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I realize it's beating a dead horse and everyone is going to have to just move on, but this makes me bitter all over again at our administration.

Ultimately, of course, Hamilton and Cheek had no choice but to fire Pearl and his staff. The NCAA left them no other option. Keep him and get hammered or lose him and escape virtually unscathed.

But instead of being truthful and forthcoming about that, Hamilton and Cheek took it upon themselves to try and sway public sentiment by throwing Pearl under the bus. (You could argue, obviously, that Pearl threw himself under the bus when he lied to investigators, and I won't necessarily argue that, but it doesn't change the fact that the actions by Hamilton and Cheek were shameful.)

When Pearl was fired and Hamilton and Cheek refused to face the public, instead issuing vaguely-worded statements under the cover of darkness, that Sept. 14 "bump" was mentioned, along with the "additional violations" in March.

Everyone who knows anything about NCAA rules knew that the bump was virtually meaningless; a secondary violation, at worst. Who knows why the NCAA charged Pearl with a major for that one. I suspect they did it to help Tennessee make its decision to fire Pearl just a little easier. But that doesn't excuse Hamilton and Cheek for using it as ammo, because they knew full well that a major violation wouldn't stick in the end. Now, as it turns out, it wasn't a charged violation at all by the NCAA.

As for the violations in March, Hamilton's statement may not have specifically said Pearl committed them, but it was certainly meant to imply that. Newspapers and sports websites across the country ran headlines saying that Pearl committed additional violations in March. Shamefully, but probably not surprisingly, the News Sentinel didn't bother to do a little digging to find out just who committed those violations. It took a member of the "new media" (Hubbs) to initially report that, but for the most part it went unreported until the records of those violations were finally released by UT weeks later. By that time, the national press had moved on and the record was never, and will never, be set straight.

I guess it worked. Hamilton and Cheek needed to sway the overwhelming public support of Pearl. (Don't think for a moment that Hammy's appearance on the Sports Animal two days before the Michigan game to imply that Pearl might be fired was a slip of the tongue. It was calculated.) I specifically remember UT fans who had defended Pearl through the lies and everything else grumbling that he just couldn't stop cheating and needed to be fired. So it worked, at least to some extent. But it was almost slanderous.

Because we now know that Pearl didn't commit a single violation, at least not that he was charged with, after that initial lie to the NCAA last summer. Yes, he still bears responsibility for that. And I'm not suggesting for a moment that Tennessee shouldn't have fired him, because the NCAA left no choice in that matter...which is a discussion for another day.

But Tony Jones was right when he said today that UT fans should have no confidence in Cheek. I would have had much more respect in both men if they had just been honest and straight-forward. Obviously they couldn't very well say, "Hey, we have to do this because the NCAA will let us off easy if we do." But they could've shouldered the criticism and the blame and gone about what was very necessary business without the unnecessary drummed-up accusations.

I'm glad Hamilton is gone. Couple Cheek's shameful actions in the way the Pearl matter was handled with his downright incompetence in the search for a new AD and his affiliation with UT cannot end soon enough.

I agree 100%+ on Cheek.  He makes incompetent look good :rant:

Clay Travis has said all the negative news lately is "the Fulmer curse" but I say it is the Hamilton curse it seems everything Hamilton touched turned to shizzle.

I agree with you. It was never going to get fixed if Hamilton were still around. The man was just incompetent.

Clay is a buffoon who loves Fulmer because his book about Fulmer made him some money and got his name out there. I saw Clay tweet that about the Fulmer Curse the other day and I responded to him reminding him that the football program started going downhill before Fulmer was fired so there is no Fulmer curse.

I don't think there is any coincidence that Fulmer getting comfortable and feeling untouchable coincided with Hamilton taking over the AD chair in 2003. Fulmer never respected Hamilton and Hamilton never did anything to demand Fulmer's respect. Fulmer ran the football program into the depths but Hamilton was partially culpable because he didn't hold him responsible soon enough.

Negative news?  WTF is he talking about?  The news from the NCAA is POSITIVE!  I was scared to death we were going to get the absolute shizzle hammered out of us.  I almost think OSU and Miami did us a favor. 

We are out from under the NCAA cloud, recruiting is going great, and prospects of improving over last season look pretty good also.  Football-wise, I don't know what else we could ask for.

I am not phased by Janzen Jackson.  I thought he should have been gone long ago and didn't necessarily expect him to make it through the season.  We have a talented secondary even without him IMO.

As for Pat, I don't count that as "bad news" in a SPORTS sense.  That's bad news in her personal health, which is far more important than anything that could happen to our sports program.  I feel for her and her family, but I don't take it as bad news for the University or athletic department.  IMO the impact on her and her family is far more of import than anything that happens to the program that might affect me as a fan.  And I am definitely not implying that you or anyone else views that differently, just saying I don't lump that in with things like Janzen getting kicked off the team or wins and losses, etc.

Anyway, getting back to my original point...I don't really see a whole lot of bad news, here, today on August 25.  Over the last 2-3 years, yes, tons of bad stuff, but it started when Fulmer was still here.  But Clay is out of his mind if he thinks anything this summer compares to fall of 2008, Jan 2010 or April of this year.