THE BIG STORY

Ian Rappaport of The Birmingham News writes:

David Cutcliffe’s childhood home in Birmingham had a pasture next to it. Every time he went outside to throw a football, he picked out a big tree and named the branches.

One limb was named for former University of Alabama All-American receiver Ray Perkins, another for Dennis Homan, and so on. Meanwhile, Cutcliffe pretended to be Crimson Tide quarterbacks Joe Namath or Steve Sloan.

Cutcliffe may be the University of Tennessee’s offensive coordinator now, but he grew up a huge Alabama fan. His idol was coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.

So when Cutcliffe walks into Bryant-Denny Stadium for Saturday’s game between Alabama (5-2, 3-1 Southeastern Conference) and Tennessee (4-2, 2-1), expect him to savor the experience. As always.

“I take a moment, even when I was head coach at Ole Miss, to take in the crowd and take in the scene at Tuscaloosa,” said Cutcliffe, UA Class of 1976. “You think, `Wow, this is special.’ So you appreciate what Alabama football is and means. That helps you when you have to compete against them, because you know how intense it is.”

Cutcliffe has been involved in 18 Alabama-UT games in two separate stints. During that time, he became one of the nation’s most respected quarterback coaches, tutoring future NFL stars Peyton and Eli Manning, while helping the Vols to a national title in 1998.

His resume also includes six years as the Rebels’ head coach, with a 44-29 record (25-23 SEC), and a 10-3 mark in 2003.

Given his resume, Cutcliffe was asked if he was interested in the Tide job that was open for 38 days after the dismissal of Mike Shula. While pointing out that Alabama did not look in his direction, he said he would have loved to listen.

“Certainly I would’ve been interested in that,” said Cutcliffe, who was signed by Bryant as a linebacker before an injury curtailed his career. “Having been a head coach, having a strong feeling about the University of Alabama, I would certainly have considered that.”

While he’d like to again be a head coach one day “in the right environment,” Cutcliffe said he’d be just as happy to spend his career in Knoxville.

“Every day,” he said, “I can’t wait to get to work.”

A look at the league:

ALABAMA

Linebacker Darren Mustin loves his sister Dametria. But that doesn’t mean he wanted to speak to her much this week. “I just want to win so I can throw it in her face,” said Mustin, a native of Brentwood, Tenn. Dametria graduated from UT in 2003, according to Darren Mustin. She remains a Vols fan, so much that she’s not wholly rooting for her brother Saturday. She said she’s a Darren fan and a UT fan, and I’m still trying to figure out what that means,” said Mustin, who did not like the Vols growing up. “She’ll come and have my jersey on, but she’ll have UT socks on or something. She does that every week. I don’t care if we’re not playing UT, she’ll have some kind of UT apparel on.” . . .Offensive lineman Alex Stadler made the decision to transfer from Alabama, according to his father Mark. Stadler, a redshirt freshman who never played in a game, left the Tide this week. Team officials, including coach Nick Saban, would not say whether Stadler was dismissed or chose to quit. “We have rules and policies that everybody has to abide by, relative to everybody’s responsibility to be on the team,” Saban said Wednesday. “It’s everybody’s choice and decision to do that or not do that.” Mark Stadler didn’t want to comment on the matter beyond a prepared statement. He said his son met with Saban, who “agreed to grant Alex’s release to transfer at the end of the semester.”

ARKANSAS

Darren McFadden and Arkansas, which is 0-3 in the SEC since 2001, obviously have much more on the mind than the Little Rock native’s Heisman hopes as it prepares for Saturday’s game at Ole Miss (2-5, 0-4 in SEC). McFadden’s resume took another big hit after rushing for a season-low 43 yards in Arkansas’ 9-7 loss to Auburn on national television last Saturday. “To me it was a failure, but it goes along with football,” said McFadden, who says he hasn’t been keeping up with Heisman Trophy lists or statistics this season. “People may not look at it the same as I do, but it just goes along with football. You can’t go out there and rush for 100, 200 yards every game.”

