"Now, the changes that came about were a result of mistakes that were made with oversight and the athletic department itself was certainly culpable in some of that. Because of some irregularities that occurred the decision was made to take the oversight of the Thornton Center completely away from the athletic department and turn it over to the academic side of the university."
"As I'm well meaning as I'm sure the academic authorities were, it had a debilitating effect on the athletic department. The academic department, which again I'm sure had good intentions, just didn't have the same motivation to make sure those athletes were there studying and getting better in the classroom.
I can't stress how huge of a problem it was in helping the young men and women that the whole system was put in place for originally.
One of the results of this shift was that no one from the athletic side could have any involvement with the academic side. What I mean by that is that a coach couldn't even pick up the phone and call a tutor, or a professor, and find out what was happening with a player...................... I've heard all these concerns expressed about how you don't want a coach calling and putting pressure on a professor. There are a couple of key things on that, but the first one is, I was a college assistant for over 20 years, I don't know of any assistant coach who would want to put himself in a position where he was trying to put pressure on a tenured--that's a key word--faculty member............................ From that point up until today the athletic department has had zero input into anything to do with the Thornton Center, and in my opinion it's greatly affected how you're able to monitor your players and keep up with what's happening with them in the classroom..................Make no mistake, the athletic department made some mistakes of its own to put themselves in a position where they lost the authority to oversee the Thornton Center. However, I think the response was heavy-handed and irresponsible and we're still paying the price for it in our athletic programs. You don't throw the baby out with the bath-water as the old saying goes, and I think that's what we did in this case."
Talking about the new arrangement ....."So the chancellor reports to the faculty senate, already, to anyone paying attention, you have some inherent conflicts. Just by the very nature of things, the faculty senate and the athletic department are very often going to be on different sides of the same issue. Quite frankly, a lot of that stems from the fact that the faculty generally feels that coaches make too much money and too many exceptions are made for athletics..........That chain of command has only been in place for a couple of years now, but even in that short time I think it's already been incredibly damaging. Not just for the athletic department, but for the University as a whole.
That needs to be changed as soon as possible. It needs to be changed tomorrow"
On an example for the above change hamstringing athletics "In the 11 or 12 year period of time since Dr. Johnson and Doug Dickey left, we've had no one in athletic directors chair to even fight just to keep the status quo. In that time period the athletic department's autonomy has just been slowly stripped away.
One of those areas, and somewhere you can see the impact of the chancellor being in control of the department, is with the curriculum. That has been changed greatly, and not in any way that benefits athletics.
You no longer have those curriculums where you can put borderline athletes. I'm not advocating for something that's not in line with what our competitors are doing. Nearly every university has those majors where you can put borderline athletes. Vanderbilt, Stanford, Georgia Tech; they all have them. In the past we've had those programs ourselves. Now we don't and it's a problem...............Now our ability to get those players in has not only been compromised, our ability to keep those players eligible has also been compromised.
What's the solution? Well, in a big picture sense, it starts with Governor Haslam appointing better members to the Board of Trust. We need members appointed who want to work for the better of the university as a whole, which certainly includes the athletic department. We don't need members who are simply there as a political appointment or someone who just wants to have something on their resume."
http://tennessee.rivals.com/content.asp ... &PT=4&PR=2
That was from Mathews and Rob Lewis. Then after the article that these things came from hit VQ Hubbs answered questions as to it's validity and admitted that yes it is a problem and some reporter, not sure if it was Hubbs or not said it was one of the problems with the last coaching search and if it didn't get changed it could hamper this one as well. Then there was lots of emphasis on the BOT meeting a couple of weeks ago. They also said that yes since Franklin was hired Vandy has a program for marginal athletes just like UT used to have but we don't have it any more so it really is easier to get a marginal student into Vandy than into UT.
Also I have seen articles quoting Cheek saying something to the effect of it was hard to explain to hard working professors why an assistant football coach should get paid so much and also the infamous "we don't have a plan" quote.
So I don't have a source. I only know what is being reported, but looking at everything it appears that there has been a problem for a while but again I don't know and that's why I asked for folks on here to give their input on the situation. To say "it's horsecrap and you made it up" isn't what I was looking for. I didn't make any of it up.
I was looking for other viewpoints besides "that can't be true, oh it came from Matthews so it is Fulmer garbage".
So Tick I welcome your reasons as to why you don't think it is true besides the shoot the messenger, author etc comments. What do you know or have you seen that makes you think it isn't a problem?
"