More than nine years ago, an emotional Phillip Fulmer rode out of the Tennessee spotlight on the shoulders of his players after a career where he went 152-52. Though it had been a tumultuous final season, he exited with a win.

On Friday, Fulmer came back in on his proverbial white horse to be the UT athletic director and potential savior of a woebegone football program that has endured so much losing, embarrassment and dysfunction over the time since he was forced out that it seems like it was the program’s penance for letting him go.

All of that came to a head this week in what has played out like a daytime soap opera meets college football passion meets Game of Thrones.

In case you’ve been making moonshine in the mountains this week, here’s my quickest possible summary:

After an outpouring of indignation following the leaked announcement that John Currie, the Haslams and the rest of their cronies were going to force Greg Schiano down our throats as Tennessee’s new head coach, UT’s fan base revolted. By Sunday’s sundown, Tennessee rescinded the offer.

While that reaction was justified, the national media responded with a trailer-park frenzy of its own. The dominoes that scattered to the floor the remainder of the week amounted to warring, internal strife within the athletic department puppets and the Board of Trustees.

Long-time UT offensive assistant David Cutcliffe declined to leave Duke and try to help fix things. Then, Currie threw a bunch of money at Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy who spurned Tennessee for the second time to stay home and coach the Cowboys.

UT spoke to SMU coach Chad Morris, though an offer was never made, and the search turned its focus toward Purdue coach Jeff Brohm. Jimmy Hyams reported Brohm would be the next head coach, but news trickled out that the UT administration balked at Brohm’s buyout. Other media outlets said the Vols never offered. 

After the Brohm “did-he-or-didn’t-he” fiasco, N.C. State coach Dave Doeren was the focus and actually had an offer. Tennessee fans, by this time brimming with anger, went the irrational route and implored Doeren on Twitter that we didn’t want him. Doeren accepted a raise to stay in Raleigh. Then, under the veil of secrecy, Currie flew to the West Coast where he interviewed Washington State head coach Mike Leach without permission from the administration, his authority minimized by this time due to the Schiano fiasco. Currie was ordered home like a child by his scolding parents, was “suspended” Friday morning, and will be fired later after only a matter of semantics leaving the deal with Leach in the ether and Fulmer at the helm with a two-year deal as athletic director. 

Got all that insanity? Yes, all of that has happened in the past six days. But perhaps the only way to really cure the major ailments that afflict the Vols was to have a very public episode.

Of course, the national media has piled on like a pack of hungry wolves, with ESPN’s GameDay crew saying just this morning we are college football’s version of the Titanic. All but a few writers who understand the climate that had been bubbling for years such as SI.com’s Andy Staples, ESPN’s Peter Burns and a limited few others, have sharpened pitchforks all week. Many of the names you normally read were quick to judge and take sides. Now, if you’re like me, those will now become names you used to normally read.

None of that matters, though. Not anymore.

The only thing that matters to us is that we can have a football program of which we can be proud. The quickest way to cease being a laughingstock off the field is not to be one on it. And the only way not to be one on it is to get a unifying force to lead this athletic department; somebody who really, truly cares about fixing football the way Alabama fixed football 11 years ago.

When Nick Saban came to Tuscaloosa, the program got better, the money started rolling in so the athletic department got better, and therefore, the university got better. Tuscaloosa isn’t only an NFL factory; it’s also printing money like no other.

Well, that’s not exactly true. Tennessee brings in plenty of money, too. Yet the administration still continues to make bumbling, middling hires that will leave us in the wilderness we entered when we fired Fulmer so long ago.

Now, thankfully, finally, Fulmer is back. He never really left, but his home in Maryville may have well been on the moon for all the say he’s had in the program over the past decade. Any time he was interviewed, you could see the hurt on his face over what we’d become. All he ever asked for was an opportunity to fix it.

That opportunity is now here.

You think Fulmer is just going to ride in here on his stallion and throw a no-name coach out there? He may have to, but he’s going to begin by fishing in deep waters. Depending on the nibbles he gets, GoVols247’s Wes Rucker said a VFL duo of Kevin Steele and Tee Martin is a possibility to return to Knoxville and help Fulmer right these wrongs. Are they the answers? At this point, who knows? But what we can and should all get behind is that there’s a man in the captain’s seat who cares about Tennessee now as much, if not more, than you and me. That should thrill us all.

This nation-wide coaching search isn’t over, but the national nightmare is. The appointment of Fulmer as athletic director effectively minimizes the involvement of the corrupt Haslams, who’d ruled Tennessee and treated it as their own personal fiefdom over the past several decades. Considering Daddy Jim Haslam was instrumental in Fulmer’s ousting, it’s safe to say the two aren’t chummy.

Friday’s decision to turn the athletic department over to Fulmer was a proverbial passing of the torch from the Haslams’ money to other donors. Now, most importantly, somebody who actually knows and cares about football will be making the football decisions.

Fulmer spoke Friday about there being a time when our football team could compete with anybody anywhere and he’s charged with making that happen again. Though it won’t be an overnight fix, the most important thing for UT fans to remember that he said is this:

“Our first job is turning around our football program,” Fulmer said. “Our football teams in recent years have struggled for a variety of reasons, but through it all we have been supported by the most passionate fan base in the country. These great fans deserve teams that make them proud.”

