One of my favorite times of the week has returned, time for the purely majestic Big Orange Roundtable. This week it’s hosted by Fulmer’s Belly, and he’s determined he’s going to pick a winner at the end of this week, breaking the “everybody’s a winner” norm. We’ll call this the Start-of-School Edition, since UT starts today (I don’t – let’s hear it for a 12-hour, Tuesday/Thursday class only fall semester!).

I’m probably not going to win anyways, but I’m still going to answer his wide array of interesting questions for this week. You should know the deal by now, the other blogs will be linked at the bottom so you have to at least skim my ramblings to get there to see the others.

Enjoy!

1. Knock on wood before answering this question, but let’s assume that Jonathan Crompton goes out with a season ending injury in the 1st half of the first game of the season. Should we just pack it up and wait until next season, or is there a glimmer of hope in any of the young backups?

For the record I really did knock on wood. That’s mostly because if Crompton gets hurt, we’re screwed. Neither Nick Stephens or B.J. Coleman have played in a real game and for them to be thrown in there due to injury is something that obviously I really REALLY don’t want to happen.

Now that said, the part about us being screwed is if Crompton goes down, say, against UCLA. It would of course be different if he was hurt against, say, South Carolina or anytime the middle to latter portion of our schedule.

For example, Rick Clausen, after botching the Notre Dame game, led Tennessee to wins over Vandy and Kentucky, thanks to the help of the Riggs/Houston combination. So Coleman, who I see as the backup, could beat those two teams, but to have him for Florida, Auburn, Georgia? No thanks.

Then again, either could be the next Peyton Manning, er, probably not, but those around the new QB could really step up, so I don’t think we’d not win a game with a backup or anything like that.

2. Does Erik Ainge have a future in the NFL?

As a starter, no way. As a practice squad QB, possibly. The main reason is that he doesn’t have David Cutcliffe to help him out, and I really think that shoulder injury his freshman year diminished his potential a little bit.

Yes, he did put up some pretty gaudy numbers in 2006 and 2007, but he was a different QB then than he was in 2004 as a true freshman. He was so afraid of getting hurt again – though last year he played through a couple different injuries, so you can’t hate on his toughness – that it effected him in the pocket.

In the NFL – even more than in college – you have to be able to take some hits and deliver throws in the pocket. The only time I saw Ainge do this last year was the two-pointer in the 4th OT in Lexington when he hit Austin Rogers. Unless he can change from the last two years and do that, he’s not going to see the field.

3. Why in the hell did you decide to blog about Tennessee football? Aren’t there already enough Tennessee blogs?

Of course The View isn’t a strictly Tennessee football, or even Tennessee sports for that matter, blog. There’s been and will be plenty of college football and college hoops – my two favorite things – on here in the future.

As for why I started, I had kinda always wanted to start a blog, and starting a month of summer school seemed like a good place to start one. I did, and here I am today. I had been reading some other blogs for awhile, so I guess you could them inspiration.

The hardest part was thinking of a name. I think the name I chose fits, me being a UT student and all.

4. If you could be one player in one game in Tennessee history, which player and which game would you pick? Why?

Thomas from over @ YMSWWC and I are great minds because we thought alike. I knew this one pretty quick: from a game I still have never watched (I have my reasons), it’s Travis Stephens in Gainesville 2001.

Get the hell off him!

That was probably Tennessee’s greatest win since 1998, as the underdog in Steve Spurrier’s last home game in the Swamp. He had 226 yards and Florida could not tackle the guy. That’s gotta be such a great feeling – knowing you can’t be stopped.

5. Which is your favorite rivalry and why? (Not necessarily limited to Tennessee teams)

I don’t care what you say, Yankees/Red Sox is in a league by itself. But I’ve progressively have begun to care about baseball less and less over the last couple years that I’m not gonna answer this question with a baseball rivalry.

There’s Ohio State/Michigan, Auburn/Alabama, and countless other interstate rivalries in college football and even college basketball. As a Tennessee fan I despise Florida and Alabama of course, but UGA as well thanks to my trip down to those score 51 on them and their awful fans in 2006. But I wanna pick a non-Tennessee rivalry.

The Big Ten especially likes to play for silly little trophies like an ax (Wisconsin-Minnesota), a pig (Iowa-Minnesota), a brown jug (Minnesota-Michigan), a bucket (Indiana-Purdue), and useless crap like that.

Those trophies are ants compared to Chief Caddo, the trophy battled for each year by Stephen F. Austin and Northwestern State. This joker stands 7-foot-6 and weighs over 320 pounds and it’s basically a big wooden Indian chief. Who wouldn’t wanna play and win THAT big ole hunk of wood?

That said, trophies are cool and all, but there’s absolutely nothing better than playing purely for pride and bragging rights – the way it’s done in the SEC. Though I may and usually do despise the two teams playing, any and all SEC rivalries are my favorite.

Bonus: Who will win the national title this year? And by how many points will Tennessee win? (See what we did there?)

The perfect preseason question. After a wild and wacky year, Clemson gets to the title game and Tennessee crushes them 49-7.

Here’s everybody else’s:

- Fulmer’s Belly
- Gate 21
- Your Mom Did It With The Wilt
- Losers With Socks
- SESB
- Third Saturday in Blogtober
- Rocky Top Talk
- MoonDog Sports