. He's already shown the leadership this summer that needed to be there.
The kickoff rule I think will impact our game as much as any rule has since I've been in the league. When you start kicking that thing off to great players in this league in an open field with blockers in front of them, there's a lot of crap gonna happen that a coach can't control necessarily. We're gonna try to be one of those teams as well.
You're going to have people starting in better field position. Consequently statistics are going to be influenced because there's going to be more scoring maybe than ever. There's going to be a lot more strategies involved in the kicks and the returns than ever before, because the percentages are going to go way up as far as the number of kicks returned and the starting field position for the offensive team.

Q. You have sort of a long-range perspective having been a coach in this league for a good amount of time. For one of the programs that has all the resources, assets, and there are several of them in the league, what, over a five-year period of time, is a realistic expectation for a fan base for the program to accomplish?
COACH FULMER: Well, I mean, the truth of it is everybody practically in this league has great tradition, has financial resources that have been committed to their programs, has high expectations. I don't have my head stuck in the sand that we need to compete for a championship.
Five out of the last nine we've been in the eastern division championship. We're graduating our players. Our APR is in great shape. Our guys are being drafted. All those things that are positive things, but you've got to be sound fundamentally, you've got to be physically really, really good.
As far as managing expectations, it's a lot about scheduling. This is just the truth. It's a lot about scheduling. It's a lot about staying healthy. As I said earlier, it's about making the plays that win the game.
Do you have the Candace Parker-type person, whoever that person might be? You can look in this league, there's a lot of those guys that plays well enough and stays healthy to win the championship. Our league you have to win the championship twice because you have the regular season and you have the SEC championship game.
The truth of it is, if everybody in the country would look at it, for football, because we don't have a tournament per se, that the regular season is the playoff, and if the Big-10 and the PAC-10 would have a championship game, which they won't and don't, you would really have a legitimate playoff to a national champion.
It's benefited us. In '98 we probably wouldn't have played in the championship game had the Big 12 not had one and Kansas State gotten beat, and we won, so we go and play Florida State and win the national championship.
Again us in '01, we played LSU for the SEC championship. Probably had the better team, but we didn't play the best. Had a couple turnovers late in the game. It knocked us out of a chance to play for the national championship.
That's a long answer to a short question. But there's a lot of variables that go into that to be champions. In our case, certainly in Alabama's case, I think that's who you're talking about, is expectations are already there because we've already created 'em.
I'm a part of what's been created at Tennessee. Alabama's exactly the same way. They're fantastic and have high expectations.

Q. What does Erik still have to do to become a Candace Parker-type player? What does he have to do to get there?
COACH FULMER: Got to finish those games against Florida and LSU. Of course, he didn't play against LSU. But those kind of games.
Erik has all the tangibles and intangibles as a player. He's been through the gauntlet now of the Southeastern Conference. He's had great success when nobody expected him to. He had some disappointments when everybody expected him to have. So from a maturity standpoint, his skin ought to be pretty thick and he ought to be able to handle anything.
Specifically, play the way that he's capable of playing within the system. Hang in the pocket, make the plays he's supposed to make. Not allow the defense to touch the football when it's his responsibility. Those would be things that he could do to help us -- to reach that Candace Parker level.

Q. Fans in the SEC aren't known for their patience. Have you felt any pressure, whether from fans or anyone else, after 10 losses over the last two years?
COACH FULMER: Well, I mean, you can say it like that if you want to. If you look at a much longer period of time, it's not necessarily that way.
As I say, I'm not silly. I know that our expectations are high because we created those. I also know I just got a contract extension. Athletic director gave my coordinators three-year contracts, assistants two-year contracts.
As I said earlier, we're doing -- we've never had an NCAA violation in 15 years. APR is in great shape. There's a lot of positive things.
But nobody - you or the fans - nobody wants to win a championship more than I do, nobody. We're going to work like heck to make that happen.

Q. With all of the kind of high-profile character issues that are coming up in the NFL right now, the commissioner cracking down, how have you changed the way you handle off-field issues with your players? Can you take anything from what the NFL is doing and apply it to the college system?
COACH FULMER: You know, I think that's a great question. Again, as he said earlier, just drawing on my experience, I'm going to not try to go too long on this, but I think it's an important issue.
Things have changed in college football, in society, in the expectations from the athletes. You could talk about the NFL, but I'm going to talk about my world of college football. Myles Brand, president of the NCAA, has set a new academic standard that he expects to be there. I think the commissioners and the athletic directors are a whole lot less understanding and patient with off-the-field issues.
If you're gonna bring those guys in at different times, you can't always control everything that happens on your campus. We all know about 18 years old, immaturity, bad decisions, all those kind of things. But consistently it can be a problem.
I'm going to go back to my '05 season. We had several things, all independent of each other, mostly reasonably solid young men, but we had too many things and it distracted from our program. I told our group there in Knoxville a couple different times, I learned a lot about how much patience to have.
It goes back to the history of each one of them. But if a guy has had consistently inconsistent behavior, you know, you're getting ready to have a problem. So that's the reason our players understand we're not putting up with any crap. This is the way it's gonna be.
If you have an issue, we're going to deal with it as we see the right, firm way to do it. Now, That doesn't mean I'm going to chunk everybody kid's career at the first incident. But if it's something that's significant and we've had some consistent problems, we're going to deal with it, just as we have in recent times there at UT.
I've let a couple guys go. Might have been the wrong thing as far as them, but it was the right thing as far as our football team.
I think less tolerance is out there than ever before right now.

Q. Even though you turned it around last year from the previous year, was there a sense at the end of the year a little bit of emptiness? You got to a certain point, but you didn't quite get there, do you sense?
COACH FULMER: Yeah, yeah, you answered your own question. Yeah, it was a disappointing end of the season in that we didn't play as well as we wanted to in the Bowl game.
You know, our program is so proudful and the expectations are so high that it becomes its own challenge after you get knocked out of the SEC championship or BCS championship to maintain that level of intensity and commitment that it takes to finish a season out.
That's another set of problems that you have. I thought we practiced in the Bowl game about as well as we could practice. We asked a lot of them and they responded. But then we laid an egg in the game. I think we were the better team.
That doesn't mean -- obviously the better team doesn't always win. You have to play better. Three fumbles will do that to you sometimes.
It was disappointing. If we had had 10 wins, we'd all have been pretty happy about a "turnaround season." Somebody asked me if there's a magic number every year. Yeah, win 'em all. That's the magic number to make everybody happy in Knoxville, or the coach happy.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach Fulmer.
COACH FULMER: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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