“It will not be easy, and it will take some time, but we will succeed. We first must find us a coach who wants to be at Tennessee, who appreciates the unique opportunity that we have to offer at this very special place at this historical time and who is driven to win at the highest level of college football; the kind of head coach who will honor our University’s values, will be proud to represent our state and be a role model for our student-athletes.

When Fulmer says it, you know it isn’t just lip service or coachspeak. You know he means it, and he has the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past decade, wrongs that started with some recruiting and hiring missteps that came under his own watch.

Fulmer didn’t spend any of his time at the podium on Friday gloating. He didn’t spend any of it talking about how he never should have been fired in the first place or even mentioning that Currie was a Mike Hamilton disciple and that it probably gave him some gratification for this entire situation to come full-circle and for him to replace the obviously overmatched Currie after only eight months on the job. Fulmer spoke of a utopian future where, perhaps, Tennessee could compete at a national level again. He understands that isn’t in the near future, but the only way to fix everything is to start on the inside and work out.

Sometimes, in order to look ahead, you have to learn from your past. Fulmer addressed that, too.

“I hope to be a stabilizing and unifying force through this, just because we do have some grey hair and lots of experience at this place, and sometimes when you’re younger, you screwed it up so bad that you figured it out later. You don’t make the same mistakes again.”

Those mistakes Fulmer made were only the tip of the iceberg that became glacier. They snowballed from the Lane Kiffin year of tearing down traditions, bending NCAA rules and leaving to the failed tenures of Derek Dooley and Butch Jones — two of the worst program fits of any hires in SEC history — to Dave Hart’s decisions to do away with the Lady Vols nickname to bumbling chancellors and university presidential leadership to Hart’s own ouster and the grueling power struggles that led to Currie being hired as the Haslams’ Yes Man at AD, to this year’s 4-8 season that was the worst in school history, to Jones’ way-too-late firing, to this past, forgettable week.

Tennessee is an also-ran and an afterthought. On a day when conference championships are being played, the Vols are sitting at home while the administration has been bursting apart at the seams.

But Fulmer — no matter how he got in the seat — is a glimmer of hope. You can talk all you want about basement-dealings, back-stabbings and cloak-and-dagger decisions, but the bottom line is we’ve tried all those other things. We’ve gone every direction possible after Fulmer, and we never could recapture what Fulmer gave us.

Now, Fulmer is back, and his legacy, in part, depends on what he can do to build us back up to what we once were. Can we emerge from our own considerable shadow to have a program of substance ever again? Neyland Stadium sits empty on the edge of the river, just waiting to be filled with happiness once again, and the last man who ever brought that inside her walls now sits at the stern of the athletic department.

Papa’s home. The Battle Captain is back. So, let’s go find us a coach and have fun winning some championships, Vols.

Jimmy Hyams is reporting that Philip Fulmer will be named the athletic director this afternoon at 4:00.

While UT considered Reid Sigmon for interim AD job to replace the fired John Currie, Phillip Fulmer will be named the athletic director at the 4 pm presser, but don’t know if full time or interim. With Fulmer at the helm, don’t be surprised if pool of candidates opens up.

— Jimmy Hyams (@JimmyHyams) December 1, 2017

There was some concern that Reid Sigmon was on the wrong side of the power struggle currently raging behind the curtain in the the department. Who knows.

At the least, we’ll find out whether it’s Fulmer or Sigmon at 4:00. We’ll have a live thread, so plan to be here.

Tennessee football is broken, and it’s becoming more and more evident with each passing moment that it’s broken in ways that aren’t limited to just the team or whoever the current coach happens to be. It goes much deeper than that.

We all know what has happened. What we haven’t gotten clarity on yet is why it is happening. Much of the national media lays the blame on common fans for believing they have a right to influence the decisions of the athletic department. Fans blame the coaches when the team does poorly, and after Sunday’s very public Contractus Interruptus, fans were screaming for a similar fate for athletic director John Currie. At the basketball game the other night, the arrows started reaching another rung up the ladder to Beverly Davenport.

First it was “FIRE BUTCH”

Then it was “FIRE CURRIE”

Now it’s “FIRE BEV” pic.twitter.com/zhDJl82qLf

— Brianna Paciorka (@bpaciorka) November 30, 2017

This morning, fans got their wish as to Currie, but it came just as he’d done something right in reportedly landing Mike Leach, a win that seemed to please most Vols fans. That deal now appears to be off, if it was ever really on.

What the heck is going on here?

It’s tempting to believe that firing Currie or firing the Chancellor or whoever is at the top of the totem pole will fix the problem, but we’ve experienced an unending series of issues for nearly a decade now, and every time one problem is uprooted, another one pops up in its place.

Maybe it’s something much deeper. Maybe it’s time to stop focusing on the people who’ve been hired and fired and instead start wondering whether those people are being improperly influenced by the wrong people. Maybe there’s a common thread lurking in the shadows, shielded by the scapegoats.

This is why it is so irritating to have national media calling out the common fans for what happened Sunday. I said this in many more words a couple of days ago, but let me try to say it more succinctly this time: If you think Sunday was the first time a fan base influenced an athletic department, you’re just wrong. What was notable about Sunday was that common fans were pushing back against the rich ones.

Big money boosters (a small number of fans with a ton of money) have always had influence over the athletic department to which they give money, while common fans (a ton of fans with a little money) have never had the same privilege until technology enabled them to aggregate their influence. At most places, common fans don’t mind the big money boosters because they don’t actually screw anything up.

