Wilson Post Blogs

The predominantly orange clad crowd in the Georgia Dome exhaled a chorus of relief after Tennessee toppled N.C. State, 35-21, in the season opener for both teams.

Vols Coach Derek Dooley’s seat cooled considerably while N.C. State’s Tom O’Brien’s seat was noticeably warmer than when he arrived in Atlanta.

Preseason expectations were high in Raleigh. Their fans were banking on a strong secondary and the play of senior quarterback Mike Glennon.

In Knoxville, expectations ran the gamut. Truth be told, no one knew how their heroes would play in the season opener, much less beyond that.

Dooley has taken a lot of heat, but reasonable fans were willing to watch this season play out before rendering judgment.

After the Vols had picked Glennon off four times and receivers ran by NFL cornerback prospect David Amerson, Vols fans were breathing easier.

I don’t know about you, but this year’s opening week of college football is the most exciting I can remember.

In the SEC alone, there are a handful of games that will serve as trendsetters for the rest of the season.

Locally you have Vanderbilt hosting No. 9 ranked South Carolina at a Vanderbilt Stadium. The stadium has undergone the most off-season improvements since the early 1980s when Maryland opened the Commodores home schedule. It was an electric night capped by a Vanderbilt win.

Tonight you will see new lights. A state of the art scoreboard. New field turf. It won’t take fans long to notice.

ESPN is televising the 6 p.m. start tonight. A blimp will be hovering overhead.

South Carolina has designs on winning the SEC East. A loss to Vanderbilt tonight will toss the Gamecocks out of the hen house.

Friday night in the Georgia Dome, Tennessee takes on ACC member N.C. State.

This is a special time of the year.

Football is in the air and Friday night, Lebanon High christens its new football stadium against Franklin County.

The Blue Devils would rather forget Week Zero (I will never understand that math) against state powerhouse, Mt. Juliet.

There is nothing like the first game in a brand new stadium. The popcorn tastes better. The band has some extra pep in its step. It’s a great spot to run into friends you haven’t seen this summer.

The new Lebanon High School has a lot of similar features that Mt. Juliet used when it built its new school. If only the Blue Devils football program could become as competitive as Mt. Juliet’s.

Football isn’t the only thing to get excited about around Middle Tennessee.

Goodlettsville’s Little League team is undefeated in the Little League World Series, the first time since 1974 an area team won its first two games in the event. Their next game is Thursday against Texas, also winners of its first two games.

Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin attended Sunday’s game against California and it was as good a game as you can find. Goodlettsville had to rally to take a 9-6 decision.

Corbin said the atmosphere surrounding the Little League World Series is similar in a lot of ways to the College World Series.

He also said if you are a baseball fan, the Little League World Series should to be on your bucket list. I would agree.

I remember how important playing Little League baseball was when I was that age. Every time it looked as if that day’s game was going to be rained out, I watched the sky closer than any certified meteorologist ever did.

If it was rained out, my whole day was ruined. I had to wait another week to play a game.

We never got to Williamsport. We did travel 15 miles or so to Erwin to play their All-Stars. My buddy Johnny Leach hit a home run as a train was passing just beyond the outfield fence. Spectators claimed the ball landed in one of the coal cars and I always contended it was the longest home run hit in Little League history. Think about it. He hit a ball from Erwin to Kansas City, or wherever that car came to rest.

Moving to Hendersonville, Steven Fox captured the U.S. Amateur crown at Cherry Hills CC in Colorado Sunday, winning a 36-hole match-play marathon that required an extra hole before engravers were cleared to put Fox’s name on the Havemeyer trophy.

It didn’t come easy for Fox, a senior at Chattanooga. He was the No. 35 seed in the 36-man field and dodged a number of bullets to reach the finals. He becomes only the second player in history to win from that position.

Down two holes with two to play, it looked bleak for Fox. But he would record back-to-back birdies to catch Cal’s Michael Weaver. Weaver could have closed Fox out with a 5-foot birdie putt on No. 18. It appeared to be destined for the cup, but it spun out.

Even Fox gasped when the putt failed to drop. He finished Weaver off on the playoff hole with yet another birdie putt.

So Middle Tennesseans have had a lot to cheer about. And we still have a full football season ahead of us. 

Contact Sports Columnist Joe Biddle at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

With each passing Major golf tournament, the odds of Tiger Woods passing Jack Nicklaus as the all-time leader in Major championships grow longer.

This is not the Tiger that once had the PGA Tour by the tail.

This is not the Tiger Woods that, when he showed up at a Major, everyone in the field didn’t think they were playing for second. They knew it.

Woods has been possessed with becoming the all-time leader in winning Major tournaments.

There are only four a year – the Masters, U.S. and British Opens and the PGA Championship.

This year, Woods failed to register a single round under par on weekend rounds in all four Majors.

