Many locations across Tennessee saw their first snowflakes of the season last night and this morning, giving the state its first real taste of winter two days before meteorological winter begins (Dec. 1).

Now that winter has arrived, will it stick around? After a couple of days with temps in the low 40s, models are progging 50s to return by the end of the week. Valley locations should even go into the low 60s by the end of the weekend.

That’s warmer than normal for this time of year, although it is slightly cooler than what we saw for much of November.

Models are also projecting another round of cold air for early next week, potentially accompanied by another chance of snow. The National Weather Service is currently forecasting a high of 50 on Monday for the Plateau. If model trends continue, those temps will probably be adjusted downward as we get closer to the weekend.

But, again, it looks as though the cold air will just be a glancing blow — diving in and scooting out with no lasting consequences.

That’s the overall theme for December as we head towards Christmas. In fact, if you’re looking for a second consecutive white Christmas, you might have to be looking for a pattern change by the second half of December. Because the first half, at least, looks like it could potentially wind up being quite warm.

La Nina winters lend themselves to milder-than-average conditions in our region if other atmospheric conditions don’t line up right. Last year, a moderate-to-strong La Nina was overcome by an alignment of teleconnections that created cold and snowy conditions for much of December and January.

Thus far, that hasn’t been the case this season. And, for the next couple of weeks, at least, it doesn’t look like it will be.

There are a number of teleconnections that play a role in determining our weather here in the Southeastern U.S. But for the purposes of this post (and most others), my focus is on three: the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation and the Pacific North American (PNA) ridge index.

To recap from previous discussions: the NAO is a measure of storminess in the northern Atlantic, where a positive NAO represents atmospheric conditions that allow storms to progress fine and a negative NAO represents conditions that do not. Thus, a +NAO often correlates with warmer-than-average weather in the South, while a -NAO often correlates with colder-than-average weather, especially if blocking sets up in the northern Atlantic.

Similarly, the AO is a measure of atmospheric conditions in the Arctics, where a positive AO represents the ability for cold air to stay bottled up in northern latitudes and a negative AO represents the ability for colder air to be dumped southward. Thus, a +AO often correlates with warmer-than-average weather in the South, while a -AO often correlates with colder-than-average weather.

The PNA is a measure of heights in the eastern Pacific, where a positive PNA represents ridging and a negative PNA represents troughiness. A +PNA often means that troughs set up over the eastern U.S., while a -PNA often means that ridging sets up over the East.

None of those are absolutes, but together they can provide a reasonable picture of what to expect in the days and weeks that lie ahead.

Early last week I posted that atmospheric conditions across the Northern Hemisphere were becoming more conducive for cold, wintry weather in our region. That isn’t really the case now, as models have shifted somewhat over the past seven days.

Using this morning’s 0z run of the GFS computer model, here is what those teleconnections are projected to do over the next couple of weeks, starting with the NAO, followed by the AO and the PNA:

The black lines represent real, observed values for each teleconnections over the past few months, while each red line represents one of the ensemble members of the GFS going forward. Each ensemble member uses different initiating values to try and get a better handle on what the weather will be going forward. When ensembles are in good agreement, that’s generally a pretty good indication that they’re locked on to the proper solution.

Notice that a number of the ensemble members project the NAO to start trending towards neutral territory towards mid December. But, in the meantime, the NAO is going to stay in positive territory, which is where it has been for most of the fall season. If the GFS is correct, the NAO will slowly improve for wintry weather chances over the next couple of weeks, but it should be noted that the GFS has been consistently projecting the NAO to be more negative than it has been over the last several months.

The AO remains a train-wreck for the next couple of weeks; the GFS ensembles are all over the board but they all show the AO staying in positive territory.

The PNA trended into positive territory this week, but it looks like it will go back to negative territory over the next few days and could wind up in moderately negative territory by the middle of the month.

Taken together, a +NAO, a +AO and a -PNA are a pretty good recipe for warm weather in the South. So if short-sleeve weather in December is your idea of a good time, there’s probably a better than average chance that you’re going to be pleased with what the month has in store…at least for the first half.

It has to be noted, of course, that much of last winter also featured a -PNA, yet we still saw cold and snowy weather in the East. But last winter also featured a -NAO and, perhaps more importantly, an AO that plunged sharply into negative territory, canceling out the impact of the -PNA.

It should also be noted that what happens in December doesn’t necessarily correlate to what’s going to happen in January or February. The winter of 1985 comes to mind as a perfect example. December 1984 was very warm, but January 1985 brought about a pattern change that saw repeated winter storms impact much of Tennessee, creating a harsh winter with a lasting legacy.

With that said, the NAO has been in a predominately negative state for the past couple of years. Already, this predominately negative state of the NAO is one of the longest-lived on record. So at some point, it stands to reason that things will balance out with a period of a predominately positive NAO. And while it has been said — here and elsewhere — that there’s no reason to think that the NAO will stay predominately positive this winter, there’s also really no reason to think that it won’t. Bottom line: it’s a waiting game, but the models seem to indicate that the next couple of weeks will feature mild weather.

A weather phenomenon that is relatively uncommon is unfolding across West Tennessee tonight.

A cold-core upper level low is producing snow across much of the western third of the state, with up to 5 in. of accumulation reported in isolated areas. Most places will see 2-3 in., with lesser amounts further east and north.

Winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories are out across much of the western half of the state.

The winter weather advisories extend as far east as Grundy County, but stay well south of I-40 on this end of the state.

