The Tennessean: Fulmer: Our expectations haven't changed - Vols look to return to winning ways

DESTIN, Fla. - As Phillip Fulmer approaches his 14th full season in a profession and a league that chews up and spits out football coaches, he understands as well as anyone the need to produce. "I don't know that I feel pressure," said Fulmer, the dean of Southeastern Conference coaches. "Obviously, I'm highly in tune right now to what having a poor year last season has meant for all of us. "But our expectations really haven't changed, and they don't change. We expect to go and compete for the championship and have a great season."

Nobody who counts at Tennessee has labeled this as a championship-or-bust season for Fulmer, who's won 77.6 percent of his games, two SEC championships and one national championship. By the same token, the reality is that he's not likely to survive another six-loss season coming off last year's 5-6 disaster despite his gaudy $4.3 million buyout.

And for that matter, losing to all of the so-called teams who count - Georgia, Florida, Alabama and now South Carolina - would place athletics director Mike Hamilton in the kind of lurch he has no interest in even thinking about at this point. "I don't deal in the hypothetical," Hamilton said. "What I will say is that the mission is clear, and we all understand that last year was not something that was acceptable for any of us - administrators, coaches, staff, fans, anybody.

"We're working toward correcting that, and I've seen that in the offseason. Now, I'd like to see that play out in the season itself." Fulmer, in Destin this week for the SEC spring meetings, said he's as motivated as he's ever been to start the season. He said it's a motivation driven more by a deep sense of responsibility to steer the Vols back to the forefront of the SEC than it is feeling any kind of pressure that he might lose his job. "You have to look at our history of what we've been able to do while we've been here," said Fulmer, who enters his 32nd season at Tennessee as either a player, assistant coach or head coach. "From a loyalty and passion standpoint, there's not anybody out there any more interested in getting it done here than I've been because I'm a Tennessean, a guy that loves the program in every way."

He remains miffed over last season and all the distractions that led up to the Vols' first losing season in 17 years. He blames himself for many of the things that went wrong, especially the whole quarterback shuffle that divided the team. And for the first time publicly, he admitted that he waited too long to make changes on his offensive staff. Fulmer brought David Cutcliffe back in to be his offensive coordinator after Randy Sanders resigned last season. Fulmer also fired receivers coach Pat Washington and offensive line coach Jimmy Ray Stephens. "Sometimes change is good," Fulmer said. "A couple of them should have been made a couple years before that, but that's hard because you're just coming off an Eastern Division championship and some good years. "But getting to where we got to, we were patching it in some ways and should have made some changes before that. I was talked out of it, actually. But ultimately, it's all my responsibility."