Tennessee's Resurgence: Good or Bad for South Carolina?

It’s hard to see Kiffin producing a better team than Carolina, Florida, or Georgia in the next two years. By then, will he have already lost the long-term battle? Will the fans stay behind him?

Is there any other answer than: Bad. Bad. Bad?

UT has historically recruited well in South Carolina, and lights-out in North Carolina (where we’ve made some recent inroads despite Butch Davis taking over at Chapel Hill). A resurgent Vol program is going to be bird-dogging in our backyard.

Even in their reduced (current) condition, UT is going to be a tough-enough nut to crack. Make them one of the BCS heavyweights again, and the “Orange Crush” is going to be that much harder.

Finally, I cannot abide Kiffin’s mouth. He’s accomplished squat except (a) get fired by the craziest man in football (maybe not so crazy after all) and talk a lot of trash.

Let’s hope Georgia brings the wood and takes the Vols behind the shed. Hard.

remember the 2007 game at Knoxville on ESPN? (or ESPN2 I forget). Remember how the Vols had their hoops coaches, Pat Summit and Bruce Pearl, introduce the Vol “O” and the “D”?

In what I still consider a low-rent move, each of them talked up the South Carolinians on the Vol squad. I’ve never seen that done before (and I think I’ve watched enough games, including other random SEC match-ups, to be able to say I think it was way, way unusual). Why would they do it, other than to send a very unsubtle message that the Vols’ – in a state with only mediocre in-state talent – will always be trying to steal our best players? UT needs players from the Carolinas. You can make a decent argument that their downturn is directly related to recruiting woes in their traditional (NC and SC) recruiting beds.

True, some will always want to go out-of-state no matter what and I wish them luck. Sometimes, perhaps it’s best if one of our young recruits does leave (Ryan Bethea leaps to mind). But USC needs the keep the best at home if we realistically want to reach and stay at that elusive “next level”. A successful Kiffin just makes it that much more complicated.

is that if we can win in Knoxville this year, we should win the following year in Columbia to get a three year streak over the Vols. Our current staff is probably the strongest group of recruiters top to bottom we’ve ever had at Carolina. With a three year winning streak, they should be able to fend off Tennessee inroads into the Carolinas.

Georgia obviously has too much talent for a single program in the first place. While I’d rather see Georgia Tech make the Bulldogs work in their backyard, I think Tennessee has a stronger historical presence in Georgia than in South Carolina, despite the Albert Haynesworths and a few others over the past fifteen years. Kiffin may decide to concentrate on Atlanta rather than cast a wide net over the entire Southeast.

It’s a lot of “ifs”, but there is a possibility that a perceived Volunteer revival would not necessarily be a bad thing for South Carolina, especially if the revival is more in perception than on the field results. Regardless, I hope to see Georgia not just win tomorrow, but put a real curb stomping on the Volunteers.