This system is the one I alluded to last week that was showing up as a snow storm on the models for the northern Plateau. As it turned out, the models were correct in their assessment of a snow-producing ULL — a rarity in November — but they were wrong in their placement. For reasons I won’t begin to try to comprehend, West Tennessee typically sees more wintry weather from these ULLs than the Plateau region.

These ULLs are able to pull cold air to the surface, creating an unusual situation where areas directly beneath the system are the ones that see wintry weather (whereas with surface lows it is the areas on the northwest side of the system that see the wintry weather), and where the cold front moves northeast instead of southeast. That shows up well on this 12 a.m. surface analysis from wunderground.com. As the front enters Ohio, it’s actually moving almost due north, making it totally inverted from normal:

And here is a pretty spectacular radar shot from intellicast.com at midnight. Notice the very sharp cutoff of the precipitation on the back side here in the eastern quadrant of this system. That’s unusual and pretty cool…

If you’re a weather buff like I am, you can’t help but admire systems like this one. It has been a very complex weather maker that first started out with copious amounts of rain — the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River will crest later tonight in excess of 60,000 cfs, which is about 25 ft. above normal — and then the ULL got cranked up, producing the unusual push of cold air from south to north — leaving places like Indianapolis and Columbus with much warmer temperatures than Memphis and Huntsville, Ala., which is very unusual — and providing some extremely isolated locations in West Tennessee with more snow from a November storm than they often times see from storms in January or February.

Amazing.

With her husband en tow, Barbara Dooley visited Oneida Monday to help raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of Scott County. And mostly she talked about her life as the wife of legendary Georgia coach and athletics director Vince Dooley.

But with Tennessee just 48 hours removed from its gut-wrenching 10-7 loss to Kentucky, obviously her life as the mother of UT coach Derek Dooley factored in.

Barbara Dooley said that her son was upbeat and positive after the Kentucky game, saying that it was hard for her to call him once the game was over, but he wounded up being the one who lifted her spirits.

“He said, ‘Mom, we’re on the right road. I promise you that this will not happen again,’” Dooley said. “He was so positive that he was cheering me up.”

Vince Dooley said that his son has gone through some “tough times” at Tennessee. But, he added, that’s just part of it.

“In this business you’re going to go through the tough times,” he said. “Derek inherited a tough situation. He has a lot of young players and a very difficult schedule. So we’re very excited for the future.”

Vince Dooley said he tried to persuade his son not to follow in his old man’s footsteps as a coach. “We sent him to a good law school, and he got a law degree and landed a job with a good firm,” he said. “But after a few years he called me and said, ‘Dad, I’m just not happy.’ I tried to argue with him but they trained him to argue in college, so needless to say, I lost that debate.”

Even as a growing number of Tennessee fans are already longing for a coaching change, Barbara Dooley said that she is still building her orange wardrobe.

“For years, all the teams we hated wore orange,” she said. “Florida, Auburn, Clemson, Tennessee…

“But,” she added, “here we are in Tennessee, and we’re loving every minute of it.”

Known for her saucy attitude — she called an Atlanta radio show earlier this fall to set a couple of Knoxville reporters straight after they suggested that Dooley might be on the hot seat, and her husband said Monday that when his wife has a thought, “she usually doesn’t filter it before it comes out of her mouth” — Barbara Dooley had a few tales to tell about Vince Dooley. She also talked about Derek Dooley’s days of growing up in the home with a Southern football legend.

“When he was 10 years old, I was pregnant (with what would have been her fifth child),” she said. “We decided to tell the kids, and so we called a family meeting for five o’clock. Of course, they all thought we were getting divorced or something and they didn’t even leave the house that day. At five o’clock, Vincent came in and we sat down and I said, ‘I’m pregnant.’ Derek just fell off his stool. He said, ‘Thank God. I thought you were going to say we’re going to Auburn.’”

The Dooleys, who advocate family prayer time each night, used to pray about winning football games, both said. It was the standard prayer: may the best team win. But, Vince conceded, “Barbara didn’t really believe in that.”

“I didn’t care anything about who the best team was,” Barbara added. “I just wanted to win games.”

When Georgia faced Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl for the national championship, Barbara Dooley approached the Notre Dame president at a luncheon the day before the game.

“I said, ‘I know about your network,’” she said. “‘Do you think God will help you win?’”

The Notre Dame prez told her that his God “doesn’t have time for football.”

“I smiled and said, ‘Well, you’re in trouble, because mine does,’” she said. “The next day, after we won, I wanted to go look him up and say, ‘you might want to think about switching.’”

When her son was five years old, she said, Derek approached Vince about being on the sideline of a Thanksgiving showdown with arch-rival Georgia Tech.

“Vince told him that if Georgia was far enough ahead at the end of the third quarter, he could go to the sideline for the fourth quarter. He had two rules: stay away from him, and stay away from the team.”

That night, she said, Derek prayed, saying, “Jesus, please help us win by enough points so that I can go to the sideline.”

The following day, Georgia led Tech 42-7 at the end of the third quarter. “As a mother, I thought that was enough of a lead to take Derek to the sideline,” Barbara Dooley said.

“By the time I got to the sideline and had a manager help him over the fence, it was 42-14. By the time I got back to my seat, it was 42-21. Georgia Tech had recovered an onsides kick and had the ball. I look down and there is Derek pulling on Vincent’s pant leg. And I just know it’s going to be my fault.”

Derek continued to pull on his father’ s leg,

she said, until Georgia Tech finally scored to cut the gap to 42-28.