By JOE BIDDLE

To this point, I must admit the London Olympic Games have been most enjoyable to watch.

I can’t remember a recent Olympics that had as many unusual human-interest stories as this one.

Seriously, does it get any better than having a legally blind archer set a world record in the men’s individual archery ranking round?

That’s exactly what Im Dong-Hyun did, despite the fact he can’t read a newspaper at arms length and he can only see blurred colors and lines at the target 76 yards away. He cannot see anything out of his right eye.

Then there is the Blade Runner, 25-year-old South African double amputee Oscar Pistorius, who runs on a set of carbon blades.

Pistorius had both legs below his knees amputated, but he qualified for the 400-meter semifinals, an incredible accomplishment by any measure. He will compete in South Africa’s 4x400-meter relay team Thursday.

By JOE BIDDLE

Titans Coach Mike Munchak is enjoying his favorite part of the NFL calendar.

Don’t bother to hazard a guess as to Munchak’s choice.

You won’t get it.

It’s the first 10 days of training camp. Huh? This guy has been involved in 30 NFL training camps. He was a Hall of Fame offensive lineman for the Houston Oilers. He hung up the cleats and became an assistant coach for the Oilers/Titans.

Munchak is in his second season as Titans head coach. Although NFL training camps have changed dramatically in recent years, Munchak holds firm that it’s the first 10 days that give him the most satisfaction and joy.

Why? It’s all about football. Teaching football. Teaching technique. Watching his team take shape, forming what will be its identity.

Mike Munchak is first and foremost a teacher. His classroom is the football field.

“Really, it’s the first 10 days for me because there are no games to be played,’’ Munchak said on the eve of training camp 2012.

The NCAA dropped the hammer on Penn State football this week.

The sanctions will cripple the football program for at least 10 years.

Everything the late Joe Paterno built came crumbling down. His statue at Beaver Stadium was dismantled and hauled away.

If only Paterno and those above him had taken a stand. If only they had moved to stop former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, a convicted sexual predator whose victims were young boys from broken homes.

While the 68-year-old Sandusky will live out his life in prison, his victims are burdened with the stigma he caused forever.

Hindsight being 20/20, Paterno should have acted on evidence that Sandusky was involved in a sordid world of child sexual abuse.

Instead, he ignored it as he and Penn State administrators tried to cover it up. Their wrongful decisions cost the university dearly. They will spend years digging out from under the NCAA punishment.

So how will Paterno be remembered? Those close to Penn State will look at all the good things Paterno did while becoming an icon who grew larger than the university.

Paterno wielded more power than anyone on campus and arguably anyone in the state. What Joe said was the final word.

Few will now recognize him as college football’s winningest coach. The NCAA stripped the school and thus Paterno of all football victories compiled from 1988 through 2011.

For Paterno, that meant striking 111 of his wins from the record. It dropped him to fifth on the FBS list, eighth overall – from 409 wins to 298. It put retired Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden atop FBS coaches.

Paterno’s legacy has been damaged forever. All the good he did was negated by what he refused to do to --  stop a heinous assistant coach on his staff from molesting young boys on the Penn State campus and in his home.

Blind loyalty, that old school male bonding between football coaches, cost Paterno his place in college football history.

South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier got to know Paterno when their teams met in a bowl game. Before the game, Spurrier asked Paterno if he would have his picture taken with him. Paterno readily agreed.

Spurrier placed that picture in his den. Paterno was the first person Spurrier has ever asked to pose for a picture.

Paterno influenced hundreds of coaches in the profession. He ran a clean program. He disciplined his players when they crossed a line. He was for everything decent in college athletics. But when it came to making the most difficult decision of his life, Joe Paterno went against all he believed in. He tried to hide from the truth, hoping it would all go away.

In doing so, Paterno ruined his reputation. He helped put his beloved football program and his school in NCAA hell.

Football at Penn State will never be the same, and maybe that’s a good thing. As NCAA President Dr. Mark Emmert said Monday, the culture surrounding elite college football programs has to be changed.

It’s too late for Joe Paterno and Penn State. Years of civil and criminal trials are on the horizon. Yes, some of the victims who face NCAA sanctions are blameless.

The players weren’t aware of Sandusky and his demented acts.

But Joe Paterno knew enough to act on what he had been told. Alas, he chose not to.

Contact Sports Columnist Joe Biddle at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  

If you are like most college football fans, you take your favorite team’s upcoming schedule and go down the list.

You give out wins, losses and tossups and total them up for a best case-worse case scenario for your team. It’s a great way to pass the time before that first kickoff and the season starts to roll downhill.

BeyondTheBets.com is one of several on-line sites that provide projections and let you decide.

There has been a lot of chatter among Tennessee fans as to how many wins Coach Derek Dooley needs to save his job.