No, common fans wouldn’t have any problem with rich fans having influence over the department if they were actually making the program better. But if they’ve been screwing it up for a decade and there’s no way to get rid of them, your athletic department has a very serious problem.

The growing perception of common Vols fans is that the Tennessee athletic department has long been beholden to rich men with terrible judgment about football. On Sunday, the collective voice of the common fan revolted, not necessarily because the athletic department wasn’t listening to them, but because it was becoming more and more clear that some really rich guy had optioned the right to make decisions for the entire fan base and was ruining the program in the process.

The view from the stands

Common Vols fans aren’t allowed behind the curtain on The Hill, so we can only rely on whatever information we can gather from media members with sources to help us figure out what’s going on.

But when you start to see comments like this from credible national media members, you have to wonder:

So, if that’s DING DING DING true, just who is it that had Currie’s hands tied until last night?

I’m telling you right now that I don’t have sufficient sources to know, but I do know that when you venture onto Twitter or message boards or Tony Basilio’s radio show for any amount of time, the name you’ll see or hear most often is Jimmy Haslam’s.

I am not taking a position on whether Haslam is the sole problem, a problem, or not a problem at all. I’m only saying that I do believe that the program is suffering from too much influence from one or several big money boosters and that there are a lot of common Vols fans who believe that it’s Haslam causing the most trouble.

Why are Vols fans suspicious of Jimmy Haslam?

Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay and you’re okay
Money, it’s a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I’ll buy me a football team

— Money, by Pink Floyd

Jimmy Haslam is rich beyond comprehension for most of us. He’s the CEO of Pilot Flying J, the 15^th-largest private company in the United States. According to Forbes, he’s worth $3.6 billion.

Haslam loves football, but he’s terrible at managing a program. He bought the Cleveland Browns back in 2012 for $990 million. Since that time, Cleveland has been considered the worst franchise in the NFL, finishing dead last in the AFC North every year since Haslam bought the team. Over the past six years, the team has gone 5-11, 4-12, 7-9, 3-13, and 1-15, and they are winless this year. One Browns fan has purchased a permit to hold an 0-16 parade around FirstEnergy Stadium at the conclusion of this season. They are 1-29 in their past 30 games and 4-44 dating back to 2014. It’s the worst 48-game stretch in NFL history. They are not just bad, but historically, terribly bad. People are beginning to seriously wonder whether the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft this year might refuse to sign with the Browns if they’re the ones to pick him.

Of course, you can’t buy a college football team like you can an NFL team. But you can give a boatload of money to one, and Haslam is a major donor to the University of Tennessee. He was part of three generations of the Haslam family that donated $50 million to the UT College of Business back in 2014.

To my knowledge, there have been no reports of big money boosters causing any serious problems at Tennessee, but it’s no secret that donating large amounts of money earns you certain privileges at the schools to which you donate.

And there are, in fact, some reports that Haslam has been and is involved in important decisions for the athletic department. Jimmy Hyams reported that when the school was hiring someone to replace outgoing athletic director Dave Hart, Haslam was not only on the search committee, but was “the search committee member that pushed for Currie.”

And regarding the current search for a new coach to replace Butch Jones, Mike Griffith recently reported that:

Currie declined to use a search firm, and he has instead been consulting with the family of Vols booster Jimmy Haslam and Tennessee legend Peyton Manning, according to the source.

Griffith also said via Tweet that Manning has merely “been involved” and that Haslam is “at the point.”

Peyton Manning has been involved, Jimmy Haslam at the point with Currie on this one, per sources. https://t.co/PzjK6pjfpu

— Mike Griffith (@MikeGriffith32) November 29, 2017

Subsequent reports suggest that Haslam’s involvement after last Sunday has been limited. But up until then, at least, a guy who’s owned a terrible team for five years and has given millions of dollars to the University was reportedly involved in some of the most important decisions they make. And so many of those decisions have not gone very well at all.

But does any of that mean Haslam is forcing himself on the University? Not necessarily. Maybe they want his help.

But let me ask you this: Would you?

We’ve already established that the NFL team he’s owned for five years is historically bad, so why would you ask him for advice on football matters?

In addition to that, there’s that not-so-small matter of the current Pilot Flying J scandal. This article is not about that case, so I won’t spend too much time on the details, but here’s the gist: Pilot Flying J, the company of which Jimmy Haslam is CEO, is embroiled in an ongoing fraud case against the company. The FBI and IRS raided the corporate headquarters in 2013, and 14 former employees have already pled guilty. Four more former executives are on trial for conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. The company has already paid $92 million in fines (and the board of directors reportedly confessed criminal responsibility in connection therewith), and the company paid another $85 million to settle with customers. So far, Jimmy Haslam himself has not been charged. This week, though, feds began to look into his potential knowledge or involvement based on a recording purportedly showing that he was present at a meeting during which the fraud was allegedly being taught to staff.

None of that is to suggest that Jimmy Haslam himself is guilty of anything, but whether he’s guilty or not is not the point.

The point is this: When you Google Jimmy Haslam’s name right now, what you get is a page full of news associating his name with fraud.

Who in their right mind would think it’s a good idea to send him out on a coaching search to represent a school with its own reputation problem?

