https://theathletic.com/2881454/2021/10/11/inside-tennessees-2017-search-that-turned-the-coaching-carousel/Nothing too terribly earth-shattering in there, as it's mostly what we already knew. But the part that caught my eye is how Fulmer was allegedly meddling in the coaching search even before Schiano Sunday. According to The Athletic, one current head coach (not named) said he turned down an opportunity to take the job after interviewing because he realized that Fulmer was flexing his muscles behind the scenes, had Bev Davenport's ear and was attempting to undermine Currie, and he felt that the next coach wouldn't have an honest chance to succeed under those conditions. It is further alleged that Fulmer was actually contacting potential candidates even while Currie was the AD and was conducting his own search.
Of course, we know how it ended. Fulmer pulled off the coup, he hired someone he felt he could control and who fit the mold for how he felt college football should be played, someone who was just as stupidly stubborn as him, and it ended disastrously.
I'll always have fond memories of Tennessee football in the '90s, but the more we learn about Fulmer the more of a distaste I have for him. I never put much stock into Majors' claims that his own coaching tenure was sabotaged by Fulmer while Majors was in the hospital recovering from open heart surgery, but with everything we know about how Fulmer staged a coup against Currie in 2017, it's hard not to believe that everything Majors claimed was accurate. And it's easy to say that Majors did it to himself by being stubborn in his own right, not kissing the right tails, and with his affinity for the bottle, but I'm starting to believe that if we knew everything there is to know about Fulmer, we'd find that he has always been about Fulmer > the University of Tennessee. The fact that he walked away from his short tenure as AD with a 7-figure payout is an insult.