AUBURN

Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville said he doesn’t know LSU coach Les Miles very well, except for brief chats during league meetings. Miles has a 28-5 in his third year at LSU after replacing Nick Saban. “He’s done a good job,” Tuberville said. “He kept it going. That’s the main thing. You inherit something, you just try to keep it going and build on it, and he’s done a good job of that. All these jobs are hard, and it’s even harder when you come in and the expectations are already (winning) national championships. He’s handled that well.”

FLORIDA

Florida’s last two losses on the field were hard to handle, but the biggest loss came with the death of walk-on defensive back and scout team quarterback Michael Guilford. Guilford was killed in a motorcycle accident early last Friday morning. “There are certain people who have that electricity about them,” Florida coach Urban Meyer said of Guilford. “You never forget a person (like that) when you meet them and that’s the kind of guy Michael was. He wasn’t a guy who stood on the sideline and held a bag. He’s a very valuable member of this team.” With everything going on, Meyer said this has been his most trying time as a coach, but that through it all he has been able to keep his emotions together in order help his team prepare. “It’s easy when you start to realize you’re the head coach of the Florida Gators,” Meyer said after practice Thursday. “I have three great children, a great wife and a great football team with a future that’s ridiculous, so it’s really not that hard. The hardest thing is the tragedy we had to deal with.”

GEORGIA

Nearly two months after voicing frustration with the lack of an indoor football practice facility, Georgia coach Mark Richt is upbeat now about getting one. “It will be hopefully sooner than we all think,” Richt said Thursday. “I’m as encouraged as I’ve ever been to get this thing going.” Evans told the athletic board Wednesday that he planned to return to the winter meeting with a priority list of football facility needs. Besides an indoor facility, Butts-Mehre expansion and improvements to Sanford Stadium are under consideration in the exploratory stages. Richt expects the indoor facility to be on the athletic board’s agenda “in the very near future.” “We’re going to start fundraising,” he said. “The indoor’s a big part of this phase that we’re going to go into and build.” Exactly where the indoor facility will be located has yet to be determined, Richt said. “We just want to make sure that we do it right,” Richt said. “You could be in a sprint and then say, ‘I wish we had done it here and wish we had done it there.’ We want to take good look at the overall picture to make sure we do it right one time.” President Michael Adams told the executive board that it would take “a year or two,” of fundraising for the projects. “I’ll be ready, willing and able,” Richt said. “I’ll be excited to do whatever it takes to help build this thing.”

KENTUCKY

Florida and Kentucky will display the SEC’s two highest-scoring and most balanced offenses on Saturday in Lexington. Florida has Urban Meyer’s spread option attack, a variation of the West Coast offense that relies heavily on the quarterback to make option reads. Then you have Joker Phillips and the Wildcats. The offense is technically called multiple-scheme, but when Phillips was asked to give one word to describe the UK offense, he said, “Patience.” Both teams run and pass equally well. Florida comes into the game ranked third in the Southeastern Conference in rushing (202.8 yards per game) and passing (246.7). UK is fourth in rushing (200.0) and second in passing (260.0). A team averaging nearly 43 points a game isn’t usually thought of as overly patient, but the Wildcats are attacking the scoreboard a little differently than they did last year. UK’s rushing average this season is more than double what they produced last year (98.6). The Wildcats already have 16 rushing touchdowns compared with 12 all of last year. Phillips said the plan all along was for UK to become more balanced offensively. “We’ve been pretty patient,” Phillips said. “We haven’t been as explosive as far as scoring quickly. We’ve had to grind out some long drives. But we’re basically taking advantage of what teams give us. I actually think our passing game is better than last year because we’re not depending on it as much.”

LSU

LSU sacked the quarterback at least once in 25 straight games until Oct. 13, 2007, in Lexington, Ky., where the No. 1 Tigers fell 43-37 to No. 17 Kentucky in triple overtime. LSU’s defense had three extra possessions for a sack, but it failed to get one. There were also no near sacks, or hurries, recorded by the formerly No. 1 ranked LSU defense. Going into the game, there were whispers around LSU that the athletic department would begin pushing defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey for the Heisman Trophy. Those whispers have been sacked for the time being. Dorsey, who leads the team with four sacks, made four tackles against Kentucky, but none were behind the line. “We’ve got to get better pressure on the quarterback than that,” Dorsey said. “I can’t believe we didn’t get a sack.”