Separation of powers

So, when a highly-respected national media member endorses the idea that the real problem at Tennessee was something improperly influencing the athletic director, well, that should get your attention. So should someone as respectable as Bruce Feldman mentioning in an article published this morning that, “there is a lot of in-fighting, finger-pointing and back-stabbing taking place amongst Tennessee brass.”

Does that verify the common fans’ belief that Haslam’s been wielding too much influence over the process? Does it mean a coup is underway among the most influential boosters, and if so, is that a good thing? Is the department finally headed toward stability? Are we possibly at risk of trading one tyrant for another? Or has someone with a white hat finally rode in to save the day?

It’s too early to tell, of course. But it would seem that a re-balancing of power at this time might be a very good thing, even as ugly as it’s been. Especially if whoever ends up in control knows that they are also going to be held accountable by the collective voice of the common fan.

WVLT is reporting that Tennessee athletics director John Currie has been fired.

Currie was hired only eight months ago and had gained not insignificant amounts of goodwill by bringing back the Lady Vols logo and making a move on head football coach Butch Jones in the middle of a historically bad season. All of that was undone in a matter of weeks, however, with Currie’s handling of the search for a new football coach, which has featured a long series of missteps that has the various factions of Tennessee stakeholders at odds with one another.

Currie reportedly met with Chancellor Beverly Davenport this morning and learned of his fate during that meeting. No word yet on who will replace Currie, either permanently or temporarily for the purpose of concluding the coaching search.

[UPDATE] VolQuest is reporting that Phillip Fulmer has been more involved in the coaching search since last Sunday and that he’ll be assuming a greater role going forward.

 

It’s looking like Tennessee’s coaching search may finally be drawing to a close. At 10:42 last night, Newy Scruggs and NBCDFWSports (NBC Dallas Ft. Worth) cited sources in saying that the Vols were working on a deal with Mike Leach and that an announcement could be made today. Almost immediately after that, Dan Harralson of Saturday Down South tweeted that Leach himself said, “I’m on my way” directly to Harralson. At 11:43 p.m., Bruce Feldman — who co-wrote Leach’s book Swing Your Sword — said that “a souorce” told him that Leach’s meeting with Tennessee went very well.

Mike Leach is in his sixth season as the head coach of the Washington State Cougars. We have him listed as an offensive Guru in our taxonomy of college football coaches, primarily due to what I once termed a unique “space offense.” Leach is only 38-37 at Washington State overall, but his team is currently 18th in the nation, and he’s done that with a rolling recruiting ranking of only 49th. His recruiting rankings the last four years were 44th, 56th, 42nd, and 53rd. Whether you take that to mean he can’t recruit well or that he can coach well despite lacking SEC talent is up to you. But if he comes, he’ll at least have a couple of years to show what he can do with SEC talent.

At this point, the reports are not official and we should all be well aware by now that nothing is done until it’s done and the guy is standing at the podium, but this one somehow looks like a plausible scenario, so it’s definitely something to watch.

[UPDATE] This is obviously in limbo in light of news that John Currie has been fired as Tennessee’s athletic director.

 

You’d think we’ve gotten to the point where a Tennessee head coach search wouldn’t be a disaster zone. Over the last decade, maybe people would’ve learned something from the litany of past mistakes.

It’s been a decade, hasn’t it?

From the Clawfense to shirtless chain pictures to Coach O recruiting for USC in the back of the press room to Opportunity is Nowhere to finding Rommel (we never found him, did we?) to Five-Star Heart to Title IX payouts, it’s been a decade. I don’t blame anyone at this point for being done, and I don’t blame anyone for deciding to walk away.

We hoped this would pass once Butch Jones put a stamp on the 2017 season and proceeded to mail it in until he secured his buyout. We ended up with interim coach Brady Hoke, who has now been on a fired staff three years running. Jauan Jennings got kicked off the team instead of the more-normal suspension and re-evaluation under a new head coach.

The last year in football has been falling out of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down, no mean feat for a season that started with a literal trash can.

Well, great. Now what?

Anyway, after all that we’re stuck hoping that John Currie, former Kansas State AD turned Tennessee AD, would be able to guide us out of the muck. Currie, it should be noted, never hired a football coach at Kansas State. The main revenue-sport hire he did there was turfing Frank Martin for Bruce Weber. (Frank Martin, in case you forgot or checked out of college basketball, led South Carolina—South Carolina!—to a Final Four last year. This would be classified as “known defect” among the more engineering-inclined of the sports punditry.)

We’ve seen nothing in the last month that makes me think either Currie or the people working with him on this there has any idea what they’re doing. I’m left to believe we’re in the middle of a farce.

Given a month or so to plan following Butch Jones being shown the door and a pretty decent slate of potential head coaching candidates, we’ve seen:
– Nothing until the end of football season. That’s firmly in the annoying-but-explainable camp, but we’re being completist here. This is probably fine.
– Greg Schiano get offered the head coaching job, accept the position, and then back out after a revolt for most of last Sunday.

Wait, hold up.

If you’d like to write off Schiano being involved with Penn State during the Sandusky era, sure. That still leaves the relatively lackluster record at Rutgers, who rolled up wins back when the Big East was sending 8-4 UConn to the Fiesta Bowl, the player revolt in Tampa Bay, the MRSA outbreak in Tampa Bay, and the, well, zero jobs he was in the running for before being plucked off the scrap heap to give up 55 points to Iowa. Really, take your pick on why this was a bad idea, you’ve got options.

