KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Phil Fulmer made the understatement of the year when he summed up the ugliness that was his Tennessee Volunteers Saturday night. "We made enough mistakes to lose two football games tonight."

Heck, the Vols made enough mistakes to lose two games to Rutgers.

In what had to be the ugliest five minutes the sports world has seen since Roseanne tried singing the national, UT fumbled four times and surrendered 24 points in the last five minutes of the first half to gift wrap the game for Florida.

	“	The second quarter was an embarrassment. I apologize to the fans. ”
		— Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer

On the bright side, Vols quarterback Casey Clausen did complete 30 of 44 passes. Too bad that was about the same completion rate that he had with center Scott Wells on the quarterback exchange. The QB whose nickname is Iceman, for his resemblance to Val Kilmer's character in Top Gun, played like his fingers were frozen. Four times in the second quarter alone Clausen couldn't get the snap cleanly. But there was enough blame for the whole team to share.

The Vols' pass rushers missed so many tackles they made Rex Grossman look like Michael Vick. Meanwhile, UT's secondary looked more like they were playing on an ice rink than a wet field. And if that wasn't bad enough, Tennessee still found time to commit 11 penalties, including the ugliest of ugly: not one but two flags for having 12 men on the field.

"The second quarter was an embarrassment," Fulmer said. "I apologize to the fans."

The whole night was 360 degrees of ugly. Clausen even showed up to his post-game presser wearing a lime (puke?) green six-button suit that looked like something he dug out of Arsenio Hall's closet. To his credit, the junior didn't use the heavy downpour as an excuse. "It rained just as hard on them," he said.

The Vols, Fulmer explained, do drills with a wet ball at practice every Tuesday, but Clausen said that is a little different since they're not working it in a shower with the rain pelting them as it was Saturday night. "It's just something we have to work on," he said.

Making things worse, there was injury added to insult. Leading rusher Cedric Houston suffered a thigh bruise and missed most of the game, while star wideout Kelley Washington, playing in his first game back after missing two games with a sprained knee, had a bandage on his right thumb as the result of having the nail torn off. As Washington pointed out, though, that didn't stop him from catching passes. "(Catching passes without a thumbnail) is just one of my talents."

But the brash receiver, who caught seven passes for 102 yards, was not able to beat triple coverage. "(Florida) was shading three guys to my side," he said. "One of the other receivers has got to step up.

"Florida made sure I wouldn't catch my hitches or catch any deep balls. Another guy really needs to step up in addition to (tight end) Jason Witten."

That was one of the concerns the Vols had going into the season. Now, three games in, a whole new batch of troubles has popped up -- tackling, fumbled snaps, proper alignment, et al.

As Fulmer was asked to assess the damage, a reporter brought up the Vols motto for this season, Unfinished Business, but before the guy could spit his question out the UT coach interrupted.

"We've gotta get a new motto, and it's gonna be 'Discipline.' "

Bruce Feldman is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He can be reached at bruce.feldman@espnmag.com.