I respect Fulmer a little more after each game we lose

#53
#53
Orange931 said:
After over a decade of being the HC, he should. Winning the east is good and all, but winning the SEC Championship is what matters. He was great in the 90’s and hit his peak, not taking anything from him in that regard.
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Coach Cutt was great, Fulmer not so much.

I will give it too him that he could recruit, but outside the Georgia coaches during the same time period he did less with more than most coaches.

Spurrier outclassed him constantly.
 
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#54
#54
mpfvol said:
Fulmer hired Cornbread which is the worst hire of a coach in UT history IMO. But as far as leading and coaching the program their has been no coaches hired since him that could hold his jock strap. Ole kiffy has not won a dam thing and the jury is out on Coach Hype . The admin went about firing him all wrong and the replacements were even worse.
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Pruitt was definitely the worst hire since Kiffin.

I think the worst decision since Kiffin was in 2010 and it was two pronged.

1- Hamilton not letting Kippy Brown or someone be the interim for one year and basically have a 12 month coaching search

2- Once Hamilton was dead set on going with a rushed search that resulted in Dooley, he should have NEVER balked at Cutcliffe’s request to hire his own assistants and not be forced to absorb the Kiffin leftover coaches.


Cutcliffe would have walked into Tyler Bray and a somewhat promising offensive core.

The worst coach we hired was far and away Pruitt. But the worst decision of UT’s athletic department was in January 2010
 
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#55
#55
Coddlecreek1 said:
He almost burnt it down
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No. He just did not do that. He just got lazy and neglected some key aspects of the program. Fulmer never dreamed he would be fired. He thought one national championship meant he controlled his own destiny. He became more worried about chasing the General's win total rather than making sure the program was functioning properly. He thought he was untouchable. He was not. It's what happens when you just make excuses rather than finding solutions. Plus I guess his fascination with the Clawfense was the final nail. He was living in denial, and I don't mean he was in Egypt. But it might have helped if he had been.
 
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#56
#56
GUNTERSVOL said:
He put his HC job in play with this Clawson hire and paid the price.
He put his AD job in play with the Pruitt hire and paid the price..

He will NOT be remembered as one of the greatest coaches of all time.

He won 152 games while losing 52
He won the NC
He brought us lots of positive exposure
He was elected president of the coaches association
I believe he is in the HOF
He will be back to host several teams reunions
He still has respect from most of his high profile guys including Al Wilson
He still has a street named after him
He and his staff left White a great bunch of coaches in all the other sports that were recently extended.

Like all of us he should be remembered by his total body of work, not his fateful failures.

Funny how those featuring embarrassing one sided posts bring up embarrassing losses.
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Excellent post.

Appears you have had plenty of practice memorizing that resume defending the man who has led this team into a now 13 year spiral with no end really in sight.
 
#57
#57
Phil stopped recruiting, still collected millions in salary, and let the program go way down.
 
#58
#58
VolsRule said:
Phil stopped recruiting, still collected millions in salary, and let the program go way down.
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My memory is he had the 6th ranked recruiting class the day he was let go. He nor anybody else that we could have put in place had a shot at the classes CPF signed during his heyday. Other programs did not stay down to open the doors to those type classes.
 
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#62
#62
While the Pruitt hire is clearly terrible in hindsight, at the time it seemed like a sound choice. He had won a national championship at FSU, improved the uga D in a short time, and was back under Saban. While not every Saban assistant has been successful, some surely have (Fisher, Smart, Tucker, kiffin (I know, I know), probably someone else), so it wasn’t obvious that Pruitt was such a terrible hire at the time. I don’t blame Fulmer for hiring him, just in keeping him. Ga State should have been the nail in the coffin, but then we played high school teams to end that season and the 8 game winning streak(!) kept him longer than necessary. Fulmer blundered through last year for sure.
 
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#63
#63
GUNTERSVOL said:
My memory is he had the 6th ranked recruiting class the day he was let go. He nor anybody else that we could have put in place had a shot at the classes CPF signed during his heyday. Other programs did not stay down to open the doors to those type classes.
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What was so weird about Fulmer's recruiting in the 00's was it was so wildly inconsistent. He'd have a top 5 class one year and the next year it wouldnt be in the top 25. He struggled to maintain recruiting momentum from one year to the next for some reason. He also had an abnormally high number of 4 and 5 star recruits that never panned out. When Kiffin took over in 2009, he was forced to start two 265 lb walk ons on the offensive line. That was an indictment on Fulmer's poor recruiting/development.
 
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#65
#65
JonGrudensAgent said:
Excellent post.

