Post
by eCat » Fri Dec 08, 2017 7:43 am
Aaron Torres writes a piece that should make UT fans feel a little better
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It isn’t an exaggeration to say that the Tennessee football coaching search might end up as the most over-scrutinized and overanalyzed search in the history of college football. Take a social media mob, mainstream media backlash and a three-week adventure that involved two AD’s and more than half a dozen candidates, and it really was like nothing that we’ve ever seen before in college football.
Unfortunately for those of us who enjoyed the sheer entertainment value of the search process, it has come to an end. The Vols have hired Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt as the school’s new head coach on Thursday.
Ultimately, we’re still years away from finding out whether Pruitt is the “right” man for the job or not, but really, that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. What we’re here to talk about is the process that it took to get here, specifically the moment when Tennessee fans boycotted the first man who was hired for the job, Greg Schiano, back a few weeks ago. It was a boycott that led many in the national media with a few exceptions (including me, CBS’s Barrett Sallee and a handful of others) to unfairly criticize Vols fans, and paint them as a group of pitchfork carrying hillbillies with no perspective on reality or their place in the college football universe.
Well, with the coaching search complete, I’m here to say one thing: In the end, Tennessee fans were proven correct. Not because we can say with 100 percent certainty that Jeremy Pruitt is the right man for the job. But because the fan-base as a whole stood up to their administration, said “enough is enough” and didn’t settle on mediocrity from the start.
To understand why Vols fans are right, you have to understand the psyche of the entire Tennessee fan-base – a fan-base that has dealt with more bad hires and overall ineptitude than just about any fan-base in college sports over the last decade or so. With all due respect to other schools like Arkansas and Ole Miss, no one has quite put the “fun” in dysfunction quite like Tennessee has the last few years.
To give you a quick recap here goes: It all started in 2009 when Lane Kiffin left for USC, all due to the simple fact that he had a miniscule, $800,000 buyout that left him easy to hire away. The fact that his buyout was so small was administrative malpractice, and things didn’t get better when Tennessee hired Derek Dooley – with a career record of 17-20 at Louisiana Tech – to replace him. It continued three years later with the Butch Jones hire, and well, we all saw how that went (I mean honestly, I’ve seen can openers with a higher IQ than Butch), and let’s not forget that the Vols also made one of the most egregious coaching hires in modern basketball history a few years ago when they signed Donnie Tyndall. The same Donnie Tyndall who was later popped with a 10-year show cause for some of the most egregious NCAA rules violations in recent history.
Therefore, can you blame Tennessee fans for being mad? Can you blame them for seeing Schiano, who I described the day of the hire as “Butch Jones with better hair” and knowing it was going to be a disaster? Can you blame them for standing up to their highly-paid administration and simply saying “this is not good enough?” Can you blame them for being outraged that their administration hired Schiano – who was barely .500 as a college head coach, flamed out in the NFL, and is despised by most of his former players – without doing any real search, or interviewing any other candidates (as best we know) for the job?
Of course not, and that’s why I never blamed Tennessee fans from the beginning (and I’m not even going to get into Schiano’s loose, potential ties to the Jerry Sandusky case). To put this in a different perspective, remember when Kentucky fired Billy Gillispie in 2009? Now imagine if instead of replacing him with John Calipari, UK had instead chosen someone who UK fans knew would fail, like say, Mark Gottfried or Matt Doherty? Or imagine if Alabama had decided to hire Ron Zook in 2007, without even attempting to interview Nick Saban? You think fans would have freaked out? Of course, and they would have had every right to.
Now with that, I already know what most of you are thinking: “Torres, that’s a cute analogy. But Jeremy Pruitt isn’t Nick Saban or John Calipari.”
And you’re right. But that also highlights another point that most of the media is missing. For Tennessee, it was never really about getting the perfect hire, since few schools rarely do. What it was about was again, what I said up top. It was about not settling for mediocrity.
Understand that in theory, there was never anything wrong with hiring Greg Schiano – if he was sixth, seventh or eighth choice for the job. The problem was hiring him right away, without any semblance of a coaching search. Remember, an athletic director serves as the gatekeeper for an entire athletic department and should have the best interests of his school, the athletes and fans at heart. Therefore, the athletic director’s only goal should be to do a thorough job, to make every phone call and turn over every rock needed to get the possible candidate in as their head coach.
Did that happen at Tennessee? Not at the beginning. Nope, it wasn’t until after the Schiano revolt that an actual coaching search – the way it’s SUPPOSED TO BE DONE – really began.
That’s another thing that John Currie underestimated: Tennessee fans had no problem “settling” on a fifth, sixth or seventh choice (which Pruitt might just be), as long as they knew that the first, second and third choice all said no. And that’s why the boycott of the Schiano hire was so important. Because it made UT go back to the drawing board, and interview the guys they should have interview in THE FIRST PLACE! Again, the problem wasn’t attempting to hire Greg Schiano, or hiring Pruitt today. It was attempting to hire Greg Schiano without even calling Mike Gundy, Jeff Brohm or every other big-time candidate. It’s OK to be told no. What’s not OK is not even calling them at all.
Which is why today is a good at Tennessee. Not because we know Jeremy Pruitt is a great hire (although his resume indicates he could be) but because the fan-base didn’t settle for mediocrity.
As it turns out, the fans were right all along.
I like the stinky pinky but only up to the first knuckle, I do not want a GD thumb up there--I've told her multiple times and I always catch her when she tries to pull a fast one---it's my butthole for Chrissakes I'm gonna know--so cut out the BS.
