From Athletic Daily
2. Tennessee’s decisions were mind-boggling
We haven’t talked enough about just how crazy the Tennessee situation was and still is. The Vols might have voluntarily torpedoed their program with NCAA penalties because of one bad contract extension — and might not save money from it anyway.
To recap: Athletic director Phillip Fulmer gave Jeremy Pruitt a two-year extension in September, coming off an 8-5 season, at a time when no one was banging down the door to hire Pruitt. Tennessee then had an ugly 3-7 season and faced a decision: It could have paid Pruitt $12.8 million to go away — close to the same amount South Carolina paid Muschamp. Instead, it started an internal investigation into potential NCAA violations and later fired Pruitt for cause, which nullified a buyout.
Tennessee then paid around $6 million to UCF just to buy out athletic director Danny White and head coach Josh Heupel from UCF. It seems likely Pruitt could sue Tennessee, and if the sides come to a settlement like Kansas did with former head coach David Beaty after KU tried a similar strategy, Tennessee might end up spending as much money as if it had just bought out Pruitt. And now the program is in the crosshairs of the NCAA.
Why did any of this happen? Tennessee apparently couldn’t get its boosters to buy out another coach. But this move also came at the end of the coaching carousel. Any replacement candidate Tennessee wanted would have been available in the next coaching cycle. Did they need to pull the plug on Pruitt that badly? So badly it was worth potentially crippling NCAA penalties instead of waiting another year? That NCAA cloud then turned off a number of targets to replace Pruitt.