“I saw them have some words, and then Derek went over and sat on the bench,” she said. “After the game, I asked Vince what Derek told him. He said, ‘Daddy, don’t worry. Jesus is just having a little fun with you.’”

No one can really be 100% sure, given the fact that there’s new brass at the top of the ladder, but one can say with a certain degree of confidence that Derek Dooley isn’t going anywhere for now. Dooley will coach the Vols in 2012.

But that doesn’t mean that all of his staff will — or should — return with him.

Exactly what off-season changes Dooley has in mind are anyone’s guess, but from my armchair, these are changes that are pretty doggone important.

1.) Fire Harry Hiestand. Hiestand brought a boat-load of credential with him to Knoxville when Dooley lured him away from the NFL. But Tennessee’s offensive line was terrible this season. Pass blocking was okay through much of the season, but run blocking was terrible from the get-go. These players could never handle the schemes. Throw in problems transferring the ball from center to quarterback, and line play was disastrous much of the way. Don’t lose sight of the fact that the offensive line was expected to be one of the strong points of the 2011 Tennessee team.

2.) Hire a runningbacks coach. Right now, offensive coordinator Jim Chaney is more or less coaching the runningbacks in the absence of an assistant coach on staff who can devote time exclusively to that task. It’s an arrangement that clearly isn’t working. Tauren Poole regressed this season and Marlon Lane never emerged. Runningbacks coaching duty needs to be taken out of Chaney’s hands. Former Tennessee runningback Jay Graham has been mentioned as a possible candidate. Why not? Graham was a standout at Tennessee in the mid-1990s and is currently doing a good job as the runningbacks coach at South Carolina.

3.) Fire Darin Hinshaw? Hinshaw has done an admirable job with Tyler Bray, but if Tennessee must rid itself of a coach to free up room for a runningbacks coach, Hinshaw is the most logical guy to be placed before the chopping block. Reason being: Chaney has strong credentials as a quarterbacks coach. It’s reasonable that he could do the job of coaching the position.

4.) Evaluate some other positions.

Receivers coach Charlie Baggett is another of those guys who came to Tennessee with a lot of credentials. But once Justin Hunter went down to injury this year, Tennessee’s receiving corps was average at best. Da’Rick Rogers led the SEC in receptions, but couldn’t duplicate Hunter’s output. Several other highly-touted recruits never emerged as solid targets at receiver. Eric Russell (tight ends/special teams) and Terry Joseph (defensive backs) are a couple of other positions in question. Mychal Rivera emerged as a good receiving target early in the season but disappeared in the second half of the year, and the tight end position was never strong in blocking assignments. Everyone knows Tennessee’s problems on special teams. Russell’s coverage units deserve a lot of credit; those areas were solid. But despite having a punter and placekicker who were highly recruited in high school, the kicking game was sub-par, at best. Tennessee’s pass defense was ranked among the top 25 in the nation at times, but DBs tended to get burned for big plays in man coverage. That unit was hurt by personnel problems, however, and was at times called upon for support in stopping the run, so Joseph probably should be the safest of all these coaches.

5.) Continue to recruit according to needs. One thing Dooley and his staff have done well thus far is recruit according to their needs. That must continue, even though the 2012 class is hitting the home stretch. There’s a big difference between simply targeting guys who are going to make a splash because of their ratings (as Phillip Fulmer seemed to do his last couple of years at Tennessee) and going after guys who can step in and play right away at important positions. There may be no greater position of need right now than runningback. Unfortunately, it’s probably too late to land an SEC-caliber runningback in this class. That doesn’t mean that the Vols shouldn’t pull out the stops and try. Runningback is one of those rare positions where a freshman can step in and contribute immediately. And playing time is definitely there for the taking.

Derek Dooley’s seat is very hot at this point. Tennessee must win eight games next year if he is going to save his job, and the magic number may very well prove to be nine. The status quo probably isn’t going to get it done.

Former Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency spokesman Allen Ricks died yesterday of a rare form of cancer, at the age of 62.

Ricks was one of those people behind the scenes at TWRA. His official title was information & education coordinator in TWRA’s Region IV office. He made a career out of coordinating information between the agency and the public. His job was to make sure that hunters in East Tennessee knew which game seasons were open, what the bag limits were, and what the regulations were.

Ricks also maintained a presence on Tennessee-based internet discussion forums geared towards hunters and sportsmen. Posting under the moniker “Infoman,” he answered questions and chimed in on discussions about hunting deer, turkey and other wild game in Tennessee. That wasn’t part of his job description at TWRA, but he did it anyway, and that was a display of his dedication to Tennessee’s hunting heritage.

For more than thirty years, he worked with the game agency.

I came to know him through my work as a journalist. When I needed a question answered about hunting or fishing in Tennessee, Ricks is the person I turned to. Not once did I ask a question that he didn’t have an answer for, or that he didn’t take time to find an answer for.

Even after he became sick this summer, I called on him a couple of times with questions about various things — Tennessee’s new hog hunting regulations, for instance. He appeared as devoted to his job then as ever.

Diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer in the spring, doctors gave him two months to live in May. Five months later, he was still reporting for work at the TWRA’s Morristown office. He worked until mid October before finally becoming too sick to make it to the office. His son, Jonathan, said at the time, “He wants to go back every day.”

Ricks’ passion was turkey hunting. He was an avid supporter of the National Wild Turkey Federation and its efforts to restore and maintain turkey flocks in East Tennessee. Jerry Lay, former president of the Longbeards of the Big South Fork chapter of the NWTF, said that Ricks “has done more for Tennessee turkey hunters than most people realize.”

