re: How does Tennessee dig out of their hole?

got a shovel that big?

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Network money to invest in a solid football coach plus solid assistant coaches

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What? Nobody spends like UT and I remember multiple posts on here after they hired Ansley,Chaney and Tee Martin, that talked about the Vols having the "best staff in the SEC"

Not so much now

The issue with Tennessee is this:

Any program "turnaround" begins and ends with in-state recruiting. Outside of Memphis, which sends a lion's share of their talent to Ole Miss and U of Memphis, the in-state talent in Tennessee is really, really mediocre.

In the SEC, SIX states produce more blue-chip recruits than Tennessee: Texas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Easily translated, over half of the conference's teams have a leg-up on the Vols.

Moreover, when you think about the Fulmer Tennessee teams, he was on the bleeding edge of producing teams that were a majority out-of-state. When you think of great Vol players in the 90s and 2000s, you think of: Peyton Manning, Peerless Price, Leonard Little, Tee Martin, Donte Stallworth, Jason Witten, Eric Berry... only one of those players came from Tennessee (Witten). Pretty sure that weird Clausen family was from California as well.

Plainly put, Georgia Tech as a better leg to stand on when rebuilding their program than Tennessee.

It's virtually impossible to rebuild your program without locking up your in-state talent. Moreover, you better hope they are good.

What people don't talk about with the '08-'09 recruiting classes that turned Alabama around was -- a majority of their "big time guys" were actually from the state of Alabama. Julio Jones, Mark Barron, Courtney Upshaw, Marcel Dareus, Dre Kirkpatrick, Nico Johnson, DJ Fluker, and AJ McCarron are all hometown guys. I think all but Nico are still playing in the NFL.

The national recruiting for the Tide really didn't get rolling until 2011... but that's only because of the on-field success Saban had locking up Alabama, and being able to plug holes with guys from nearby Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana along the way.

It's going to be tough for Tennessee to make any kind of an impact unless by some miracle, Nashville stops producing a majority of slow white kids.

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How does Tennessee dig out of their hole?

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Destiny dictates that Tennessee cannot move forward until Fulmer returns to HC and he dies on the field during an embarrassing loss. We seem to be heading in that direction.