A Look at The 2009 Tennesee Volunteer Football Season

(Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

With two-a-days and training camp merely a couple weeks away, the Tennessee Volunteers look to put an offseason of tremendous turnover and controversy behind them.

The Vol’s offseason, which began under new leadership for the first time in over 17 years in the likes of former Oakland Raiders Head Coach Lane Kiffin, found themselves in the national spotlight again. In many ways the spotlight was unwanted by many Tennessee followers. It included several recruiting violations, although none were major, the Alshon Jeffery recruiting situation in which Kiffin was accused of telling the kid he would be pumping gas if he did not come to Tennessee, and the constant war of words between Kiffin and, seemingly, every SEC coach that wanted to take a swipe back at him. The constant bickering between coaching staffs seems to have added fuel to what was already intense SEC football games.

With Rocky Top buzzing and the Vols firmly situated as front-line news in the college football world, Coach Kiffin had seemingly achieved one of his main goals: He made the Tennessee football program relavant again. For Kiffin, his biggest question and, more importantly, his biggest task was, and still is, how to keep the Vols in the primetime.

What, seemingly, gets lost amongst all the negativity that swirled around Lane Kiffin and the Volunteer program is that Kiffin was able to sign a top-15 recruiting class for the 2009 season during a coaching change. This is no small feat and should not be over-looked. Most coaches had over a full year to recruit players, but Kiffin had less than six months to sign his new Volunteers.

Kiffin was able to sign the No. 1 high school running back in the nation in Bryce Brown out of Wichita, Ka. Brown, who looked to be a possible replacement for graduating senior Arian Foster, may play an even more significant role this upcoming season due to the loss of tail backs Lennon Creer, who transferred, and a season-ending injury to the talented freshman Toney Williams, who suffered an ACL tear.

Kiffin was also able to recruit the highly sought-after high school wide receiver Nu’Keese Richardson out of Pahokee, Flo.

Richardson and other incoming freshman receivers like Zach Rogers, brother of senior wide out Austin Rogers, and Marsalis Teague were expected to play significant roles in the upcoming season as the program looked to replace three of their five leading wide receivers from last season, but, as of early Tuesday morning, the Vols' receiving corps took another significant blow, as their active leader in receptions, the man who picked off 76 balls, Austin Rogers, would be lost for the season with an apparent ACL tear.

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