Keith Hickman, president of the NWTF’s state chapter, said simply, “Allen was a great man.”

Ricks was also active in other conservation organizations in Tennessee, including the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which played a chief role in helping TWRA build a population of wild elk in the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area.

His job was his passion. And for journalists such as myself, Ricks was an invaluable resource.

Said former Tennessee newspaper editor Steve Oden, “Some folks have a job. Some have a dedication. Allen was one of the latter.”

For a generation, some things in life have been certain: the rising sun, paying taxes, death…and Tennessee beating Kentucky. Even in years when Kentucky fielded its best teams (2007), even in years when Tennessee fielded its worst (2008), the Vols found a way to beat the SEC East’s doormat.

For 9,863 days, Tennessee owned Kentucky.

But with bowl eligibility — and the opportunity to avoid back-to-back losing years for the first time in one hundred years — riding on the line, Tennessee couldn’t continue the streak. Playing a Kentucky team that was using a wide receiver at quarterback and running a variation of the old wing-T offense almost exclusively — with a University of Tennessee retread calling the shots on offense — the Vols themselves became the doormat of the East, losing 10-7 and slipping into last place in the conference with a 1-7 record.

Tennessee bought out North Carolina, which was scheduled to face the Vols in Neyland Stadium this season, to provide insurance that the team would be able to secure a bowl berth in 2011. As it turns out, the university should have asked SEC commissioner Mike Slive if it could buy out Kentucky.

The loss handed Tennessee its first back-to-back losing seasons since 1910 and 1911. Alex Stone and Z.G. Clevenger — two guys who aren’t exactly a big part of UT football lore — were the coaches in Knoxville in those days.

It was the first time ever for the university to lose seven games in the SEC.

And, with Vanderbilt’s 41-7 win over Wake Forest, the Commodores are eligible for a postseason bowl and the Vols aren’t for just the second time ever.

So, just seven days removed from an inspiring overtime win against Vanderbilt, what happened?

Senior runningback Tauren Poole summed it up like this: “The whole game, no one wanted to be out there.”

That’s disturbing. It’s disturbing because, watching the effort on the field in Lexington, it appeared to be true. Tennessee’s effort was largely uninspired. When you’re playing for bowl eligibility and fighting to keep a 26-year winning streak intact, you hope your players will give it their all.

Apparently that didn’t happen.

“We’re all trying to encourage people because people were out of it,” Poole added. “When it’s like that, you’re not going to be able to execute…the result was what it was.”

And that summed up the second year of what is looking increasingly likely to be a short-lived Derek Dooley era.

To be fair, Tennessee has had a tough go of it this season. Dooley’s luck couldn’t be much worse. At (almost) full strength, Tennessee pounded a pretty good Cincinnati team at Neyland Stadium back in September, defeating the Bearcats 45-23.

The next week, Justin Hunter — who could very well have played his way into mention as a preseason hopeful for the 2012 Heisman Trophy — was lost for the season at Florida, and Tennessee’s season was on the ropes.

Two weeks after that, quarterback Tyler Bray went out with a broken thumb. He would miss half the season before returning against Vanderbilt.

The Vols were already playing without their best defensive player — defensive back Janzen Jackson, who was dismissed shortly before the season opener against Buffalo. Herman Lathers, the anchor of the Vols’ linebacking corps, had already gone down with a fractured ankle and would miss the season.

There were other injuries along the way, but those were the most critical ones.

Those were enough.

Imagine Alabama, which will play for the national championship in early January, without quarterback A.J. McCarron, running back Trent Richardson, linebacker Courtney Upshaw or safety Robert Lester. Would the Crimson Tide have been in contention for the SEC championship, let alone the national championship?

Imagine Georgia, which won the SEC East and will play for the conference championship in Atlanta next week, without quarterback Aaron Murray, runningback Isaiah Crowell, linebacker Jarvis Jones or cornerback Brandon Boykin. Would the Bulldogs have been in contention for the SEC East? Would the Bulldogs have even been bowl eligible?

If those teams couldn’t survive those losses with their whole and experienced rosters, how can a team like Tennessee — still playing with an incomplete and very green roster — expect to overcome such serious losses?

Even healthy, Tennessee was expected to be no better than an 8-4 team this season. Can we safely assume that a team with Bray, Hunter, Lathers and Jackson for all 12 games would have won three more games?

Yes, it’s been a tough go of it. Injuries compounded an already tough task by Dooley, who inherited a team in 2010 that was seriously depleted. The longevity of the Phillip Fulmer era, the Lane Kiffin experiment, and Mike Hamilton’s ineptness as athletics director all combined to leave the cupboard rather bare.

So bare that as recently as Oct. 16, while already beginning to have my doubts about Dooley’s hopes of leading the Vols out of the wilderness and back to college football’s promised land, I opined that he had to have more time — at least two more years.

That opinion was based on the presumption that Tennessee would lose games because of its depth issues. Even when healthy, the Vols were perilously short on depth. An unhealthy, banged up Tennessee team was always going to face an uphill struggle for bowl eligibility.

Six weeks later, my opinion on Dooley has done nearly a 180. But it has nothing to do with wins and losses. Given the nature of the injuries, 5-7 isn’t terrible. Bowl eligibility is great, but let’s face it: Nashville in January isn’t exactly awe-inspiring for a Tennessee program that still has the taste of sugar and oranges and Tostitos in its mouth from years past.

