Phillip Fulmer Comments from December 31 News Conference

On playing in the Outback Bowl:
“We’re very excited about playing this game against a great Penn State football team and a legendary, tremendously respected coach Paterno. We’re prepared as much as we can be. Certainly there are areas that we have struggled through the course of the year that we hope we have improved some as we get ready to play Penn State. All of that will be seen on Monday. Our greatest asset to this point has been our attitude during the course of the year, our responsiveness as we’ve overcome several injuries and a couple disappointing losses. We’ve put those to use, we’ve talked about them, and we’re looking forward to playing now.”

On the loss of receiver Bret Smith:
“It’s an academic process, so I’m not going to speak at great lengths about it. We thought it was cleared up; it turned out it wasn’t quite. We’re always, as I said in the statement, going to err on the side of caution to make sure everything is in the right order. Josh Briscoe will play the inside receiver when we run three and four-wides. He’s done fine during the course of the year, and we expect to go on.”

On beating a Joe Paterno-coached team:
“It’s not really the two coaches that are playing against each other; it’s the players on the field. I think keeping that in perspective is very important. We’ve done that once before without the greatest of results. We look forward to that. It’s exciting to be able to go against Joe Paterno.”

On the Penn State Nittany Lions:
“Certainly when you watch Penn State on tape and you see how they’ve given up in the last four games 26 points there’s a lot of things that define what this team is. The last time we played them I think we jumped out to a 10 point lead early in the ballgame and we had a player basically running wide open across the middle, dropped a pass, and that almost changed everything. The thing I remember is that we had an unbelievably tough time stopping the run. We have been in the past, typically, a good run defense. Our big concern, and history would tell you this, they’re going to be physical and run the ball.”

On Penn State tailback Tony Hunt:
“Hunt, I think, is a fantastic football player. I don’t know that we’ve played two or three backs this year that are better than him. He is fantastic.”

On Erik Ainge returning to form since injury earlier this season:
“Erik has done fine. We’ve been really trying to get Erik back on track since the injury. I’m hopeful that he’s on track like he was earlier this season because he was playing extremely well and at one point I said he had a chance to be perhaps the all-conference quarterback in the league.” On the progress of his Tennessee team: “From where we started coming off of last year and where we are now it’s still about putting the exclamation point on the season and finishing it with the same pride and respect that we started the Cal game with.”

On his approach to bowl preparation:
“The first several years that I did this I thought we had a pretty good formula, I really did. Things were rocking along pretty good and the results were good. Then we hit a couple years there where it just didn’t happen for us very well. When we went to the Cotton Bowl two years ago I changed considerably. It is a balancing act between how much contact you’re going to have and what events. We had a very nice event at the beach yesterday. We were there an hour and 12 minutes. We saw everybody and came back home and went to practice. So, keeping their focus on why you’re here is the key.”

On his team playing in a New Year’s Day bowl game:
“Last December wasn’t much fun; it wasn’t any fun. I’ve reminded them about that at every turn, I can promise you. They’re excited about playing.”