Oh yeah, and the memorandum of understanding. Apparently, Schiano signed a memorandum of understanding prior to the scuttled announcement on Sunday. This is a little baffling, and the only thing I can figure out happened here is someone in the athletic department was directed to run a find-replace on Rick Barnes’s old MOU and forwarded it to Schiano’s agents/lawyers. This was saved because Beverly Davenport didn’t sign the MOU, I guess? Somehow, ending up on the hook for Schiano’s buyout after possibly employing him for four hours is about the most appropriate way for that story to end.

Stop me if any of the above sequence makes you feel good about the people still looking to make a hire. On the other hand, if you’re into dark humor last week was great.

Anyway:

We backed up the truck for Mike Gundy and made him say no. This was good! This was a good idea! The process they used to get here is:

• Florida hired Dan Mullen, who I’d say was now off the board but I’m honestly not sure he was on there in the first place.
• Had ….something weird happen with Jeff Brohm. I’m not sure what happened here, so I’m just going to make a note and come back to it.
• Arizona State hired Herm Edwards. That has nothing to do with Tennessee, but you probably missed this yesterday and it did pretty much lock in Tennessee to the second-worst hire of the offseason at worst. Yay?
• Made an offer to Dave Doeren, whose coaching profile looks like “hey, what if we hired Butch Jones but only with 75% of the success?”
• Had the band play over videos and every single stoppage during the Tennessee-Mercer game to drown out “Fire Currie’ chants coming from the student section. If you missed the game last night, 1) you should watch the Basketvols, they’re good!, 2) you could hear some chants over the TV in the first half.
• Jimbo Fisher left FSU, presumably to take Texas A&M’s open head coaching gig.
• Doeren, head coach at NC State, decided he wanted no part of this.

I don’t blame Doeren, for the record. This job was going to be brutal—and, since he’s turned it down, too tough for him. We can say that now. Tennessee is a hard, but rewarding job, and the difficulty is directly related to the reward. Coming in for a fanbase that lacks hope after the demolition job of 2017 would’ve meant he was updating his resume by 2020 at the latest.

You’d be forgiven at this point for ignoring the actual issue at hand–oh yeah, by the way there’s an early signing period this year!–and just descending into the kind of macabre comedy that ….well, isn’t really America’s bag quite frankly. If you’re the kind of person who watches Black Mirror for the comedy, this week has been great.

Eeeeeeeesh.

The nice part about Currie and crew screwing up this badly is that they’ve left all the good candidates still on the board. Somehow, Kevin Sumlin might actually take our phone call. Les Miles is still on the board. Tee Martin? Around, confused that he hasn’t been called, but he’s around! I’m contractually obligated to mention Lane Kiffin is around, and I guess I’ll even go above and beyond the contract to mention that going after him will end in him also publicly turning Tennessee down. Everyone and their brother, sister, cousin, aunt, and uncle has their favorite candidate. (For me? Go talk to Brohm, bury your pride, bring your best I’m-sorry, and bring your wallet.)

At this point, regardless of end result the process that was taken to get there has been abhorrent, the worst combination of administrative slapstick and ideas perpetuated by the same thought process that got Chan Gailey job after job after job. If we end up with a head coach that isn’t a disaster zone, consider it a bonus.

In the meantime, congrats to future Tennessee head coach Dave Clawson, because ….hey, do you trust Currie to not do that?

Hope is valuable.

The Powers That Be at Tennessee haven’t given us much reason to believe they will make a good decision in this situation. Not only were they completely out of touch in almost hiring Greg Schiano, they believed Schiano was a more valuable candidate than Mike Gundy, Jeff Brohm, and any number of other options available before everything got nuts on Sunday. It was a stunningly poor move on both a football and a fan relations front, one John Currie will have a long and difficult road to recover from, if he still can.

What do you do when you can’t trust the thing you love to make good decisions?

When the Vols hired Butch Jones, Tennessee’s faith was tested. But we could hope the coach who went 9-3 the last two years at Cincinnati with a pair of shared division titles could grow into the role at Tennessee. And fans showed up, early and often and even late into his final season, because we love Tennessee and we tried to love Butch Jones.

It’s been five years, only about 365 days of which, from one October to the next in 2015-2016, felt like a real return on the investment. The last year was the worst in school history.

We’re all here because we love Tennessee. What we need is hope.

And what we’re losing by the hour is faith in the decision makers.

I actually liked swinging and missing on Mike Gundy; it was a serious play for a serious coach. I don’t know what happened with Jeff Brohm, but fan reaction to the possibility/momentary probability should be educational for the decision makers, if they’re willing to listen.

It’s not exclusive to hiring Tee Martin. You certainly don’t have to hire Lane Kiffin. But you have to hire hope.

When faith seems non-existent, love gets very difficult. When you’ve already shown up for a decade now and been met with only disappointment, it gets more difficult to write the check for tickets. When you don’t believe those in charge are making good decisions about the future of the program, it gets more difficult to show up to support the program.

Tennessee needs hope. And even if there is little faith in the decision makers long-term, they can still make a hire that provides hope today.

Jeff Brohm would have done that, but he’s not the only one. Tee Martin would do that in a different way, but he’s not the only one either. Again:  we hoped in Butch Jones. It can be done.

As one example, consider the difference between Chad Morris and Dave Doeren.