Instead, my opinion of Dooley is based on what appears to be a pattern of mismanagement of the football team.

I was a fan of the Dooley hire even when he was still at Louisiana Tech and before Tennessee’s talks with David Cutcliffe had fallen through. Given the circumstances, I thought it was a good hire. A high-risk hire, sure. But a good one.

Dooley’s introductory press conference went well. When he managed to salvage a good recruiting class from the Lane Kiffin debacle with just a few short weeks to work with, his hire looked even better. And when his team and staff conducted themselves with integrity that was lacking from Kiffin’s short era on campus — while becoming bowl eligible — last season, it looked better still.

I was convinced after the 2010 season ended with a gut-wrenching loss to North Carolina in the Music City Bowl that Dooley would be the guy to get Tennessee back to a BCS bowl for the first time since 1998.

And just so we’re clear, I like Derek Dooley. He’s a man of integrity at a time when Tennessee sorely needs a man of integrity to steady the ship. He gives one of the best press conferences in college football, even if the whole throw-the-players-under-the-bus-and-put-a-comical-twist-on-it routine is becoming a bit stale. And he’s a Southern gentleman with pure Southern football blood running through his veins — the very makings of an iconic Southern football coach, in other words. I want him to succeed at Tennessee, even now.

It’s just that I no longer have confidence that he can succeed here. That confidence has been dwindling since the Florida game and was pretty much completely used up by the Arkansas game.

In hindsight, there were red flags well before this season’s debacle began. When Tennessee lost at LSU last season — snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in a game that the Vols deserved to win and LSU deserved to lose — the loss came because Tennessee’s defense didn’t have a clue who was supposed to be on the field. Instead of 11 players on the field when LSU ran its final play — a mangled effort at clock management in typical Les Miles fashion that resulted in a bad snap and appeared to end the game — the Vols had 14. The redoux went to LSU.

Instead of blaming coaches, Dooley blamed the officials. They should have stood over the ball and prevented the snap until Tennessee had a chance to respond to LSU’s substitutions, Dooley said.

And, technically, he was right. The officials messed up.

But would Tennessee have been able to get the right players on the field even with more time?

If the 2011 season is any indication, probably not.

Throughout this season, Tennessee has repeatedly been forced to burn timeouts because the wrong players were on the field, or because the offense couldn’t get lined up correctly. Issues that should have been resolved in the first couple of weeks, against Buffalo or Cincy, were still rearing their ugly heads at season’s end, against Arkansas and Vandy.

And that’s where the biggest issues with the Vols’ coaching staff lie.

The improvements — or lack thereof — weren’t limited to the part of the game plan that deals with getting personnel on or off the field. And in many areas, the Vols actually appeared to regress.

Tennessee’s running game, non-existent in wins over Buffalo and Cincinnati to open the season, was still non-existent against Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Tauren Poole went from a 1,000-yard season in 2010 to a lackluster senior season in 2011. Marlon Lane, a freshman, never emerged as the kind of back UT hoped he would become.

Tennessee’s offensive line, bad against the run but pretty good against the pass in the first couple of games of the season, was still bad against the run against Kentucky, and twice gave up sacks in the face of a three-man rush.

Devrin Young, a local kid who appeared poised to become something of a football cult hero after injecting a bit of life into the Vols’ flailing special teams play, disappeared in the second half of the season.

Mychal Rivera, who emerged as a valuable target at tight end, also disappeared by the end of the season.

Tennessee’s receivers — a highly-touted unit with lots of potential if little experience — were average at best after the loss of Hunter. Da’Rick Rogers came on to lead the SEC with 60+ catches, but had costly drops throughout the season. A dropped touchdown pass against South Carolina changed the course of that game. DeAnthony Arnett never really came into his own. Matt Milton, a  4-star sophomore, wound up being suspended indefinitely before the Kentucky game.

The defense — employing the bend-but-don’t-break style of its coordinator, Justin Wilcox — was solid but not spectacular, getting burned for big plays at inopportune times and failing to create enough turnovers to help the Vols win games when their offense couldn’t assemble lengthy drives with their top two playmakers out.

Most troubling, though, was Dooley’s inability to rally his team. Young, inexperienced, shorthanded…those were all apt descriptions of the 2011 Vols. Unfortunately, “over-achieving” wasn’t one.

And that’s what separates average coaches from great — even good — coaches: the ability to inspire a team to play above itself. Look around the college football landscape and you’ll find examples of teams that have done just that. A team of 3-star athletes — with a few 4-star and perhaps a 5-star or two sprinkled in — hanging with the big boys and even beating a few of them. Chris Petersen does it with regularity at Boise State. Randy Edsall has done it at Connecticut. Tommy Tuberville used to do it often at Auburn (and did it again this year at Texas Tech).

Dooley’s team has yet to beat a team it wasn’t expected to beat. Often times, the Vols have looked great against teams for a half (Alabama this year; Florida and Alabama last year) before falling apart in the second half.

But the second half has been a different story. Whether other teams have made adjustments Tennessee couldn’t make, or an outmanned Tennessee team has simply gotten worn down, and it’s probably a combination of the two, the Vols have simply not been able to sustain themselves in the second half.

Too often, though, the issue appeared to be a matter of not enough want-to. Like this year’s shellacking at Arkansas. As the Razorbacks poured on the points, Tennessee simply quit on Dooley. It was the same thing that happened against Oregon in 2010, another of those early red flags that most people didn’t pay much attention to at the time.

