The Doormats

[KYSkipper]

Prior to 2005 The Vols lost to Vandy 6 times and tied once from 1938 until 2005.

Since 2005 We have lost 6 times. We have not beat the Doormats in 4 years and the last time we did the team made a spectacle of it.

I keep hearing the talking heads say "Our problem is the academic requirements at UT are causing us to lose recruits."

I'm calling Bull Crap on that theory.

 

[ProudVOLfan]

We still out recruit them by a MILE. Doesnt really matter what kind of recruits you have if you cant develop them or put them in good situations. We will whup their a$$ this year tho

 

[Jack Burton]

Our lack of commitment to winning has been the problem since Dickey left in 2004. With the way we’re spending money now I think it can shift the other direction finally.

The AD is on board it seems. We have a great staff and now we need great recruits.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

Our problem was the guys in charge (Hamilton, Currie, Haslams, Hart) had no F'ing clue what they were doing when it came to hiring a coach...

 

[VOLfrombama]

Our problem started with coaching turnover and transitioned into pure ineptitude from top to bottom. Fulmer seems to have changed that narrative to some degree as Pruitt & Co certainly look the part.

Now is seems all we are missing is some momentum generating W's.

 

[Orangefog]

^ That one right there

 

[EZE]

Our problem was the guys in charge (Hamilton, Currie, Haslams, Hart) had no F'ing clue what they were doing when it came to hiring a coach...

Post of the year...no. Decade...no. Century...no. Millennium...ding, ding, ding!

Hiring Dooley and Jones back-to-back absolutely killed the program.

 

[KYSkipper]

I agree that the program has been mismanaged to hell and back since 2005. It's just hard to get excited about the coming season when the talking heads and writers are debating "Is it considered a successful season if we beat Vanderbilt?"

For 40 years of my life I thought beating the Doormats was a given.

 

[Vol-in-Atlanta]

Prior to 2005 The Vols lost to Vandy 6 times and tied once from 1938 until 2005.

Since 2005 We have lost 6 times. We have not beat the Doormats in 4 years and the last time we did the team made a spectacle of it.

I keep hearing the talking heads say "Our problem is the academic requirements at UT are causing us to lose recruits."

I'm calling Bull Crap on that theory.

No one has ever said that about the academic requirements. We've just stunk for the last decade.

 

[PEPPERJAX]

UT turned itself into a doormat OP and that is the problem. Time to crawl out of that hole.

 

[05_never_again]

Our lack of commitment to winning has been the problem since Dickey left in 2004. With the way we’re spending money now I think it can shift the other direction finally.

The AD is on board it seems. We have a great staff and now we need great recruits.

Don't think it is lack of a commitment to winning - I think everybody there over the years has really wanted to win.

It's been a lot of administrative incompetence and infighting that has put us in the position we are now.

 

[livefaith]

Prior to 2005 The Vols lost to Vandy 6 times and tied once from 1938 until 2005.

Since 2005 We have lost 6 times. We have not beat the Doormats in 4 years and the last time we did the team made a spectacle of it.

I keep hearing the talking heads say "Our problem is the academic requirements at UT are causing us to lose recruits."

I'm calling Bull Crap on that theory.

I know you're not buying this crap. But, mentioning the idea that "UT's academic standards are too high, therefore we can't beat Vanderbilt" is embarrassing on more than one level.

 

[livefaith]

Post of the year...no. Decade...no. Century...no. Millennium...ding, ding, ding!

Hiring Dooley and Jones back-to-back absolutely killed the program.

That following firing Fulmer and hiring the boy wonder brought the results of the Great Hambone Experiment to fruition. Even though ADMH didn't do the actual CBJ hire. A FoFoFo string of disastrous decisions.

 

[jeff1vol]

Our lack of commitment to winning has been the problem since Dickey left in 2004. With the way we’re spending money now I think it can shift the other direction finally.

The AD is on board it seems. We have a great staff and now we need great recruits.

THIS is EXACTLY correct! UT spent more than a decade with loser buyouts and could've just spent the money on the front end on a QUALITY coach after Kiffin split. BUT... in typical UT fashion, we hired Dooley, then Butch, now Beldar... maybe one day we'll learn that you HAVE to spend money to make money.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

Don't think it is lack of a commitment to winning - I think everybody there over the years has really wanted to win.

It's been a lot of administrative incompetence and infighting that has put us in the position we are now.

Mike Hamilton would tolerate a BS Program as long as that meant he had a Strong B/S (Balance Sheet).......