Certainly current Athletics Director Dave Hart has given no indication as to what that number is, or if he even has a number.

One thing for sure: Dave Hart is looking for improvement in all aspects of the program and winning games is the best defense Dooley has.

Beyond The Bets has Tennessee’s line at 7½ wins. Which side of the fence do you see the Vols on?

Let’s play the games on paper, admittedly a risky proposition.

The Vols need to get out of the gate with a win and it won’t come easy against N.C. State in the Georgia Dome. I think this game is a must win if the Vols are going to have a solid season. A tossup.

They have three pastry opponents including Georgia State, coached by Bill Curry. The program is still in its infancy and the Vols won’t stumble here.

Akron and Troy are must wins. I wonder how full Neyland Stadium will be for these three games?

Now, let’s get to the meat of the schedule.

After Georgia State, Florida comes to town. Will Muschamp is feeling the heat in Gainesville. In a Knoxville New-Sentinel poll as to which SEC coach’s seat is the hottest, Dooley gathered 66 percent of more than 2,000 voters. Muschamp was a distant second at 17 percent with Kentucky’s Joker Phillips at 11 percent.

Florida is a swing game, one Dooley has to win to convince Hart there is progress being made. I think the Vols outscore the Gators and keep hope alive.

After Akron, the Vols go Between the Hedges, a place Dooley became most familiar with during the years his father, Vince, coached the Dawgs.

It’s another swing game, one I believe the Vols will lose.

After an open date, the Vols stay on the road at Mississippi State. This is a must win for both programs -- one I think the Vols will find a way to win.

Next up is defending national champion Alabama in Knoxville. Won’t be a fun time in K-town. Tide rolls.

A trip to South Carolina is no place to lick your wounds. The Gamecocks won 11 games last year for the first time in school history. Vols lose here.

Now it gets easier. After Troy, the Vols welcome SEC newcomer Missouri. Vols show the Tigers what it’s all about.

A trip to Vanderbilt should be a pivotal game for both programs and how long has it been since anyone said that? The Commodores couldn’t find a way to beat what was arguably the worst Tennessee team they will play, but this one is a tossup.

The Vols finish with a win against Kentucky.

I have them winning seven games, with N.C. State and Vanderbilt as tossups.

I predict they will split those games, giving them an 8-4 season and a bowl invitation. Dooley survives.

Contact Sports Columnist Joe Biddle at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Texas A&M and Missouri officially became new members of the Southeastern Conference on July 1.

Their real induction comes next week when they join 12 other teams, each represented by their head football coaches and three players at the annual SEC Football Media Days in Birmingham.

I was there the day then-SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer welcomed Arkansas and South Carolina to the conference in 1992.

I had known and covered Kramer during his days as Vanderbilt’s athletics director. But the day he wore a large plastic Razorback snout on his head, was indeed groundbreaking.

It was totally out of character for Kramer, who was always dignified in his role at Vanderbilt and as the SEC’s commissioner.

For the first time in Vanderbilt basketball history, the Commodores saw two players taken in the first round of the NBA Draft.

John Jenkins went No. 23, to the Atlanta Hawks. Festus Ezeli was the last first round player taken, No. 30 by Golden State. The Commodores could have made it three, but Jeffery Taylor was the first player taken in the second round.

The only draft picks to get guaranteed money are first rounders. Those in the second round start their NBA careers behind the 8-ball, as their teams don’t have significant money invested in them.

Prior to Jenkins and Ezeli, the Commodores have had only three first round picks, dating back to the first year of the draft, 1957.

Let the Jerry Sandusky case serve as a cautionary tale to parents of young children.

Don’t ever believe that sexual predators such as the former Penn State defensive coordinator don’t exist in your town.

Some of them are teachers. Some of them are youth coaches. Some of them are volunteers who hang around kids’ games. Some of them live next door.

Sandusky was a man to be revered around the storied Penn State football program. He established a foundation designed to help young kids from broken homes learn life lessons.

They didn’t need the kind of help Sandusky forced on them.

How difficult is too difficult when it comes to golf courses?

When difficult shamelessly flirts with impossible.

I have never played Olympic Club at San Francisco. I pray I will never have to.

Watching the world’s best golfers play the Alcatraz of golf courses was enough to convince me. That, and the fact I could not stuff enough golf balls in my golf bag to get me through the first six holes.

If the rough that makes the place look like a deserted field isn’t enough to diminish your golf ball supply, you can always count on those golf ball-eating trees they have guarding the Olympic Club fairways.

The Big O chewed up the world’s best golfers and spit them out in the Bay.

Take Tiger Woods for instance. He had two fabulous rounds and I thought: hey, he is back. Really back.

Whether they win a game or not, the Stony Brook Seawolves are the story of this year’s College World Series.