And against Kentucky, Tennessee never even really showed up, even with quite a bit riding on the line.

The writing is on the wall: Derek Dooley is not the guy who can get it done at Tennessee. Even if he was, the deck is now stacked against him, because he has lost a significant portion of the fan base.

Apathy was already present among Tennessee fans. The Vols failed to sell out most of their games this season. The bad economy was part of it; empty seats were part of college football stadiums throughout the land. But teams like Georgia and Alabama were still selling out their stadiums while Tennessee was struggling to avoid thousands of empty seats by hiring a new promotion firm to handle ticket sales.

And that was when bowl eligibility — and, theoretically, SEC East championship hopes — were still in play.

Tennessee fans don’t ask much from their head coach: 1.) Don’t eat your young, 2.) Beat Kentucky.

If Dooley’s job was hard already, imagine him trying to do it with his head on the chopping block and more than half of the UT fan base waiting on — and wanting — the axe to fall.

That’s where Dooley is as early preparations for the 2012 season begin. He managed to avoid the hot seat by eeking out an overtime win against Vandy, then went and firmly planted his posterior in the seat by doing the unthinkable — losing to a team that Tennessee hadn’t lost to since a decade before many of its current players were even born.

Even before Tennessee officially named Dooley its head coach, an ESPN radio analyst who has followed Dooley’s career opined that Dooley is an excellent manager but his X’s and O’s are questionable.

Indeed, that’s how his short tenure at Tennessee has played out. He had the foresight to go after lesser-known recruits who would be more likely to sign with a program that has been mired in mediocrity for the better part of a decade and who would restore the program’s character. And Dooley — who referred little-known defensive coordinators Will Muschamp (now head coach at Florida) and Kirby Smart (soon to be a head coach somewhere) to Nick Saban while serving as an assistant on Saban’s staff — had the wherewithal to bring in some good coaches to join his staff. Certainly not all of them were good choices — offensive line coach Harry Hiestand should be fired as soon as possible, while the jury is still very much out on wide receivers coach Henry Baggett, tight end coach Eric Russell and even offensive coordinator Jim Chaney, a holdover from the Kiffin staff — but former Boise State defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox was a great hire for Dooley, and Darin Hinshaw appears to have been a good hire as quarterbacks coach. Lance Thompson, another Kiffin holdover, was an obvious choice for the DL, while linebackers coach Peter Sirmon also appears to have been a great hire.

But the X’s and O’s? Well, those speak for themselves, at this point.

So why should Tennessee fire Dooley? The problems with X’s and O’s, the inability to coach up the team, the apparent problems with prepping before games and adjusting amid games all add up to a very short tenure in Knoxville for Dooley. As one Vol fan aptly put it, “The SEC is not a forgiving training ground for a guy to slowly warm up to being a head coach.”

If that’s the inevitability, why prolong it? Fan apathy is already at an all-time high, which is costing UT money and the type of big-name recruits that can put the program back on the map. None of today’s high school players remember the last time Tennessee won the SEC. With the improved coaches in this league, the fertile outside recruiting grounds that the Vols have always been forced to rely upon without an abundance of prep football talent in the Volunteer State are drying up. And the SEC is set to become even more competitive with the addition of Texas A&M and Missouri. Programs that aren’t assertive and aggressive will quickly be left in the dirt. Mississippi State learned that, and that’s why they spent more money than any other team — relative to their overall football earnings — to hire a big-name coach.

In other words, Tennessee can’t afford to spend a few years swinging and missing while it searches for a coach who can rebuild the program.

Hamilton struggled to hire a coach to replace Fulmer, and struggled even more to find Kiffin’s replacement. But the program isn’t nearly as much in shambles now as it was just two years ago. For that, Dooley deserves a lot of credit. As a fan said a couple of days ago, “Dooley was the right guy at the time…he just isn’t the guy to lead the program all the way back.” Tennessee has lots of young talent in the fold and it should be an easier sell now than it was then. Plus, going after the little-known guy was Hamilton’s style. There’s no reason to think new AD Dave Hart won’t take a more aggressive approach, and Tennessee can afford to open its pocket book to throw more money at a head coach than it was willing to throw when both Kiffin and Dooley were hired.

As several of the growing legion of UT fans who are disgruntled with Tennessee’s coaching situation have said, “you can’t afford to make a change this quick unless there’s a sure-thing waiting to come coach at Tennessee.” Alabama got a sure thing when it made a coaching change and went after Nick Saban. But this isn’t Alabama and there aren’t any Nick Sabans out there waiting to put down roots in East Tennessee.

And then there’s the other hand . . .

Dooley isn’t going to be fired now. Probably not, anyway; with a new athletic director, one never knows. But Tennessee really can’t afford to fire him and start searching for a new coach now. The Vols are just starting to recover from the ill-effects of Fulmer’s poor recruiting at the end of his tenure and the attrition of the Kiffin experiment. Another coaching search at this point would set the program back too far. Let’s say you fire Dooley and experience the same attrition suffered when Kiffin abandoned ship. The 2012 recruiting class would likely be a wash and it would be at least 2014 before the Vols would have any hopes of seriously competing for an SEC championship game berth.

And that’s probably the one thing that will save Dooley’s job…for now. But he’ll be a lame duck coach. Because if he doesn’t win eight games in 2012, he’ll almost certainly be fired.

And he almost certainly should be.

