Fire Phil Fires Up Tennessee Players

September 24th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
By Chris

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After mistaking their way to a loss against the beloved Florida Gators, mixed with a dash of losing to a really suspect UCLA team, fans of the Tennessee Volunteers aren’t too pleased with the direction of the football program. Neither are University of Tennessee students, who voiced, er, painted their displeasure on the campus rock.

As was the intention, the “FIRE PHIL” message or any related complaining has not gone unnoticed by the Volunteers coach or his players. During his Tuesday presser, Coach Fulmer responded with the kind of candidness we like to see:

“We’ve won 148 football games in my time here at Tennessee and lost a little bit less than that – a lot less than that, actually – and we didn’t all of a sudden get stupid as coaches. We know what we’re doing, and we’re going to go to the practice field and correct and work and put our football team on the field with the best advantage that we can possibly have.”

Some of the Volunteer players were asked about the message on the Rock, something that they couldn’t avoid if they wanted to. Gerald Jones, in particular, was none too pleased with the message, equating those type of fans to Florida supporters.

OH, SNAP!!!

“You know who’s real fans when things go wrong,” said Jones, a sophomore. “There’s a lot of things that say, ‘Fire Fulmer’ and ‘Get (Jonathan) Crompton out of there and put Jones at quarterback’ or ‘the receivers can’t win one-on-one’ and ‘(tailback) Arian (Foster)’s not running physical.’ I’m not worried about that. They might as well be Florida fans because they’re saying the same exact thing.”

Jones was incredulous about fans’ discontent with Fulmer.

“Firing Fulmer? Come on now,” Jones said. “He’s one of the winningest coaches in the NCAA. They ain’t going to fire that man. He’s not going anywhere. It’s really no big deal. We’re not even focused on what people have to say. We’re focused on Tennessee.”

Let’s see if all this passion and pride produces a better product when they go to Auburn on Saturday.