Appears you have had plenty of practice memorizing that resume defending the man who has led this team into a now 13 year spiral with no end really in sight.
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I get the hate of Fulmer..... But there was nothing he had a hand in that resulted in Hart being the AD, Dooley and Butch being hired, and Currie trying to backdoor in Schiano....... There is a 7 year window and almost 2 full recruiting classes that graduated that had nothing to do with Fulmer.....

People can't hate Phil all they want for the Pruitt hire, but Phil never enters the equation if it wasn't for Hamiilton, Hart, and Currie making boneheaded decisions in a 7-8 year window..... This is not debatable
 
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#66
#66
onevol74 said:
He only had 2 SEC championships in 17 years with elite talent and was gifted a highly developed program. His incompetence as an athletic director has everything to do where this program is right now.
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B.S. he didn't sign Kiffin to a flimsy contract nor did he hire Dooley or Butch. The program was in a downward spiral before he even sniffed the AD position. There was no way he could have known Pruitt would cheat. Some of you folks with your revisionist history amaze me.
 
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#68
#68
JMSqb11 said:
Pruitt was definitely the worst hire since Kiffin.

I think the worst decision since Kiffin was in 2010 and it was two pronged.

1- Hamilton not letting Kippy Brown or someone be the interim for one year and basically have a 12 month coaching search

2- Once Hamilton was dead set on going with a rushed search that resulted in Dooley, he should have NEVER balked at Cutcliffe’s request to hire his own assistants and not be forced to absorb the Kiffin leftover coaches.


Cutcliffe would have walked into Tyler Bray and a somewhat promising offensive core.

The worst coach we hired was far and away Pruitt. But the worst decision of UT’s athletic department was in January 2010
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Well said. Hamilton carries a a great deal of the responsibility for the downfall of UT FB after Fulmer. You laid out all the reasons. UT may only now be starting to recover from his incompetence.
 
#69
#69
Fulmer got complacent. Couple that with the rise/reemergence of programs like Clemson, Georgia, Alabama, and LSU and you have the beginning of our death spiral that we have been trying to work our way out of for the past 15-20 years. The decisions he made as our AD only exacerbated our problems. I do not respect Fulmer more every time we lose.
 
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#70
#70
Orange931 said:
After being the HC for 10 years and was on a decline. Fulmer had a good run but things weren’t looking good, he had a losing record the year he got let go.
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He also had multiple players in and out of courtrooms those last couple of years too. And his reaction to that? "They have my phone number." If you want the real reasons why he got canned? You kind of have to look beyond the win loss record every once in awhile.
 
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#71
#71
sechamp2012 said:
To get there quickly we would have to talk teams into getting rid of their HC's. Then hiring coaches like Sparky Woods, Mike Shula, Jim Donnan etc... The coaches across the board are so much better than they were in the 90's. It was Fulmer Spurrier and the rest. We had the best players( most to NFL) and Spurrier did more with less but also had great players but he didn't recruit like Fulmer. The coaching competition is tremendous in the SEC, that's why this is a hard climb.
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Stallings was pretty good man. Sherrill was legit. Tuberville was a winner. There were some pretty good coaches back then. Bowden went undefeated in the year at auburn was banned from post season play. Then add fulmer and Spurrier to that list. No difference to now. It’s saban and smart. Then just some good coaches.
 
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#72
#72
BowlBrother85 said:
I respect him a little less for hiring Jeremy Pruitt... after also interviewing Mel Tucker. He had a hand in Tennessee's current struggles.
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Pruitt was the worst option he had, but do you really think anybody in play that WEEK CPF had to make the hire was a game changer? The list as I remember was Tucker, Steele and Pruitt, three DC's. I would have preferred Steele as an Alum as a short term solution. I like Tucker and respect what he has done, but don't think he would turn our fortunes like I SPECULATE our current coach has an opportunity to. No way to compare winning in the big 10 vs SEC.
 
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#73
#73
Fulmer ruined our program both as a head coach and as an athletic director. He is/was stuck in a world that never went past the year 1998. Should’ve just lived quietly in retirement and let the university run him out once a year for fund raisers.
 
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#75
#75
onevol74 said:
He only had 2 SEC championships in 17 years with elite talent and was gifted a highly developed program. His incompetence as an athletic director has everything to do where this program is right now.
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I agree with your post but I think Vols fans get tired of **** like this:



Decades of losing to Alabama, Florida, and Georgia EVERY YEAR is tiring. Someone showed a state that we are 0-17 vs. Alabama, 1-16 vs. Florida, and 3-14 vs. Georgia since Fulmer left. It is not the current coach's fault but the fact that we NEVER beat these teams is sickening for a fanbase. Why couldn't we beat Florida this year? They are dog ****. We also lost to a 4-8 Will Muschamp Florida team back in the BJ era as well. The fact that we just cannot beat these three teams is why our program gets trolled constantly.
 
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