Volunteers' value soaring since discovering Pearl

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- You've heard of Football Time in Tennessee, right?

Well, this is not a column about that.

Bruce Pearl is the first coach to take Tennessee to a No. 1 ranking. (Getty Images)

This is a column about Basketball Time in Tennessee . And though the two entities will never be confused, (Thompson-Boling Arena doesn't hold 107,000 fans, you know?), the gap in relevance is closing by the minute. Again, things won't ever be equal because football rules this campus. But it was hard not to notice that more than a thousand fans took time away from tailgating Saturday morning and funneled themselves into an open basketball practice to watch the favorites to win the SEC for the second straight season conduct an hour-long workout.

"Bruce Pearl has motivated this whole city and this whole state," said Dan Hughes, a 30-year season-ticket holder from Johnson City. "It's just been unreal the way he's turned this program around."

Unreal is putting it mildly.

Pearl has taken a desolate program and re-energized it in a way unimaginable by initially using a roster that got Buzz Peterson fired and leading it to 22 wins in the 2005-06 season. After that came back-to-back Sweet 16s that pushed Pearl's three-year record at UT to 77-24 and helped the Vols:

• Earn their first No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press poll.

• Win their first outright SEC regular-season title in 41 years.

• Matter to people who wouldn't otherwise care.

That last achievement might be the most important, and it was the one on display this past weekend in the hours leading up to the football team's embarrassing loss to Florida. Fans entered Thompson-Boling Arena for practice, clapped for dunks and then spent a good hour just hanging out, taking pictures and collecting autographs. The night before at the Marriott downtown, Pearl had spent a portion of his evening posing for pictures with admiring Florida fans in town. And I know this might not sound like much to those of you from Kentucky, North Carolina and Indiana, but you must understand this is Tennessee we're talking about here.

I mean, can you imagine a Florida fan begging to take a picture with Jerry Green?

"This is great," Pearl said. "This is what a top 20 program has to be like."

A Tennessee coach talking about having a "top 20 program" would've caused eyes to roll just a few years ago. Now it's a reasonable statement, and those waiting for the Vols to come back to reality will probably be waiting for some time because Pearl -- with the help of assistants Tony Jones, Steve Forbes and Jason Shay -- has increased UT's talent level to the point where the Vols should be starting two sure-bet future NBA Draft picks (Tyler Smith and Scotty Hopson) this season beside Bobby Maze (junior college All-American), J.P. Prince (8.0 points in 18.8 minutes per game last season) and Wayne Chism (9.9 points and 5.8 rebounds in 22.9 minutes per game last season).