There Is No Such Thing As A Moral Victory, But.....

I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as a moral victory but there is such a thing as taking large strides in rebuilding a program. Lane Kiffin's Tennessee Wild Boyz took that huge step today. The overmatched Vols headed into the Swamp today as 30 point underdogs in what many in the national media called Lane Kiffin's day of reckoning. Something very important happened in the 2nd half today when the great Tim Tebow fumbled the ball near the Tennessee goal line. That defensive stand and forced fumble showed that there truly has been a changing of the guard in the Tennessee football program. In past years, the Tennessee defense would have laid down at that point,Tebow would have scored and the route would be on. Today was different. This group of Volunteers kept playing for 4 quarters and did not listen to the media and everyone else who said they could not play with Florida. The more I think about the game, the more I realize how close we were to shocking the world today. We missed a golden opportunity early on to get a touchdown when Gerald Jones ran out of bounds and caught the ball out the side of the endzone. We gave up a couple of third down and long conversions and we could not tackle Tebow on a scramble play that kept a drive alive which resulted in a TD. That being said, all the experts and Florida homers over at ESPN did not have much to say about the game other than Tennessee did not get blown out. We didn't get blown out and the team gave Florida fans a preview of things to come under the Kiffin regime.

Florida fans my not admit it, but they are very nervous right now. They are thinking. "How did our mighty Gators only score 23 points against the lowly Vols who are coached by the spoiled brat kid." The answer, my jort wearing friends, is Lane Kiffin is not Phillip Fulmer. The days of "workin like heck" and "we'll have to look at the film" are over. Enter the new era of: "We will be singing Rocky Top when we beat Florida in the Swamp" and "Anyone who went to dinner with their family and had a good time after this loss are not one of our guys." Kiffin is instilling a new mentality in our program that mediocrity and losing are unacceptable. I can't wait for him to get a few recruiting classes in here and see what he can do with some of his horses because the future looks bright for the Vol Nation. I will never accept losing to Florida and although we lost on the scoreboard today, Lane Kiffin scored his first big victory today as Coach of the Vols. There may not be moral victories in college football, but the Volunteers showed that it won't be long before we will be singing Rocky Top all night long after beating Florida. Go Vols and lets build on this momentum!