Settling into a rhythm

I’m having a problem. For the last two days, I’ve had a twitch in my right eye. It’s not simply a tic; a tic would be OK. This a full-on, flat-out twitch. My eyelid keeps half-closing and fully opening so fast it’s like watching the world through a 1920s movie camera. Interesting, and it keeps me from getting upset about the twitch, but it’s getting old.

You know what else is getting old? Nothing, I have no segue. I just wanted to talk about my twitching eye, because I find it worth mentioning. I find a lot of things worth mentioning – most of them aren’t – and the advent of social media has made me able to mention these things without concern of whether people care. I simply assume they do.

Just like I assume there are people who care about this blog. After all, I have one follower, so he must care, right? And speaking of this blog – just kidding, here’s the segue – it’s time for me to actually get serious about it. Good timing, since football season officially begins in four days. Are you excited? ‘Course you are. You’re reading my blog and thinking about football. What’s not to be excited about?

UT’s first home game this year is against UT-Martin. This game makes me a little sad, because it means Tennessee will officially be one of the 120 FBS teams that have scheduled an FCS team in an attempt for an easy win – only one other team has yet to play an FBS team, as of last time I checked, and that's been a little bit. Technically, it’s the end of an era, albeit an era no one really cared about.

Not so technically, it’s the start of a brand new one: the Dooley era. I’m going to go ahead and assume your response to Dooley’s hiring was like mine: “Who?” And if you say it wasn’t, you either know way too much about Louisiana Tech, or you’re lying. But having been to a couple practices, interviewed him a couple times and paid attention to him since his hiring, I have to say, I really like this guy.

Lane Kiffin, even if he is a … well, he’s a horrible person, knew how to excite. He brought potential with him in truckloads, and it was obvious by the end of the ’09 season that the Vols could win under him. Dooley’s not like that. He’s quiet, he’s efficient, and he’s effective, but most of all, I think he’s still going to win.

Don’t judge him by his statistics. La. Tech was a ridiculously good team at home, even if it was in the WAC, and Dooley handled both the football team and the entire athletic department during his final two years there. I can’t imagine the amount of stress he would’ve had to put up with.

Compared to that, the UT job won’t be a cakewalk, but it will certainly be more manageable. This guy knows how to lead a college team and he knows what to say to the media and the fans. The only real question remaining is: Does he know how to win? And I think yes. It’ll take time – he’s working with scraps here – but I think he’s going to give the Vols two things they never truly had under Fulmer: turnover efficiency and discipline.

Unfortunately, I also think this is going to take years. So, when you read my season predictions, please keep this in mind. I’m not saying two different things. I’m saying UT will be good again, just not right now. That being said, I’m predicting no more than a 6-6 record for the Vols, and that’s if the entire team stays healthy.

Sorry for the (relatively) short blog. I had a rare, and very welcome, break between my usual 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. run today and thought I’d get this thing written. I didn’t, then I got lazy and didn't start writing against until nearly 2 a.m. I swear I will write predictions tomorrow, and give you a concrete estimate of what the Vols’ record will be, and continue to keep pretending people out there care. (You should. I’m usually pretty good at these.)

For now, though, enjoy my column defending the shift in UT’s schedule for 2011: http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=57112

With his announcement, Favre shocks ... no one!

Starting this blog – and not updating it, as you can probably tell – has shown me something: I suck at blogging. It’s not for lack of trying; I’ve actually sat down to write something at least five or six times since I first posted. It’s that I really can’t keep a serious train of thought for more than a few hundred words.

But I’m going to try here, so let’s talk about something comforting like … Brett Favre!

OK, that’s not comforting in the slightest, but it is something I think I can go on for ages about.

If you haven’t heard, Mr. Favre (I feel I owe him this title, because anyone who’s old enough to retire three times surely commands a great amount of respect.) has decided to return to the NFL. Again. For the third time.

He said he’s “doing it for the guys.” He’s doing them a favor. Not because he gets $16.5 million and continues a record starting streak that could eclipse 300 this year. It’s really not about him, or so he says.

I think we can all say back to Favre, in unison, that that’s just bull. I truly believe Favre meant it the first time he retired. I also think he realized what kind of gold mine he had stumbled upon when he stirred up rumors that he wanted to return and realized that people would pay him millions both to go away and to play for an opposing team.

Now? Well, now he’s just milking it until he’s too banged up and sore to milk anymore. And right now, his particular Heifer of choice is Brad Childress. If it’s not bad enough that Favre is taking advantage of the fans, the media and his teammates, he’s taking advantage of one of his best friends.

I don’t pretend to like Childress, and I honestly think he’s the reason that Adrian Peterson hasn’t yet eclipsed 2,000 yards, but I will admit he is a truly stand-up guy. And Favre is taking him for a ride. Childress isn’t going to put his foot down on the situation because Favre is a close friend, he will win you games that Sage Rosenfels and Tavaris Jackson cannot and because he’s not going to do that to a guy he knows.

Favre knows this, just as surely as he knew he could use the Jets’ turmoil last year to come out, if not squeaky clean, at least avoiding looking like a BP oil spill and still being able to sign with another team.

For those of you that don’t remember, it was leaked – more likely quietly whispered by Favre himself – that No. 4 played with an injured throwing arm for most of the second half of the Jets’ 2008 season. Looking at the performance of the team, it’s really not surprising at all. Favre has since stated, though, that he would have been more than willing to go injured reserve, but Eric Mangini refused to place him on IR.

Favre said this, of course, after Mangini had been fired, after the Jets were embroiled in numerous other issues and after his shoulder had completely healed. Favre, go on IR and risk snapping his consecutive starts streak? I was, and still am, extremely disappointed with the number of media outlets who bought this. That’s baloney. Favre knows it, I know it and you should too.

Now, he’s coming out with the whole I-was-really-going-to-retire-but-I-owe-these-guys-a-favor story. Again, I have to call bull. The man had the best statistical season of his career last year. His team was a shoo-in for the Super Bowl until his costly game-losing error. He was offered $16.5 million, with the acceptance that he was going to miss all of the spring and summer and probably much of the preseason. Of course he was coming back; now he just has a story to spin so he doesn’t seem quite so dastardly (Sorry, I’ve always really wanted to use that word in a sentence.).

I used to love Favre. The first NFL game I can remember watching in its entirety was Green Bay against Carolina in the 1997 NFC Championship Game. His I’m-going-to-fit-it-through-that-hole-and-logic-be-d***ed mentality helped me fall in love with the game.

But what’s left of the formerly glorious green-and-yellow No. 4 is a bloated and now-purple-and-yellow No. 4 that’s either too prideful or too selfish to realize what he’s doing to everyone else around him. Either way, it’s childish and it doesn’t befit a man that holds a legitimate claim as the greatest quarterback of all time.

I, along with millions of other NFL fans, grew up with Brett Favre. It’s just a shame that, during that time, he didn’t grow up with us.