 

[05_never_again]

Mike Hamilton would tolerate a BS Program as long as that meant he had a Strong B/S (Balance Sheet).......

You can't have good financials with a crappy football program, though. Especially in those days before the SEC Network and all the additional revenue that brought. As early as 2005, Hamilton was putting feelers out there about firing Phil. He gave him a raise in 2007, a year before he fired him. When he finally had the ammo to fire him in 2008, he went out and made Kiffin's staff the 4th highest paid in the SEC, behind only Urban, Richt, and Saban. Mind you Kiffin was 34 years old and had never been a college head coach before. That was a bold, splash hire.

Monte Kiffin alone was making over $1m/year and was the highest-paid assistant in the country - an assistant making that kind of money was basically unheard of at that time. Say what you want to about Hamilton, but he wasn't cheap. He just made terrible decisions. Once Kiffin bolted after one year, the program was in shambles, and he wasn't really in a position to attract a big name coach after that.

 

[Smokey X]

here is where it began....I think she ultimately had the last laugh

BackTalk; Maligned and Marginalized at Tennessee, a Whistle-Blower Endures

ESPN.com: NCAA - Tennessee: Turning cartwheels on a cliff's edge

 

[iluvsmesumdooley]

Prior to 2005 The Vols lost to Vandy 6 times and tied once from 1938 until 2005.

Since 2005 We have lost 6 times. We have not beat the Doormats in 4 years and the last time we did the team made a spectacle of it.

I keep hearing the talking heads say "Our problem is the academic requirements at UT are causing us to lose recruits."

I'm calling Bull Crap on that theory.

Actually, they are right. Butt Cheek, Big Bev, Ha-SLAM, etc. wanted UT to be some kind of UNC spinoff. That's why The Hill has been suffocated with all these Drake Group eggheads. That's not necessarily a bad thing _ UF was as well. The difference is UF held their football players to a lower standard. We. however, took out the cheese courses for our goons.
I personally don't give two s***ts if they study or not. Like Bryant said - nobody's paying to see somebody take a math test. The only thing that matters is wins.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

You can't have good financials with a crappy football program, though. Especially in those days before the SEC Network and all the additional revenue that brought. As early as 2005, Hamilton was putting feelers out there about firing Phil. He gave him a raise in 2007, a year before he fired him. When he finally had the ammo to fire him in 2008, he went out and made Kiffin's staff the 4th highest paid in the SEC, behind only Urban, Richt, and Saban. Mind you Kiffin was 34 years old and had never been a college head coach before. That was a bold, splash hire.

Monte Kiffin alone was making over $1m/year and was the highest-paid assistant in the country - an assistant making that kind of money was basically unheard of at that time. Say what you want to about Hamilton, but he wasn't cheap. He just made terrible decisions. Once Kiffin bolted after one year, the program was in shambles, and he wasn't really in a position to attract a big name coach after that.

I know we've been through this before but I don't 100% agree. The "4th highest paid staff" ended up being the 6th by the time the '09 season started and bowl bonuses were paid. We made this "bold" hire because we did not want to go above $2MM per year for a HC (and we knew Monte would be a short-term solution at that price tag) and that eliminated coaches that had a far better than a 5-15 resume (cough.....Gary Patterson...cough). Again, Kiffin would have been fine as a 3rd, 4th, or 5th choice but we tied our hands on what we wanted to pay a HC.

We can take a look at other sports (Raleigh and Martin) and realize we were cheap elsewhere too....

 

[05_never_again]

I know we've been through this before but I don't 100% agree. The "4th highest paid staff" ended up being the 6th by the time the '09 season started and bowl bonuses were paid. We made this "bold" hire because we did not want to go above $2MM per year for a HC (and we knew Monte would be a short-term solution at that price tag) and that eliminated coaches that had a far better than a 5-15 resume (cough.....Gary Patterson...cough). Again, Kiffin would have been fine as a 3rd, 4th, or 5th choice but we tied our hands on what we wanted to pay a HC.

We can take a look at other sports (Raleigh and Martin) and realize we were cheap elsewhere too....

We were cheap after the Kiffin hire because we had to be. Both football and basketball were in the crapper. Nobody wanted to come coach Tennessee football in mid-January 2010 (after the coaching carousel was done) because of the bad timing plus the shape the program was in.

As far as Gary Patterson, that guy wanted the job and basically told our AD "thanks but no thanks" because he thought they'd already decided on Kiffin. We didn't get Gary Patterson because we didn't want to pay him.