Chad Morris took over an SMU team that went 1-11 in 2014. He went 2-10, then 5-7, then 7-5. Before that he was the architect of the Clemson offense from 2011-14. I don’t know if Chad Morris would be a good coach at Tennessee. But there is reason to hope. (There’s also reason to enjoy an offense that’s currently seventh nationally in S&P+ and 16th in yards per play. If you hire Chad Morris, you take some of that Mike Gundy money and buy a defensive coordinator.)

Chad Morris wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice, before or after Sunday. But there is reason to hope.

It is simply a much harder sell with a more known entity like Dave Doeren.

Dave Doeren is the guy NC State hoped would make a difference. After a 3-9 first season, Doeren went 8-5, 7-6, 7-6, and is 8-4 this year. Tom O’Brien’s last three years at NC State:  9-4, 8-5, 7-5.

Chad Morris (and Jeff Brohm, and Tee Martin, and a bunch of other guys) is an unknown. He might be good. He might not be. But I can hope.

We already know much more about Dave Doeren. Another power conference school (and one with a lower standard of success, traditionally) already hoped he was the guy to move them forward, and so far he has only achieved the same things his predecessor did before being fired.

It is simply much, much harder to hope in Dave Doeren than an unknown.

Consider this as well:  five of Tennessee’s first seven games next year are vs West Virginia, Florida, at Georgia, at Auburn, and Alabama. That is a challenge, to say the least. If Tennessee takes a beating in some or all of those games, who do you want to take that beating?

If it’s Tee Martin, the narrative is patience. I have no idea if Tee Martin would be a successful coach at Tennessee if he took the job right now, but I do know no one would get more patience from the fan base. If he starts 2-5 and finishes below .500 his first year, fans would handle it much better. But they will also handle it better if it’s someone like Chad Morris, someone who walks in the door with more hope. Tennessee is likely to struggle next season no matter who is wearing the headset. But they’re 2-5 with Dave Doeren, he will get far less benefit of the doubt because he will inherit far less hope. Even though one year on the job doesn’t prove much of anything, some will say they’re already out on Dave Doeren because deep down they were out on him from day one. I fear Tennessee needs more hope than he can currently provide.

Hope isn’t just about morale. It’s about ticket sales and patience. It’s about keeping love alive even when faith is dormant. Reasonable fans – which I always believe are the vast majority of Tennessee’s paying customers – will always be invested if you give them hope.

(Also, in the hope department:  Les Miles. It is baffling to me that he can’t even get an interview. It’s easy to view this as a crisis, which makes one look for safety, and Les Miles is the safest pick on the board. I can easily find hope in Les Miles.)

If the Vols hire Doeren, I will support him. I won’t take it out on him. But hope will be more difficult to come by at a time when Tennessee needs it most. And patience will wear thinner, faster at a time when Tennessee is likely to need more of it.

Even if we lack faith in the decision makers, they might be able to see how such a hire is beneficial to them too. With Tennessee’s name in the national sports news for reasons they don’t like, I’m sure it’s tempting to just hire someone and try to move on. But it is far better for those decision makers in the long run to not panic, at least listen to the people, and make a hire they can find hope in. The longer we can hope, the longer we’re invested. And, in this case, the more time they might buy for themselves before the unrest skips right over the head coach and goes to the top of the ladder. It’s already there tonight. But there is still time to make a hopeful hire that benefits both them and the fans.

The conversations about why we have no faith in the decision makers needs to take place anyway. But Tennessee also needs a football coach; even if not tonight, relatively soon. There are still good options out there. You don’t have to panic. And you should never underestimate the value of hope.

 

One of the most interesting things about what happened on Rocky Top Sunday concerns the shift in the balance of power in collegiate athletic programs. While some Vols fans were celebrating having “taken back their program,” most national sports media pundits were decrying John Currie’s “spineless” abdication of his decision-making authority to the fans. I heard the latter so many times yesterday that I lost track of everyone who said it. One representative example of the national criticism is a piece from Yahoo’s Pete Thamel saying that Tennessee has now “decided to let their fans dictate their coaching search “American-Idol”-style.

In case you’re wondering, that is not a compliment. Thamel is not alone, either, as that sentiment has been a recurring theme among the national media the last 36 hours. I’ve seen only one exception, from SI.com’s Andy Staples.

The profound lack of nuance is clouding up the real issue. Regardless of their words, fans don’t really mean that they’re in control of the program, and national media folks don’t really mean that Tennessee has opened the phone lines to take votes on who is going to be the next head coach.

No, fans are not saying that the administration should do everything they want and media is not saying that they should ignore fans completely. At least I hope not. When everyone’s over the top, everyone’s wrong.

The real question is this: How much weight should the administration give to the opinions of fans?

The answer, of course, is some. Sunday was about fans feeling that “none” had finally become “some,” and they had finally found their collective voice as strong as that of big money boosters.

Always listen, sometimes act

It’s a tricky question, how much to listen to your customers.

Back in 2011, I opened a store to sell licensed apparel and accessories to sports fans. Before we opened, we did all of the requisite market research and brought in the product we thought best at the time.

When we opened the doors, we started getting real feedback from real customers, and at first we listened to every one of them and bent over backwards to give them what they desired. If a customer wanted something we didn’t have, we’d get it for them.

