VTTW Board Index

...fizzle up a coaching search like we did and end up with your 45th choice. This isn’t on Pruitt. He was never up to the task in the first place, and deep down we all knew that from the beginning. This is on his boss(es).

Tennessee fans wanted a revolt. They got their revolt. Fulmer wanted a coach he could keep under his thumb and this is the result. As revulsive as the idea of hiring Schianl was, we could’ve had Leach. Does anyone think a Leach team would have come out here uninspired and lost to a 2-10 Sunbelt team by two touchdowns?

^This

The revolt was justified, but the result seems sub-optimal at present.

I don't disagree that the revolt seemed a worthy fight to carry at the time. But I cringed the day Fulmer was hired as the AD. I hinted at my disapproval, probably said it out loud in some company, but it's one of those things you don't dare shout from the rooftop because he's so popular among UT fans. I think the revolt played right into the hands of a small group of people behind the scenes who got exactly what they wanted. It wasn't so much a grassroots revolt as a coup. And it led us to today.

I agree Creek. The masses wanted Blackburn, but the powers that be had their own designs.

Blackburn was bypassed when Fulmer's incompetent predecessor was hired, not when Fulmer stepped in.

So let me get this straight... Some of you guys knew we should've left Currie in place all along and let him fix this?

Wow, hindsight sure is 20/20.

Currie had to go, if only because he was so tone-deaf that he attempted the Schiano hire (actually, it doesn't appear that it was tone-deafness; it appears it was even worse: bidding on behalf of key boosters who brought him to Tennessee in the first place). But I groaned inwardly when Fulmer was named his successor. That's not hindsight. I felt like it was a terrible move, but it seemed to be overwhelmingly favored by the fanbase. I think if you go back a couple of years before that, when Currie was named AD, you'll find posts from several of us on this board who openly protested that Fulmer had made it known he wanted the job; we felt it should've been Blackburn's, who would've crawled to Knoxville and whose credentials as AD were far and away superior to Fulmer's.

So, yes, I can say unequivocally that Currie shouldn't have been fired in the middle of the coaching search and replaced by Fulmer, and that isn't hindsight talking. If it's true that Leach would've taken the job, the administration should've let the hire play out, then fired Currie after the fact for going rogue. Given that she was later fired herself, I think it would be interesting to get Chancellor Bev talk privately about how it should've played out.

Now, if I were drawing conclusions from hindsight, I'd say, "We fired Butch for THIS?!? Why not just keep Butch?" That's hindsight. The gut feeling that hiring Fulmer as AD would prove disastrous is not hindsight. I have said more than once on this forum that I would give Pruitt a chance to prove himself but that I'm afraid he was just a hire made by Fulmer so that he could have someone submissive at the helm of the football program.

Hiring coaches in college football is strictly trial and error. Very few get what they want.

At the time, I applauded the Fulmer hire for a couple reasons. First, recall that the two guys vying for the job were Phil and some Haslam puppet whose name I can't remember. I liked Phil getting the job because it supposedly meant that Haslam was finally, FINALLY out of the picture (though I now have my doubts about that). Second, and this is key, I assumed that he was taking the job on an interim basis. Make the football hire, maybe stick around for a year to settle things down and help pick his replacement, and then retire permanently with the goodwill of everyone in Orange. If I had known he was going to stick around indefinitely, I would have opposed it vehemently. And that's not hindsight- if you check the archives, you'll see that I said as much at the time on VTTW.

I WILL admit to some 20/20 hindsight on Leach. At the time, I stupidly thought we could do better, even after Schiano Sunday. That was obviously pure folly. I still have my doubts that Leach could compete at the top levels of the SEC- but he's clearly better than what we have now, as well as any of the other finalists that Phil was supposedly zeroing in on at the end. Not to mention that his pressers would be wildly entertaining.

But let's say that Currie had done his due diligence and interviewed more than one guy before offering him the job, and the Schiano fiasco never happens. I still believe we could've gotten a top-shelf coach. Maybe not Gruden, but guys like Petersen, Gundy,  Bob Stoops, and Mullen were very much in play. And maybe others that we didn't hear about. This was not an unattractive job at the time. But Currie deep-sixed that in one Sunday afternoon. :frown:

Mullen was very interested in the UT job and the FL job came open and that ship sailed quick. Also.....Fulmer will be in that job until Fulmer decides to leave and not until. I knew that the day they hired him. It was the master plan by several $$$ folks all along.

 :dielaughing:

Hm.  First, we shouldn't say "maybe not Gruden", but "Gruden was never in play and just using UT to keep his name in the news for the NFL".  Second, Petersen is a West Coast guy and would never leave UDub, which has almost as much tradition as UT and less recent baggage.  It's well known that Petersen has a son with a health issue and wants to stay near his treatment center.  Gundy flat turned us down, but yeah, we did try that and he at least was actually in play.  Bob Stoops, I've heard he isn't interested in coaching college football at the moment and see no reason to doubt it. But seriously...why would he come to the hot mess that is UT when he was averaging 10 wins a season at OU, where recruiting is easy, they have a better tradition than UT, and he had a great deal of success?  He's almost as unrealistic as Gruden IMO.  And what TnPhil said about Mullen.

For the record, I thought Mullen might be a good candidate when Butch was hired, and got shouted down by a few on here, but that's water under the bridge.

In summary, really only Gundy and Mullen were in play, and Gundy said no very loudly and clearly and Mullen had a better opportunity come open.

No. Read my post- I said imagine if Schiano never happens.  Recall that Currie basically sat on his ass for a month between Butch's firing and the last game because he thought he had his man. He didn't even interview anyone else up to that point. All of those guys (except Stoops) weren't even contacted until after Schiano Sunday. Petersen was listening. Mullen was very interested until UF came along. Gundy was about to take the job up until some last minute concessions by OSU that we were apparently unwilling to match. And Leach had actually verbally accepted the job. How much of their interest was actually them leveraging their current schools is up for debate, but they were all talking to us before Phil took over, started from scratch, and decided to pick from a bunch of career assistants. Now imagine if Currie hadn't committed AD malpractice and had contacted these guys a month earlier. I dare say one of them would be our coach today.

Well, you threw Leach in after the fact, but he is the one who probably would have taken it.

Petersen may have listened, but I wrote him off long ago. He's in great shape at Washington and his son has health issues.  He will never coach in the East.  And my perception was that Gundy had  no real interest and was just using us to get a raise from OSU.  But who knows, maybe he was actually in play.

Not sure the month earlier would have helped with Gundy, who, for the record I am not sold on anyway, but maybe it would have helped with Mullen.

No, and pressers would have been well worth tuning in to. 

Plus at mealtime one could probably find the head coach at Gus's Goodtimes Deli and sat down and had a conversation with him. 

True that Herb! :thumbup:

All I have to say is that it is more expensive hire and fire 4 shizzlety coaches than it is to open the checkbook and hire a good, proven coach like Bob Stoops or someone of that ilk. Hey, he is available still.