I think Philip Fulmer's seat finally has to be getting a bit warm.  He's been riding the goodwill from 1998 for quite some time, and recent seasons have not been as successful as the Tennessee faithful have come to expect.

You could make a lot of arguments about why he should be nervous - difficulties winning the big games, lack of recent SEC championships, the poor overall record against archrival Florida just to name a few.  But the biggest argument for me is just to take a glance at his team.

The game against Cal was by no means a true blowout; take away the first touchdown (as it should have been, since the fumble was caused by as clear an example of spearing as you could find), and it was a one-touchdown game.  Add in the question of whether the dynamics of the game would have been affected by taking that touchdown away (and the possibility of Tennessee actually scoring first), and you have what might really be quite an even contest.  For the most part, the personnel on both sides seemed pretty evenly matched (although with Coker out, Tennessee didn't seem to have any playmakers with quite the electricity that Jackson and Best bring to the table).  But look at how they played, specifically on defense and special teams.  Consistently out of position on ST, consistently missing tackles on defense - is there any more damning indictment of a coaching staff than poor performance of things as fundamental as tackling?

I'm not even touching on the issue of play-calling (also pretty atrocious), which is probably handled more by the offensive coordinator and is also affected by which of his reads Ainge chose to target.  But for me the specific complaint is that the things a head coach can do the most to eliminate - poor fundamentals, dumb penalties and mistakes, poor positioning - are exactly the things that have been consistently wrong at Tennessee for the last few years.  And the decision to kick to Jackson is hard to figure as anything but spectacular hubris or unforgivable cluelessness.

Beating Florida is a salve for any UT coach's woes, and winning the SEC title after an opening hiccup would erase all bad feelings, but I don't see either happening.  Without these gold stars on his report card, I think Fulmer's going to be feeling the heat.  With a couple of pretty tough games in the next two weeks (Southern Miss is a trap game if I ever saw one, sandwiched between a tough loss and a game against the Gators), Fat Phil could be looking at a much tougher situation than just having used up all of his Weight Watchers points for the week.