From bad to worse.

Aftet posting a 5-6 record, would you sign with them? Tennessee's recruiting class was listed as "discouraging" in Stewart Mandel's analysis of recruiting classes on signing day on CNNSI.com:

A year ago this time, the Vols were basking in the glow of landing the nation's top recruiting class, which included seven of Scout.com's top 100 players. How did Tennessee go from that to a borderline top-25 class with just one top-100 player (in-state offensive lineman Jacques McClendon) a year later?

Certainly last year's 5-6 debacle didn't help, but the seeds of a recruiting class begin well before that. For whatever reason, Phillip Fulmer's staff wasn't in on as many big names nationally this year, which begs the question whether last year's gem was an aberration.