1.) Has anyone ever said that SEC officiating is terrible? It was on full display again this week. How the SEC can play the world’s best football and have the world’s worst officiating is mind-boggling. There were numerous examples, but Kentucky’s touchdown came after what was clearly a fumble and Tennessee recovery inside the 10-yard-line. The official ruled the ballcarrier down. First, the replay booth didn’t automatically call for a review, which required UT to use its lone challenge…SEC replay officials continue to demonstrate their inability to use video replay appropriately. Then the referee announced that the ruling on the field was “confirmed,” which by definition means that video evidence confirmed the ballcarrier was down…which he clearly was not. Then the replay booth explains that the recovery was ruled to have been by Kentucky and that is not reviewable, which makes even less sense than the original ruling. It was totally bungled all the way around. Vanderbilt fans will say that karma paid a visit to Lexington today, but last week’s screwup by college football’s worst officials didn’t really change anything on the field. Nobody got anything that wasn’t deserved. Today’s screwup was totally different. Week after week, the incompetence of SEC officials is on full display and commissioner Mike Slive’s only response is to penalize coaches who dare to question the ridiculous calls that often sway the outcome of ballgames. Fans always complain about officials when their team loses, but without the total bungled call on the UK fumble, Tennessee wins this one 7-3.

2.) Tyler Bray had one of the worst games of his career. Scuttlebutt that developed during the game was that he was battling the flu. Maybe that’s a convenient excuse, or maybe it’s the truth. There is really nothing else to explain his poor play. He made a couple of nice throws in the second half but was never on his game.

3.) Kentucky was playing with a wide receiver at quarterback…a guy who hadn’t played quarterback since he was in high school four years ago. But he managed to fake out Tennessee defenders several times. First was linebacker AJ Johnson, who was closing in on Roark as he rolled out.

Roark faked and Johnson turned his head and looked downfield, allowing Roark to easily run for a first down. Next was defensive tackle Marlon Walls who had Roark wrapped up for a sack. Roark pumped and Walls let go. Play. Until. The. Whistle. That’s fundamental football.

4.) As overheard at the 7-minute mark of the third quarter: “This game is single-handedly setting back offensive football by 40 years.”

5.) When Tennessee finally hit a big play to get inside Kentucky’s 10-yard-line in the third quarter, the Vols fumbled two plays later and the Wildcats recovered. The decision to run the mildcat package will be questioned, but you gotta try something to get into the end zone. The bigger problem was Tennessee’s fragile psyche. It’s been on display all season long, and after Kentucky recovered the fumble, Tennessee’s defense — which had held Kentucky firmly in check since the game’s opening drive — allowed the Wildcats to drive the length of the field for a touchdown because they were emotionally out of it. That’s coaching.

6.) Da’Rick Rogers had his typical drop of the game on a crucial third-and-short late in the fourth quarter, which forced Tennessee to punt. Rogers is a good receiver, but is always good for at least one drop each game.

7.) Tennessee simply doesn’t have a kicking game. Matt Darr and Michael Palardy were very highly recruited, but both look terrible. Palardy is totally unreliable on field goal attmepts and Darr struggles to punt the ball past 40 yards. Throw in the regression of return specialist Devrin Young as the season has progressed and special teams has been a gigantic disappointment for Tennessee this year…perhaps even moreso than the offensive line, which has been very bad.

8.) This point needs to be revisited: Kentucky beat Tennessee without a quarterback.

9.) Perspective: The last time Tennessee lost to Kentucky, I was in kindergarten. The Vols managed to do something today that no Tennessee team had done since John Majors was a young man.

10.) Anyone who doesn’t think Derek Dooley is on the hot seat is kidding themselves. Dooley probably won’t be fired right now (though I wouldn’t count anything out with a new athletic director at the helm and the uncertainty that is always associated with that), but he will enter the 2012 season very much in need of a good season. Anything less than eight wins next year will almost certainly get Dooley fired, and it should. Tennessee’s coaching was very disappointing this season. The problem isn’t so much the the win/loss record; even a healthy Tennessee team wasn’t expected to win more than eight games, and this team might very well have gotten there with everyone healthy. The problem was the way the team played: quitting in the second half, inexcusable personnel mixups on the field, not knowing how to get lined up at critical times…it was very much a problem with fundamentals. Dooley lost his team at times. When coaches are playing with teams that are outmanned, as Tennessee very much is, coaches must inspire their teams to play above themselves. Good coaches do that. Dooley has been totally unable to do  that.

As the early Christmas season officially gets underway, there remains the possibility that some snowflakes could be flying in the air by the first of next week, as an upper level low threatens to impact the region.

The storm’s impact will begin to be felt locally by the weekend, with increasing winds tomorrow and Saturday, followed by a chance for a soaking rain on Sunday, which will in turn be followed by cooler temperatures.

The National Weather Service in Morristown has removed snow from the forecast, with the exception of a slight chance of rain or snow showers Tuesday morning.

But NOAA’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center has much of East Tennessee under a 30%-40% risk for at least one inch of snow accumulation from 7 p.m. Sunday to 7 p.m. Monday:

Take that for what it’s worth…which, frankly, isn’t much.

There is good model consensus for a broad ULL to develop and impact much of the eastern U.S. from late weekend into early next week, but there is still a lot of model differences in the exact details.

The bigger story may prove to be a pattern change as far as temperatures are concerned. After highs only in the low 40s Sunday and Monday, the GFS is currently projecting highs only in the low 50s through next week for the northern Plateau. I expect that those numbers will prove to be too high, at least for Tuesday and perhaps Wednesday. Either way, while the low 50s for highs isn’t exactly the grip of winter, it’s certainly a change from the 60s that have prevailed for much of November.