Hamilton because fixated on Kiffin really quickly because he was the polar opposite of Fulmer - young, brash, arrogant, will say stuff that riles up opponents. ESPN had a great article a couple years on Jimmy Sexton a couple years ago. In that article, Sexton said he got a call from Mike Hamilton right after Fulmer was fired and essentially told him "Jimmy, gimme someone to talk to. The season is still going on and there's a lot of guys we can't talk to yet. I need someone to talk to now" Sexton game him Kiffin's name.

Hamilton, and the ADs who followed him, are just bad decision-makers first and foremost. The panic hire of Dooley after Kiffin left was another terrible decision. I think "we're cheap" is a feel good argument we tell ourselves - our people aren't incompetent, they're just cheap and if they opened their wallet a little more we'd be good. I don't think it is that simple. We don't make bad decisions because financially our hands are tied. We made bad decisions because the decision-makers just aren't all that good at their jobs.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

We were cheap after the Kiffin hire because we had to be. Both football and basketball were in the crapper. Nobody wanted to come coach Tennessee football in mid-January 2010 (after the coaching carousel was done) because of the bad timing plus the shape the program was in.

As far as Gary Patterson, that guy wanted the job and basically told our AD "thanks but no thanks" because he thought they'd already decided on Kiffin. We didn't get Gary Patterson because we didn't want to pay him.

Hamilton because fixated on Kiffin really quickly because he was the polar opposite of Fulmer - young, brash, arrogant, will say stuff that riles up opponents. ESPN had a great article a couple years on Jimmy Sexton a couple years ago. In that article, Sexton said he got a call from Mike Hamilton right after Fulmer was fired and essentially told him "Jimmy, gimme someone to talk to. The season is still going on and there's a lot of guys we can't talk to yet. I need someone to talk to now" Sexton game him Kiffin's name.

Hamilton, and the ADs who followed him, are just bad decision-makers first and foremost. The panic hire of Dooley after Kiffin left was another terrible decision. I think "we're cheap" is a feel good argument we tell ourselves - our people aren't incompetent, they're just cheap and if they opened their wallet a little more we'd be good. I don't think it is that simple. We don't make bad decisions because financially our hands are tied. We made bad decisions because the decision-makers just aren't all that good at their jobs.

I think us being "cheap" isnt a feel good argument. It's another way of saying our administration is incompetent because we try cheap hire after cheap hire and we get the same result....

Regarding Patterson, he would have taken the job (and TCU's boosters fully expected him to take it) but there was perceived disrespect relating to compensation and assistants. It's one reason why you never see Justin Fuente mentioned here for any openings (Fuente's mentor was Patterson). We had 2 bites at that apple and we F'ed it up....

 

[XknoxvolsX]

There is something to the OP's question. The academic requirements for entrance into the University of Tennessee changed or rather increased with Schumaker when he was president. I guess I need to remind you of all of his grandiose plans. He wanted the University to function even more as a research institution. Therefore, increased funding through grants, fees and other addin's. To improve the University's outlook, he wanted it to more resemble an IVY league type school. He kinda/sorta did that with Louisville. The problem was/is that to increase all of the test scores and required GPA's for entrance into the University, that also meant the same for the athletes. So, therefore, yes, that has caused us to miss on some potential athletes that go elsewhere to play.

I don't know if many of you are aware of this but, several years ago, Vany lowered their requirements. Therefore, a degree from in-state Vanderbilt isn't what it used to be but not many are understanding of this.

 

[05_never_again]

Regarding Patterson, he would have taken the job (and TCU's boosters fully expected him to take it) but there was perceived disrespect relating to compensation and assistants. It's one reason why you never see Justin Fuente mentioned here for any openings (Fuente's mentor was Patterson). We had 2 bites at that apple and we F'ed it up....

Yes totally agree. But according to Patterson himself the reason he was turned off by the job is because when he met with Hammy/others, he said it was apparent they had already decided on Kiffin and were just meeting with him as a kind of courtesy. Didn't think he could "handle the big spot" or something to that effect. It didn't have anything to do with compensation - our admin just preferred Kiffin over him, thought Kiffin was better for the job. Again, it is incompetence/bad judgment more than anything.

 

[utvols74]

I remember the days when the good guys rarely ever lost in the month of November - and we always played Vandy and KY in Nov.

 

[Manning Up]

When my brother called to tell me that Kiffin was leaving, I told him that it would set the football program back 10 years. Only time in my life I wish I'd been wrong.