Just 35 days (that’s 5 weeks!) until Football Time in Tennessee!

No. 35 Robert Nelson
Class: Freshman
Hometown: Stone Mountain, Ga.

High School: Stone Mountain
Height / Weight: 5-11 / 198
Position: LB
UTsports.com — VolsToTheWall

This morning I highlighted Dr. Jeff Masters’ blog entry about how 15 nations around the world have set heat records this year.

Much has been written in the mainstream media about heat waves affecting the northeastern U.S. and other parts of the world. Yet very little has been said about the bitter cold temperatures currently impacting South America. Yes, it’s winter down there. But these temps are cold even for winter, having claimed more than 400 lives so far.

There’s no doubt that the globe is very hot right now. This might well go down as the hottest year on record (though I suspect La Nina is going to have something to say about that before we get to the end of December). But can you imagine the response of the MSM if extreme heat had killed 400 people

? (Yes, I realize more than 1,000 have died in Russa…but most of those were the result of drinking too much before swimming rather than a result of the heat itself.)

In that same vein, you don’t see nearly as many news reports about the record cool summer temperatures on the West Coast (where meteorologists are beginning to refer to it as “the year without a summer”) as you see about the very warm temperatures in the Northeast.

If Tennessee fans need another example of why they’re going to have to give Derek Dooley some time to right the listing ship in Knoxville, John Pennington’s current recruiting chart is a perfect example.

Using a points system similar to that used by Rivals.com, with 5 points awarded for a 5-star commitment, 4 points for a 4-star commitment, etc., Pennington tallies the 2011 commitments of each SEC school thus far. Not surprisingly, Alabama is in the lead, with 52 points.

Tennessee has 19 points.

With the commitment today of a couple more 3-star recruits, Tennessee’s total would be 25, tying the Vols with South Carolina.

But that’s still far down the list. And all of the commitments the Vols do have are 3-star players. When it comes to 4-star players, Alabama and Florida have six each (‘Bama has a 5-star kid thrown in for good measure). Georgia has five. Tennessee has none.

There is already a sizable talent gap between the Vols and their chief rivals, and it’s only getting bigger. In fact, some of UT’s secondary rivals might be on their way to catching up in the talent department. Kentucky, for example, appears to be having a good recruiting year (by Kentucky standards, at least).

This isn’t necessarily an indication that Dooley and his staff aren’t good recruiters. It remains to be seen whether they can recruit effectively in the SEC, but it’s too early to make that call one way or the other. Instead, Dooley appears to be taking a different approach. Mack Crowder, who committed to Tennessee today, fits the same profile of many of the Vols’ other 2011 commitments. He has a modest rating from the major recruiting services, but he also has a 3.9 GPA.

Lane Kiffin had a very good recruiting class in 2009 and was on pace for another great one in 2010 before USC came calling. But a pretty strong argument can be made that Kiffin’s approach wasn’t the best approach for the program. The biggest news from Kiffin’s recruits so far has been crime, dismissals, and transfers.

Dooley, on the other hand, appears determined to rebuild things from the ground up: laying the foundation with the 3-star guys, then building his way back towards the top. It’s a strategy that might work, but it isn’t going to happen overnight.

Next year’s recruiting class isn’t going to be very good for Tennessee. Barring some major surprises (of the pleasant variety) on the field this fall, it might be the worst recruiting class for the Vols in a lot of years, in fact. But if Dooley’s plan works, 2012 will be an improvement, and 2013 better still.

The question is this: Will Tennessee’s infamously impatient fan base be willing to wait?

@JPARKER_VOTC Cool. I didn’t know Maury was go ing to be

in Scott County today.

Mack Crowder, a 3-star offensive lineman from Bristol, has committed to Tennessee. He had an extensive list of offers, including South Carolina and Vanderbilt in the SEC. InsideTennessee.com broke the news moments ago.

UPDATE: Brendan Downs, a 3-star tight end who is Crowder’s teammate, has also committed to Tennessee.

Lane Kiffin thinks the lawsuit filed against him by the Tennessee Titans is more about geography than his unorthodox methods of hiring assistant coaches:

Kiffin claimed he wasn’t allowed to say much Thursday at the Pac-10 media day about the suit facing Kiffin and the Trojans, who angered Titans coach Jeff Fisher by abruptly hiring running backs coach Kennedy Pola last weekend.

Yet the young coach with a history of audacious pronouncements couldn’t stop himself from sharing his thoughts about the real reason for the highly unusual legal action taken by the Titans.

“I think it has to do with the location of the team in the lawsuit,” Kiffin said.

Yep, the world’s biggest human propaganda machine keeps on churning out product.

