Phillip Fulmer

KNOXVILLE — An atypical season in nearly every way finished with a typical result: the University of Tennessee football team beating Kentucky.

Phillip Fulmer’s last game as head coach of his beloved alma mater finished with the Volunteers’ NCAA-leading 24th consecutive victory over the Wildcats.

Beleaguered junior quarterback Jonathan Crompton ran for one touchdown and threw another in Tennessee’s 28-10 Southeastern Conference win in Neyland Stadium.

No player upstaged Fulmer, though. The second-winningest coach in school history was carried off Shields-Watkins Field after winning his 152nd game — exactly 100 more than he lost.

“That at the end of the game was something I’ll never forget,” said Fulmer, who has given 34 years of service to the UT program — four as a player, two as a graduate assistant and 28 as a full-time coach.

“This has been a really tough year, and really a particularly tough month, but this group of kids are special, like every group I’ve had. I don’t want to sit here and rattle on. We’ve had a great run. We weren’t ready for it to end, but as it has, it’s probably ended as well as it could — to get the ‘W’ and finish in a real positive way.”

The Vols (5-7, 3-5) lost a chance for bowl eligibility five days after Nov. 3, when a teary Fulmer announced on a Monday afternoon that he would not return next season. They rebounded from a humiliating homecoming loss to Wyoming and finished the season like they almost always have — with victories over Vanderbilt and Kentucky (6-6, 2-6).

The Commodores and Wildcats will get bowl invitations. But, as UT sophomore wide receiver Denarius Moore said, neither likely will rub that in the Vols’ faces.

Moore said “there was a lot of pressure coming in during practice” this week to send Fulmer out with a win.

“But once we got to the game, we knew that Kentucky nor Vanderbilt can ever beat Tennessee,” Moore added.

Moore breezed by Kentucky cornerback David Jones early in the third quarter and ran under Crompton’s perfectly thrown play-action pass, coasting 63 untouched yards to the end zone to give UT a 14-3 lead.

“Whenever (Moore) is in the game and we have a pressed corner, we know we have a good matchup,” Crompton said. “I saw pre-snap that we had a good matchup with him, and the O-line and the backs did a great job against their blitz, and the rest is history.”

UT’s lead swelled to 28-3 by late in the fourth quarter, when Alfonso Smith’s 1-yard touchdown for Kentucky made the score look somewhat closer.

Vols sophomore tight end Luke Stocker, a Kentucky native, recovered UK’s subsequent onside kick before UT ended Fulmer’s reign in a victory formation.

“We didn’t do just about anything we set out to accomplish this season,” Vols junior center Josh McNeil said. “But we can always say that we sent Phillip Fulmer out the right way ... and that’s feels pretty good after what we’ve been through.”

The Vols won’t play again until Sept. 5, 2009, when they’ll open a new season against Western Kentucky. They presumably will be led then by former Oakland Raiders head coach Lane Kiffin.

Multiple sources close to the UT program said Kiffin, 33, agreed in principle to the Vols’ job earlier this week, though athletic director Mike Hamilton and his spokesperson declined comment about it in trying to keep Saturday’s focus on Fulmer.

Fulmer came closer than any UT employee on the record to giving a timetable for the new hire, which could be announced as soon as Monday.

“This time next week, they’ll have a new coach,” Fulmer said. “There will be a new excitement out of all of that, and the way that they could do best for their seniors and the best for their coaches and themselves and our team is to put a real positive end on the season.

“I thought that perhaps put some of the other stuff out of their mind. I told them we wanted to sing together in the locker room one last time.”

The offense’s second-half eruption didn’t take Fulmer’s mind away from another strong defensive performance.

UT, which will finish in the top five nationally in total defense, held its last four opponents to less than 300 yards of total offense. The Vols held Kentucky to 193 yards, and 125 before the Wildcats’ insignificant late touchdown drive.

“I’m proud of all my players, but this was certainly a good bunch to go out with,” said longtime UT defensive coordinator John Chavis.

UT’s defense spoiled Knoxville-area quarterback Randall Cobb’s first return trip to the school he supported as a youth.

Cobb — a true freshman who plays quarterback, wide receiver and returns punts — had few statistics to show for his dirtied uniform. He completed four of seven passes for 23 yards, ran 11 times for 22 yards and returned two punts for 13 yards.

“They had eight or nine guys in the box,” Cobb said. “There’s not much you can do with that but throw the ball, and we didn’t accomplish that.

“We didn’t run our offense. We didn’t get anything done that we usually do.”

Kentucky coach Rich Brooks called Fulmer’s forced removal a “tragedy,” a “sad commentary on the coaching profession. ... It’s a crime to see people like that forced out of the profession.”

Fulmer has simply been forced out at UT, though. He said he’d lean toward staying in the business for the right opportunity.

“(Tennessee) is a very special place,” Fulmer said when asked specifically if he was interested in the opening at Clemson. “It would take a special place for me to go to. Being unemployed, though, I’m interested in those kinds of jobs — because (Clemson) is a special place.

“I also have been told by a lot of people that I really respect that I need to take some time and think through it and not just jump at the first thing. My family’s paid a dear price for me to do this job, and it’s not without stress. So I need to kind of get through all of this. It’s kind of been one thing at a time. You get through tonight, you get through tomorrow, and then you try to figure it out from there.

“But if it was the right place — that has the same kind of passion that the Tennessee people have — and I felt like I could have the same kind of passion there that I’ve had here, then certainly that was something I would look at.”

Fulmer quickly added that it wasn’t his preference to look anywhere else, though.

His players, at least Saturday night, didn’t want that scenario, either.

“That’s the way a legend should go out — on top,” UT senior defensive end Robert Ayers said. “And Coach Fulmer is a legend of college football.”