Constantin Ritzmann trusts Fulmer more than anyone at UT

#26
#26
When I say "we" I am talking about the University, I am well aware that Fulmer was fired by the people in power not because "Volunteer Joe" wrote something on Volnation. A great many fans, myself included did not want Fulmer gone at the time. Obviously a lot of fans approved the move also though, as this thread bears witness.
 
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#27
#27
unfrozencvmanvol said:
I respect the fact that you guys are of that opinion, to me though, the W-L's tell a different story. The level Fulmer "drug" the program down to 2002-08 is far preferable to what what we have suffered the last 10 years. A large part of the reason we have had trouble finding quality successive coaches is that we looked like insufferable jerks firing our national championship winning coach who had won 75% of his games, had actually attended UT, and had dedicated his life to the university. Any prospective coach with a brain and another reasonable option steered clear. Sure, the Kiffin thing made it worse but the problem is rooted in fahrin' Fulmer. We were like a business man who divorced his loyal wife of 25 years for a young fluzie, and young fluzie left us drugged and naked in the bathtub of a seedy Ft. Lauderdale hotel missing all our credit cards and a kidney, sure young fluzie is a terrible person, but our own poor choices set everything in motion.
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Are you content with being a 7-5, 8-4 type of program every single year? Because that's where we were the last few years of Fulmer's tenure. With a couple of losing seasons to boot. We were never going to get back to contending for championships with him here. He had lost his edge. Maybe he's got it back in the ensuing years and he can bring the early Fulmer to running the AD. We can hope.
 
#28
#28
unfrozencvmanvol said:
No, we had a good coach, a coach who, based on his track record was just as likely to return us to where we wanted to be than almost anybody we could have hired. We were playing black jack and decided to hit on 18 and busted, it was a bad decision, and 10 years later we are still paying for it.
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Seems to me your answer to my question is "yes". You want us to keep a coach that the game passed by just because he is well liked. PF knew for three years that he was on the hot seat, how did he respond. Better yet, what indication did he give in his last two years that he "would return us to where we want to be"?
The issue is not the fact that PF was fired, it is that the UTAD will not spend what is needed these days to get us a great coach.
 
#29
#29
I have never thought his heart was not in the right spot. I may not have always agreed with his decisions but none the less his heart was in it. He was born here, played here, coached here, and is now the AD here.
 
#30
#30
MyBloodRunnethOrange said:
Are you content with being a 7-5, 8-4 type of program every single year? Because that's where we were the last few years of Fulmer's tenure. With a couple of losing seasons to boot. We were never going to get back to contending for championships with him here. He had lost his edge. Maybe he's got it back in the ensuing years and he can bring the early Fulmer to running the AD. We can hope.
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How much longer before we can be a 7-5, 8-4 program every year?
 
#32
#32
MyBloodRunnethOrange said:
Are you content with being a 7-5, 8-4 type of program every single year? Because that's where we were the last few years of Fulmer's tenure. With a couple of losing seasons to boot. We were never going to get back to contending for championships with him here. He had lost his edge. Maybe he's got it back in the ensuing years and he can bring the early Fulmer to running the AD. We can hope.
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In 1970 a lot of Alabama fans wanted to fire Bear Bryant after he had gone 8-2-1, 8-3, 6-5, and 6-5-1 in successive seasons. "He's lost his edge", "the game has passed him by", "he'll never get us back to where we were", but they didn't fire him, and he went 54-6 the next 5 seasons. If they had fired him, we would never have known what would happen from 1971-75, just like we'll never know what would have happened if we had kept Fulmer, but it's pretty dang hard for me to believe Fulmer, AT WORST, would have gone 57-56 or anywhere close to that.
 
#33
#33
unfrozencvmanvol said:
In 1970 a lot of Alabama fans wanted to fire Bear Bryant after he had gone 8-2-1, 8-3, 6-5, and 6-5-1 in successive seasons. "He's lost his edge", "the game has passed him by", "he'll never get us back to where we were", but they didn't fire him, and he went 54-6 the next 5 seasons. If they had fired him, we would never have known what would happen from 1971-75, just like we'll never know what would have happened if we had kept Fulmer, but it's pretty dang hard for me to believe Fulmer, AT WORST, would have gone 57-56 or anywhere close to that.
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Just so happened that Bryant was also the AD at the time
 
#35
#35
unfrozencvmanvol said:
I respect the fact that you guys are of that opinion, to me though, the W-L's tell a different story. The level Fulmer "drug" the program down to 2002-08 is far preferable to what what we have suffered the last 10 years.
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Again, we suffered what we have suffered for the last decade because we hired Kiffin, followed by a string of bad hires after that. Not because Fulmer was fired. If Phil was retained in 2008, he might have rebounded in 2009 before having another clunker in 2010 or 2011. By that point, he truly would have run the program into the ground and no one would have been arguing to keep him. He was only able to rebound in 2006 and 2007 because of Cutcliffe, and when Cut left he absolutely whiffed on the Clauson hire. His recruiting was also really slipping. If I remember correctly, 2 of his last 4 recruiting classes were ranked in the high teens/low 20s. Guys like Urban, Richt, Miles, Saban, and even old nemesis Spurrier were surpassing him.