I am sure I have heard of Stony Brook somewhere in my past of writing and talking about sports. For the life of me, I could not tell you anything about it without going to my research assistant, Mr. Google.

For all I knew, its most famous graduate was Rebecca of Stony Brook Farm fame.

Is Tiger Woods for real this time?

Or was Tiger teasing us? Again.

The magic was back when it had to be Sunday at the House That Jack Built, i.e. The Memorial Tournament.

Tiger won for the fifth time at Muirfield, golfing legend Jack Nicklaus’ creation.

He had to do it under pressure. He did it by making three birdies on the final four holes. His flop shot birdie on No. 16 was one for the ages.

The Golden Bear himself said so. He called it the best shot he had ever seen at his tournament and considering the circumstances, the finest shot he has ever seen.

There was no margin for error on Tiger’s shot from the rough. It came out high, and landed soft as a butterfly. It found the crest of the green and began slowly rolling down the slope.

With a 7-15 record, eight games below .500, Vanderbilt’s baseball team was in danger of not making the NCAA Tournament field for the first time in seven years.

What happened after that makes this the best coaching job Commodores Coach Tim Corbin has done on West End.

Corbin overcame losing key players from the first Vanderbilt team to make the College World Series.

The pitching staff was young and inexperienced. Corbin could not have turned the season around if not for the job turned in by veteran pitching coach Derek Johnson.

They closed the regular season with a 10-2 record and carried over the momentum by winning their first four games in the SEC Tournament, placing them in Sunday’s championship game against Mississippi State.

Titans Coach Mike Munchak has his work cut out for him.

If he pays any attention to what Cantor Gaming in Las Vegas (Where else?) has to say about the Titans, Munchak might as well get ready for a long, disappointing season.

They could scrap Organized Team Activities. Do away with training camp. Go through the motions during preseason games.

Why?

While most Titans fans are optimistic about the team being able to put in a full off-season of work, the folks at Cantor say the numbers don’t lie.

So, before the Titans break the first sweat as a team, Cantor has offered its predictions for the coming season.

The Predators are dead in the frozen water. The Memphis Grizzlies joined the Preds Sunday by losing Game 7 to the Los Angeles Clippes in their first-round NBA playoff series.

The NFL draft has come and gone. Spring practices have concluded for college football programs. Future college basketball players have decided on which school they will grace with their talent.

In other words, it is a slow time of the season if you are a sports fan.

That often prompts a flurry of various lists compiled by sportswriters around the country.

The Sporting News has released its annual list that ranks all Division I college football coaches. It is highly subjective and one of two TSN writers who compile this list is Matt Hayes. I have known Matty for years. He delights in taking jabs at fan bases known for their thin skins.

For starters, Tennessee Coach Derek Dooley is considered the worst coach in the SEC, including the coaches from Missouri and Texas A&M, who have yet to stick their toes in the SEC pool.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees joined the thousands who showed up to mourn and honor the life of Junior Seau with a paddle out on surfboards in the ocean in front of Seau’s Oceanside home.

They chanted Seau’s number, the 55 that was on his jersey throughout his 20 years with the Chargers, Dolphins and Patroits.

Seau died in his house after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his chest. Two days earlier he had played in a charity golf tournament where he was the jovial, accommodating Junior Seau fans instantly connected with and loved.

The family is growing close to making a decision that would allow researchers at Boston University’s School of Medicine to study the impact that multiple concussions have on NFL players’ brains.

Seau is the third former NFL player to commit suicide in recent years. Researchers suspect a link between concussions and depression and dementia/Alzheimer’s disease.

Now we will see what the Nashville Predators are made of.

They find themselves on the short end of a 2-0 deficit in the best-of-seven series with Phoenix.

Losing the first two games of the series wasn’t easy for the Preds. They just made it look that way.

They managed to lose the first game in overtime after outplaying the Coyotes all over the stat sheet. In a must-win Game 2, the Preds left their defense at the team hotel as they allowed Phoenix to score five goals in a series in which hockey analysts predicted would be a low-scoring affair due to outstanding credentials of both teams’ goalies.

So Kentucky’s national championship team scattered to the winds after hoisting the trophy.

So what?

All five starters – three freshmen, two sophomores – declared for the upcoming NBA Draft. That included National Player of the Year Anthony Davis.

Cats Coach John Calipari never shed a tear. Instead, he was a proud papa at their press conference, in which he participated.

Conversely, Coach Cal realizes it is today’s system and embraces it. While he says he doesn’t like the NBA rule that prohibits a player to declare for the draft until they turn 19, Calipari is miles ahead of the curve on college coaches who have not adjusted to the rule.

Calipari is King of One and Done. He sells recruits a ticket to the NBA after one year. It is not a recruiting ploy. He backs it up. Calipari pushes the baby birds out of the nest and watches them fly.