Further out, the teleconnections are becoming more favorable for winter-like weather in East Tennessee, as I mentioned earlier this week. The latest GFS takes the North Atlantic Oscillation into negative territory for much of the first half of December. The Arctic Oscillation appears to go to at least neutral territory in the coming days, and while many of the GFS’s ensemble members keep it positive for the next couple of weeks, it shouldn’t be as positive as it is right now. And the same model takes the Pacific North American ridge index from negative to positive territory for the next couple of weeks. A -NAO, -AO and +PNA combination is a pretty solid recipe for winter-like weather in our neck of the woods.

 

 

Tennessee’s basketball team lost its second game in as many days today, but if the way the Vols have played in the Maui Invitational is any indication, Cuonzo Martin might soon make UT fans forget Bruce Pearl.

After standing toe-to-toe with No. 6 Duke yesterday — the game was tied midway through the second half before the Blue Devils pulled away for a 76-66 win — Tennessee took No. 8 Memphis to double overtime today before falling 99-97.

Tennessee had a shot to win it at the end of the first overtime and a chance to tie it at the second overtime, but newcomer Jeronne Maymon missed shots both times.

Still, Maymon had a monster game, finishing with 32 points and 20 rebounds, the latter being an individual record in the Maui tournament. It’s quickly becoming obvious that Maymon will be the marquee player on Martin’s first team at Tennessee.

The way a team plays in Maui is a poor indicator for how it will play in the conference, but UT fans have to be very pleased with the way the Vols have handled some very tough opposition in Hawaii.

Cuonzo Martin has been impressive in the way he conducted himself, recruited and prepared his team in the run-up to the start of this season. But count me among the fans who was afraid that he wouldn’t have enough to work with to make this team a solid contender. Tennessee has been picked by the media to finish near the bottom of the SEC and most pundits expect the Vols to miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time in seven years.

The SEC is still going to be brutal. The league is very tough this year, with several teams that could legitimately be contenders for Elite Eight and Final Four appearances. And, as commenter Britt pointed out yesterday, Tennessee will be exposed a bit by the fact that the Vols do not have a true big man.

But judg ing by the way the Vols have played through the first few games of the 2011-2012 season, it may not take them long to return to championship contention

in the SEC.

And if Cuonzo Martin can stand toe-to-toe with top ten teams at the beginning of his first season, a season in which his team was expected to be mediocre, might Tennessee fans look back on the Bruce Pearl era as simply the foundation of better things to come?

Maybe si, maybe no. But one thing is for sure: Tennessee is a well-coached team in the fundamentals, and they’re a well-disciplined team. This team isn’t as flashy and won’t be as much fun to watch as Pearl’s teams, but a lot of folks who thought Cuonzo Martin was a bad hire might soon be changing their tune.

Now we just have to find out if he can rep the orange blazer.

Although October was slightly cooler than average in East Tennessee, it’s been a relatively mild fall overall. But as November draws near a close, we may have our first bonafide snow threat for the lower elevations of East Tennessee as a pattern change begins to take hold.

As I posted yesterday, we aren’t going to go into a deep freeze over the next couple of weeks, but the broad atmospheric pattern will become more conducive for cold air intrusions and possible chances of frozen precipitation.

That first chance comes at the end of the weekend and the beginning of next week. Models are coming into agreement on a cutoff upper level low (ULL) that is expected to impact a large portion of the eastern U.S. by the weekend. Mild temperatures and windy conditions should precipitate the storm system, followed by what might very well be the coldest push of cold air thus far this season on its back side. Rain could very well change to snow showers by Sunday night into Monday.

Taken at face value, boundary layer temperatures will be much too warm for frozen precipitation. But these ULLs tend to be dynamic and generate enough cold air to overcome some of those issues. They’re very difficult for meteorologists to forecast and often pack a surprise — for better or worse.

The National Weather Service has already put the “S” word in the forecast for the northern Plateau, predicting a 30% chance of snow showers Sunday night and Monday. Snow in the forecast five days out, especially in late November, is unusual for NWS forecasters, but that is a sign of just how much model agreement there is on this system bringing in enough cold air and leaving behind enough remnant moisture to create the potential for some snow.

Beyond that, there’s much uncertainty. Temperatures are currently forecast by the NWS to be 34° on Sunday night and 42° on Monday. Text data from the GFS model suggests 35° Sunday night, 42° Monday, 27° Monday night and 45° Tuesday. However, models often have a difficult time with these ULLs and those temperature projections may very well trend colder by the time we get to the weekend.

A cursory glance at several models — particularly the Canadian model, the seldom-useful NOGAPS model and, to a slightly lesser extent, the GFS model — suggests the potential for a bonafide snowstorm Sunday night into Monday. However, it’s very unusual to get accumulating snows this early in the season, even from systems like this one that could produce quite a bit of snow deeper into the winter months when there is a better supply of cold air to work with.

With that said, we had a system last December that produced a major early-season snowfall, blanketing the northern Plateau under six inches of snow two weeks before Christmas. That system wasn’t dramatically different from the one being modeled for this weekend. Also, it’s worth noting that Knoxville’s all-time record for snowfall in a single day was set in November.

By no means am I suggesting this weekend’s system is going to dump a lot of snow on the ground, create slick roads and shut down schools. Climatology alone suggests that accumulating snow probably will not happen. Still, it’s something to keep an eye on for those who would like to see flakes floating in the air to put them in the Christmas spirit.