But if Kiffin had spent a little longer in Tennessee, he might have realized that there is absolutely no love lost between the fan bases of the Titans and the Vols. Sure, those bases overlap a bit, but many UT fans still view the Titans as Nashville’s attempt to compete with Knoxville’s stranglehold on sports in the State of Tennessee and many Titans fans are more sympathetic to the plights of Vanderbilt and MTSU than to the goings-on of their “redneck” brethren to the east. (The UT-Titans relationship was doomed as soon as Bud Adams had the “audacity” to attach the name “Tennessee” to his team, but the fact that the Titans have been one of Peyton Manning’s biggest rivals since Manning entered the league certainly didn’t help matters any.)

Jeff Fisher is a USC alum with absolutely no ties to UT (except the obligatory mention of his name by the obscure rumor mills every time the Vols have a coaching vacancy). Why would he risk alienating his ties to his alma mater to satisfy the vengeful lust of a fan base with which he has no connection?

But that’s Lane Kiffin for you. Always sounding off without having a clue what he’s talking about. Whether it’s accusing a fellow coach of cheating or accusing a recruit’s grandmother of steering him towards an out-of-state team, Kiffin is a frequent example of engaging mouth ahead of brain.

Kiffin did concede that his reputation might be partially to blame for the Titans’ reaction to the Pola scandal.

He has apparently realized that his propensity for making inane remarks has led the entire American football nation to conclude that he’s a jerk. But he followed that remark with his oft-repeated statement that he hasn’t said outrageous stuff in L.A. like he did in Knoxville because USC has tradition and recruits know about USC.

Only an egomaniac with an over-inflated self worth the size of Kiffin’s would believe that blue chip recruits didn’t know anything about the University of Tennessee before he arrived on campus.

You think it’s hot this summer? Most of the Northern Hemisphere would agree with you.

Moscow, Russia, hit 100 degrees for the first time ever yesterday, and Finland hit 99 yesterday…also a record (the old record was 95).

Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground says that makes 14 nations that have recorded record-high temperatures this year. That’s the second most of any single year. The record was 15, set back in 2007 when it was also very hot. In 1998, the so-called “hottest year on record,” only nine nations set heat records.

Some fodder for the global warming theorists: There have been four years when 10 or more nations have set heat records. None of those years were earlier than 2003.

It’s a hot globe out there right now. But we’re headed into a moderate-to-strong La N

ina pattern as temperatures near the equator in the Pacific plunge. That could be a sign of cooler days down the road.

Although hurricane season has been with us since the beginning of June, the peak of the season begins Aug. 1. It has been a very slow season in the tropics thus far, with only two named storms. But that can all change in a hurry when August and September arrive.

And, right on cue, there are a couple of disturbances in the Atlantic that bear watching. The first is just entering the eastern Caribbean and the National Hurricane Center gives it a 10% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone over the next 48 hours. That isn’t much, but it bears watching.

The second one is much more interesting. With August’s arrival comes the Cape Verdes season, when tropical waves peel off the coast of Africa and become cyclonic as they march across the Atlantic. The first wave has already developed just off the coast, and is already being given a 20% chance of developing into a cyclone over the next 48 hours.

Many models do show this system becoming a tropical storm or hurricane. Those models right now steer this thing a little north of the Gulf of Mexico, but have it taking aim at the East Coast. Dr. Jeff Masters:

Looking at climatology based on research done by Dr. Bob Hart at Florida State University,, 90L has a 36% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone by 2pm Saturday. NHC is putting these odds at 20%. Dr. Hart also has an experimental product showing that historically, about 30% of all tropical cyclones at 90L’s current position eventually hit land as a hurricane. Of course, 90L is not yet a tropical cyclone, but these odds suggest that 90L has the potential to become a dangerous Cape Verdes-type hurricane that will affect land.

There is some sign that impressive ridging that has had a death-grip on the Southeast for much of the summer might start to relax a little bit in the next couple of weeks, and the Gulf of Mexico waters have overcome their cool start that were due to last winter’s cold weather. The surface of the GOMEX is now bathtub-warm.

Those factors combined might make for an active remainder of the tropical season.

Churchill’s false teeth sell for $23,000.

Longtime newspaper editor Steve Oden jokes about  passing by a yard sale in Alabama and seeing customers picking through a bucket of dentures, by turns taking a set and popping them into their mouth to see how they fit and then either paying for them and going on their way or throwing them back into the bucket and trying another pair. But $23,000 for another man’ s teeth i

s taking it a little far.

Just 36 days until football time in Tennessee!

No. 36 Anthony Anderson
Class: Junior
Hometown: Knoxville, Tenn.
High School: Austin East
Height / Weight: 6-0 / 185
Position: DB