Acting on that feedback turned out to be a huge mistake. We soon learned that one customer really passionate about the one thing you don’t have doesn’t justify meeting that desire. We also learned that a customer who loudly complains about not having something often won’t buy it when you do anyway. Votes with wallets count more than votes with voices.

Over time, we got better at listening to the right customers and politely ignoring others. If only a small handful of people requested something we didn’t have, we knew better than to invest in it. But if enough people told us they wanted something, we would try it. And then, when we brought something new in, if it sold, we got more of it. If it didn’t sell, we politely ignored requests to stock it.

Bottom line, you have to listen to the feedback of your customers or you might never discover what they actually want, but you also have to make your own decisions about whether to act on that feedback or not.

When and how much should Tennessee act on fan feedback?

If anyone in the national media actually means it when they say that Tennessee or any other NCAA football program shouldn’t listen to its fans at all, they are just wrong or being lazy with their words.

Tennessee absolutely should listen to its audience, of that there can be no doubt. A football program, much like a business, is a symbiotic institution. The team is the product. The fans are the audience, the customers. The administration manages the details of the institution. Each of those things depends on the other. For instance, the administration needs the fans to continue buying tickets, concessions, and merchandise and, if they aren’t at the stadium, to at least remain interested in the team so that the school can continue to sell its customers’ attention to advertisers. Without customers financially engaged, the entire enterprise crumbles.

Yes, it would be unwise for the administration to grant the fan base any part of the decision-making process. But it would be equally unwise to utterly ignore the feedback they’re getting from them.

Sunday afternoon, Tennessee fans learned that athletic director John Currie was marching down the aisle on his way to the altar and an expensive long-term commitment to Greg Schiano. And then the preacher asked the loved ones in attendance to speak now or forever hold their peace, and the Tennessee fan base spoke up.

There were multiple reasons given for the objection. Some were uncomfortable about the Penn State stuff in the Washington Post article. Some were alarmed that Tennessee would choose a guy that had submarined a team in Tampa by losing the trust of his players, a situation much too similar to what had just happened in Knoxville with the guy they had just fired. Some didn’t like Schiano’s reported tendency to tick off people known for being nice (same link), including Tennessee’s favorite son, Peyton Manning. There were other reasons, as well, and some of these reasons were all mixed in together.

Some, like me, were especially alarmed at the sheer volume of fans headed for the exits in droves, regardless of the reason. These were folks ready to finally throw in the towel after a decade of waiting for the University to deliver on a promise to give them something worth cheering. It was too much to ask of too many, and the stands were emptying before our eyes. If my humble little fan shop in Kingsport, Tennessee is concerned about the sudden disappearance of customers, I cannot fathom why or how the Tennessee athletics administration could care less.

The customers were being ignored, again, and they were leaving.

The $100M dollar donor vs. an army of thousand dollar donors

The funny thing is, Tennessee actually has been listening to some of its customers for years, which is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be precisely the problem.

We peasant fans have little to no idea what goes on behind the curtain on The Hill. But one would have to be extremely naïve to believe that big money boosters aren’t involved and don’t have too much influence over the athletic department.

And that’s the irony of this entire story: The national media is criticizing the school for acting on the opinion of thousands of fans while ignoring the very real possibility that it’s been acting on the influence of a handful of big money boosters for a decade or more.

Let me go back to my business for a second. We have some customers that come in regularly and spend much, much more than others. They’re our best customers. We love them. We will give them special attention because we appreciate them. Thankfully, none of them have ever done this, but if one of them ever asked us to do something that would have a negative impact on our ability to also serve our regular customers, we’d be in a real dilemma: Lose our best customer or lose most of our regular customers?

That’s the dilemma in which Currie found himself on Sunday. What does he do when his one $100M donor wants one thing and an army of $1,000 donors want something else?

Back in the day, only the big money booster had the athletic director’s ear. Now, the thousand dollar donors have a voice, too. Collectively, they have always been as important as the big money guys, they just didn’t have a way to aggregate their influence to provide a counter-weight to the rich dude with the AD’s personal cell number. Now they do.

That’s the story. That’s what’s new. It’s not that the school has suddenly decided to cede control to its fans. It’s not even that they’ve suddenly decided to start listening to their fans. They’ve been doing that for years, and it’s resulted in a decade of debacles.

What was unique about Sunday was that the athletic department finally started listening to common fans, too, and not just the one guy who’s written the biggest check.

The relationship between Tennessee’s decision makers and Tennessee’s fan base is at an all-time low, at a moment when Tennessee’s football program just concluded its all-time worst season.

Things are bad. How can Tennessee make them better?

We’ll get to how a good hire would help in a minute. But first, the relationship itself.

Fans don’t usually get to be the decision makers, which is what made yesterday’s events so remarkable. A diverse cross-section of Tennessee fans, local politicians, former players, and local media raised their voices in varying degrees of negativity on the impending hire of Greg Schiano. Our combined noise became the sound of change. The powers that be made their choice, but the people got the last word. And not at the end of a season’s worth of protests, but in a matter of hours.

The list of Tennessee’s decision makers, in this case, seems to be exceptionally short. John Currie played this search close to the vest to ensure secrecy, but far too close to ensure receptivity. I applaud his ninja skills; they simply would have come in far more handy if paired with any ability to take the pulse of the fan base.

The fact that Currie, Chancellor Davenport, however many Haslams and whoever else was on the short list believed this was both a right and acceptable hire for Tennessee is beyond alarming. When those making the decisions are so out of touch with the people, you get new decisions and, perhaps, new decision makers. It just happened a lot faster yesterday.

