Let's say I had a car wreck. Asked by the press to describe it, let's say I said, "Well, I burned my legs pretty bad. I cracked my ribs on the steering wheel. I cut my arms as I was partially thrown through the windshield. And I had a concussion, too. But I survived."

Would the last sentence really have anything to do with the description of the wreck? Would you say, "See, he's glad he had the wreck, nothing bad happened to him?"

I'm amazed at the self-delusional links fans will go to in order to say someone is "fixing" the news in an effort to run down their sorry team.

The flat-out stupidity of anyone who thinks the last line of that quote had anything to do with the message Poole was sending is beyond measurement.

And as for the ridiculous, "a journalist wouldn't do that," you do realize that the quotes you read and hear every day are edited, don't you? Unless Poole had a very short interview and only said what was reported in The Knoxville News Sentinel, then one of their journalists also edited the quotes.

Oh, so pathetic.

John

Living in TN, I hear Vol fans every day on the phone and they share a crazy sense of entitlement, delusionalism, and denial.

Slow news day…come on.

I am not trying to bash Tennessee. Seriously, you guys must let Dooley fight thru this the best he can and hopefully bring the talent level back to UT standards. The SEC is better when the Ga.'s, Floridas, Bamas etc. are strong. But you gotta have more perspective than what you're displaying in this post. Writers paraphrase and whittle quotes down all the time. You want to read the essence of the story, not every uh, um, huh, mmmm…

;p

First of all, we don't "spin" anything here.

Second, if we were going to spin, do you think we should have tried to spin his comments as being positive?

John

We bring SEC news to folks across the SEC. If you read about Poole's interview or heard it yesterday, good for you. I'm guessing folks from Louisiana to Florida did not.

John

1. Didn't quote him out of context in the least. Not in the least. Clipped the last line of a quote which had bupkes to do with the rest of the point he was making.

2. It's hard to be "old news" if it was said yesterday.

John

The story is about the dysfunction, not about him saying he came out OK in the end. We clip quotes all the time. If someone is talking about taking a job at School X and then rambles into something about his wife in the middle of it, we nix that part and only bring you the part regarding the job.

Are you trying to suggest that because he says he came through it a better man, that everything else he said was unimportant? Yeesh.

The story was about a team in turmoil. He detailed that six ways to Sunday. Whether he ended a statement with, "ah, but that's life" or not doesn't change any of the facts reported here.

What a silly attempt to ignore the obvious meat of the story. As if that last line really puts a whole new spin on everything else he said. Amazing.

John

Misleading headline? Poole used the very word "dysfunction" to describe the — oh, yes — the dysfunction in the Tennessee program.

Slow news day? Tell you what, you find me another SEC team that's had a player come out and talk about such a huge mess inside his program and I'll side with you. Until then, this is sorta/kinda a rare story. (Maybe that's why such a "non-story" was picked up by radio, TV and the internet.)

John

"If you'd have told me Coach Fulmer would have gotten fired and then this coach, that coach, this strength coach, that position coach, I probably wouldn't have came here because I knew it would have been a dysfunctional setup, an unstable program. Now that I've been through it, I'm stronger as I come out it. It was a tough situation.It was a roller-coaster ride … I got to do a lot as a young man and all of us seniors came out better for it."