OLE MISS

The Ole Miss coaching staff has plenty of ties with Arkansas. Coach Ed Orgeron was a student assistant at Arkansas in 1986 and ‘87 as the assistant strength coach. It was his first Division I-A job. “I coached under Ken Hatfield and Fred Goldsmith,” Orgeron told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. “I really, really learned a lot of football from those guys, a great work ethic, how to break down film, how to go there early in the morning.” Defensive coordinator John Thompson worked under Arkansas coach Houston Nutt in 2000 and ‘01, both as the defensive coordinator. He helped lead the Razorbacks to the Cotton Bowl after the 2001 season. Thompson grew up in Forrest City, Ark., and went to college at Central Arkansas.

MISS. STATE

For all its improvements on offense, defense and much of the special teams, Mississippi State (4-3) is still searching for its first big-time punt or kick return as it heads into the eighth game of the year Saturday at No. 9 West Virginia (5-1). State is next-to-last in the Southeastern Conference in punt return average (5.7 yards per), saved from the cellar only by LSU (5.4). Florida and Ole Miss have the only two punt returns for touchdowns in the league. The Bulldogs occupy the cellar in kickoff returns, averaging 18.1 yards per return. Only Arkansas, the league leader, has returned a kickoff for a touchdown this year, doing it twice. It wasn’t always like this. Take last year. The Bulldogs were the third-best punt returning team in the SEC, averaging 13.1 yards per return. Pegues was one of the league’s top return threats, and finished a fraction (0.7) of a yard behind Georgia’s Mikey Henderson in the race to become the SEC’s top returner in 2006. In kick returns, MSU was middle-of-the-pack, again with Derek Pegues in the league’s upper echelon. Pegues told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger the difference could have something to do with a handful of new schemes the team is using, but he gave most of the credit to the other teams. “Some punters we’ve been playing, they’ve put good hangtime on the ball so it’s hard to get some returns and some have been spraying the ball a lot of places,” Pegues said. “We really haven’t had that many opportunities from the fact that the defense has been struggling trying to get off the field on third downs.”

SOUTH CAROLINA

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said he plans to put backup quarterback Blake Mitchell in during the second quarter against Vanderbilt on Saturday, then decide whether to go with Mitchell or starter Chris Smelley. “I’m just going to do whatever I think’s best for our team to win the game. … We’ve got a one-man committee, how’s that? So there’s no arguments amongst the coaching staff,” Spurrier said jokingly.“We’ll see how it goes. We all felt like Blake deserves to play some, and we’ll see how he does. If he does well, he’ll play some more. If he doesn’t do very well, struggling … we’ll just try to be fair and go from there.”

TENNESSEE

Tennessee-Alabama week is a serious seven-day stretch when coaches get a little quieter, players work a little harder, and fans get a little feistier. Books have been written about it, weddings are scheduled around it, and births have been induced early because of it. It’s always called the ‘Third Saturday in October,’ even in those rare instances when it’s not actually played on the third Saturday in October. “This is always a special football game to anyone that’s ever played in it,” said UT Coach Phillip Fulmer, a former UT offensive lineman who’s been involved with the rivalry for nearly three decades. “Certainly, for the Tennessee fans and the Alabama fans and me, it’s one of the greatest games that we’re involved in.” A border-state rivalry couldn’t have started any better. It began in 1901 with a 6-6 tie. Legend has it that thousands of fans rushed the field afterwards and fisticuffs broke out. UT and Alabama have been slugging it out ever since.

VANDERBILT

Jonathan Goff’s is “back to his old ways,” said Vandy coach Bobby Johnson, after Goff had 14 tackles last weekend vs. Georgia. “He’s probably spoiled us all, that we expect him to have that game every game,” Johnson said. The latest in a line of accomplished Commodore linebackers, Goff established high expectations for himself with a 93-tackle campaign last season that included 67 solo stops, six tackles for loss, 2½ sacks, an interception, two forced fumbles and four pass breakups. This year, he’s on pace for a triple-digit tackle total and is already within a half-sack of last year’s mark. But last weekend, Goff went from “steady” — defensive coordinator Bruce Fowler’s characterization — to stellar. Of his 14 tackles, 12 were solos and one was a sack. He also had a quarterback pressure.