I don’t want Tennessee’s next coach to be decided by a vote of the fan base. I assume the powers that be have access to information I do not. This turned out to be the case six years ago, when Tennessee went against the vast majority of fan opinion and fired Bruce Pearl. I argued the Vols should keep him in the face of up to a one-year show-cause. Turns out he was looking at three. The powers that be made the right move then, even when it was unpopular.

Tennessee’s decision makers don’t need to act on every request from the voice of the fan base. But they do need to hear it. And they need to know it well enough to recognize and, in Schiano’s case, predict it. If you are so out of touch you couldn’t see this reaction coming, this isn’t a functional relationship.

John Currie’s statement today didn’t do anything to repair this relationship. At an obviously crucial juncture, what Currie essentially chose to communicate today was that he worked hard on this search, did thoroughly research Schiano (including Penn State), and actually knew him well. But he clearly doesn’t know the fan base well.

At some point between now and a press conference introducing Tennessee’s next head football coach, it is a very good idea for John Currie to address the media. Hold a separate press conference, do an interview, something. You cannot answer questions (or refuse to answer questions) about Schiano for the first time when you’re supposed to be introducing the next guy. It’s unfair to the coach, the fans, and the media. No coach should be asked to sign up for that. Even if Currie is non-confrontational by nature, now is the moment for maturity.

When we do get around to hiring a new coach? Tennessee would appear to have a few options.

The Familiar Faces

• David Cutcliffe, Duke (reportedly staying at Duke as I type)
• Tee Martin, Southern Cal offensive coordinator

Both would scratch an itch many in the fan base have had since Phillip Fulmer was forced out nine years ago. These are our guys.

More than a feel-good story, if Tennessee’s brand has in fact been significantly damaged by the events of this weekend, securing someone with a direct connection to the university may be the smartest play. There are plenty of jobs open and plenty of situations that will look more stable than ours. Cutcliffe and/or Martin may in fact be Tennessee’s best play.

As the one was the other’s offensive coordinator at Tennessee, they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Cutcliffe is 63 years old and spent six seasons at Ole Miss as a younger man, fired far too soon. Since leaving Tennessee a second time Cutcliffe has been at Duke, putting together a remarkable run including five bowl appearances in the last six years and a division title in 2013. (As I was typing this, Chris Low reported Cutcliffe informed Tennessee he would be staying at Duke).

Martin has been at Southern Cal since 2012, serving as offensive coordinator the last two years. The Trojans are 16th in offensive S&P+ this year, 15th in yards per play. His name was attached to Jon Gruden’s fantasy staff for both his role as an OC but also his recruiting prowess. He knows Rocky Top, but has no head coaching experience. With both, you’re selling family.

The Up-and-Comers

• Jeff Brohm, Purdue
• Willie Taggart, Oregon
• Chad Morris, SMU
• Jeremy Pruitt, Alabama defensive coordinator

A few days ago, this was the tier below Dan Mullen. Now this could be where Tennessee finds its best play. Brohm and Taggart are at power five schools, but both are just finishing their first year. Morris, the former Clemson offensive coordinator, is finishing his third season at SMU in taking the program from 2-10 to 7-5. Pruitt has led some of the nation’s best defenses at Florida State, Georgia, and Alabama in the last five years, but has never been a head coach.

The sample sizes are small, and with that comes uncertainty. Brohm won two conference titles in three years at Western Kentucky following in Taggart’s footsteps, then got Purdue from 3-9 to 6-6 on the field, from 105th to 41st in S&P+. Taggart went 7-5 at Oregon after a 4-1 start before quarterback Justin Herbert was injured.

What you’re selling here is hope that early successful returns will lead to more of the same at Tennessee and in the SEC. All of these guys might be a good head coach in this league, or none of them. But there is enough reason to hope. (The most difficult name to sell I’ve seen on a hot board is Dave Doeren, who VolQuest had listed at the bottom of theirs today. Doeren is the guy NC State hoped would take them to the next level, but the last four years is 8-5, 7-6, 7-6, and 8-4. That may be fine for NC State, even if it’s awfully similar to what Tom O’Brien did, but there would be little to hope for in terms of someone like him doing more at Tennessee. Hope, even in the midst of uncertainty, is a far easier and more important sell.)

The Rick Barnes

• Les Miles, former LSU coach

When all of this started two weeks ago, I wondered at the end of our podcast about why Les Miles couldn’t even make a hot board. Proven winner, power conference, no buyout, great recruiter. These were more hopeful days of Gruden and Frost, so we didn’t spend much time on it, but it seemed strange to me. At this point, it might seem foolish if Tennessee didn’t include him in their search.

Tennessee has always been more than one step away from a national championship in this search; that truth is easier to swallow when you’re past your top choices. I’m not sure Les Miles could win a championship at Tennessee. But could he help this program take its next step? Is he the best option now that we’re at this point? I could buy it.

You may have your favorites out of these list, or might want to include another name or two from this tier. But all of them are guys fans could and would rally around, especially after last weekend. All of them would have important strengths. All of them could give us reason to hope.

I don’t know what the right move is for the powers that be. The choices aren’t as sexy as the first time around. But getting a good fit with greater transparency is a critical step for a fragile football team and a fragile relationship between the administration and the fans.