2001 was pretty clear line of demarcation in the program. It was never quite the same after that SECCG loss. 1995 - 2001 Phil went 73-14 (47-9). He won 84% of his games. 2002 - 2008 Phil went 57-32 (35-21). That's 64% and 63% respectively. Latter day Phil's average season was 7-5, 8-4. That isn't good enough; hell, even Butch won 61% of his games while here. I know it's easy to have rosy retrospection, but think about that - from 2002 to 2008 Phil's winning percentage was 2-3% better than Butch's.

More specifically, the most damning stat of all is that Phil went 8-13 against Florida, Georgia, and Alabama from 2002 - 2008. In 2002, 2005, and 2008 he went 0-3 against those teams each year. I maintain that even if he didn't have losing records in 2005 and 2008, he still should have been fired.
 
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#36
#36
unfrozencvmanvol said:
In 1970 a lot of Alabama fans wanted to fire Bear Bryant after he had gone 8-2-1, 8-3, 6-5, and 6-5-1 in successive seasons. "He's lost his edge", "the game has passed him by", "he'll never get us back to where we were", but they didn't fire him, and he went 54-6 the next 5 seasons. If they had fired him, we would never have known what would happen from 1971-75, just like we'll never know what would have happened if we had kept Fulmer, but it's pretty dang hard for me to believe Fulmer, AT WORST, would have gone 57-56 or anywhere close to that.
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If Bear Bryant was around today and had that stretch, Bama would fire him. They'd fire Saban/push him into retirement early if he went on a run like that too. It was a different game back then.

It's also worth noting that before his dry spell you mentioned, Bryant had already won 3 national titles and 4 SEC titles, and was not very far removed from that run of success. That's quite a bit of incentive to keep a guy around and see if he can figure it out. Phil had won only a national title and a couple SEC titles before the dry spell and was much more removed from his run of success than the Bear was.
 
#37
#37
MyBloodRunnethOrange said:
Are you content with being a 7-5, 8-4 type of program every single year? Because that's where we were the last few years of Fulmer's tenure. With a couple of losing seasons to boot. We were never going to get back to contending for championships with him here. He had lost his edge. Maybe he's got it back in the ensuing years and he can bring the early Fulmer to running the AD. We can hope.
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Agreed. I don't think this fact has truly sunk in here, so I'll say it again: 2002-2008 Fulmer was only marginally better than Butch, at least in terms of overall record. Phil won 64% of his games during that time. Butch won 61%.

That one is pretty hard for the "...but we should have never fired Phil" crowd to overcome. The Bear Bryant comparison is invalid, 1) because Bryant had seen a lot more success than Phil had prior to the dry spell and 2) Bryant was only a couple years removed from championships when he went into the dry spell. Phil was a decade removed from his one title.
 
#38
#38
unfrozencvmanvol said:
In 1970 a lot of Alabama fans wanted to fire Bear Bryant after he had gone 8-2-1, 8-3, 6-5, and 6-5-1 in successive seasons. "He's lost his edge", "the game has passed him by", "he'll never get us back to where we were", but they didn't fire him, and he went 54-6 the next 5 seasons. If they had fired him, we would never have known what would happen from 1971-75, just like we'll never know what would have happened if we had kept Fulmer, but it's pretty dang hard for me to believe Fulmer, AT WORST, would have gone 57-56 or anywhere close to that.
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I have some land I want to sell you.
 
#39
#39
T-TownVol said:
I have some land I want to sell you.
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In y'all's "Fulmer-pocylpse" years of 2002-2008, our winning percentage for that stretch was still good for 24th among teams playing at least 50 games. These years, which you cite as Fulmer's worst, we were still on average a Top 25 team. Since we fahr'd his sorry rear though we are 72nd in winning percentage by the same measure. These numbers speak for themselves and no amount of turd polishing can change them.
 
#40
#40
P.S. We are all Vols fans and want the same thing, a return to our former glory. I don't mean any of the above maliciously, I just will forever disagree with the Fulmer firing and think the worst fears and warnings a lot of Fulmer supporters back then gave have been fully realized. If I was confident in my ability to use emojis properly I am sure I could have conveyed that somehow.
 
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#41
#41
unfrozencvmanvol said:
In y'all's "Fulmer-pocylpse" years of 2002-2008, our winning percentage for that stretch was still good for 24th among teams playing at least 50 games. These years, which you cite as Fulmer's worst, we were still on average a Top 25 team. Since we fahr'd his sorry rear though we are 72nd in winning percentage by the same measure. These numbers speak for themselves and no amount of turd polishing can change them.
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Classic, thanks Vicky
 
#42
#42
unfrozencvmanvol said:
P.S. We are all Vols fans and want the same thing, a return to our former glory. I don't mean any of the above maliciously, I just will forever disagree with the Fulmer firing and think the worst fears and warnings a lot of Fulmer supporters back then gave have been fully realized. If I was confident in my ability to use emojis properly I am sure I could have conveyed that somehow.
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No one cares to remember the years that Bama was an "also-run" until they hired Saban. Letting PF go was the correct thing to do as he had already sentenced us to be the same.
 
#44
#44
Mike Hamilton fired a first ballot hall of famer 10 months after the Vols were one bad pass by Ainge away from winning the SEC title against the eventual national champs. The same coaching staff which had the 4th ranked recruiting class in the nation including QB Tajh Boyd.

Then hired a guy who had no respect from anyone in coaching circles who proceeded to bring in the worst recruiting class in Tennessee history and embarrassed the program with his actions on and off the field, disrespected the program while he was here and then left in the middle of the night in the middle of recruiting. And that was the best of the 3 hires UT made. But, then anybody could do better, right?
 
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