$10,800,000.00 surplus for last year

#1
O

OrangeSoddyDaisy

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#1
... and that was our worst year ever!

I think Pruitt is the man but I'm stunned at the lack of interest in our program from nationally recognized coaches.
 
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#2
#2
OrangeSoddyDaisy said:
... and that was our worst year ever!

I think Pruitt is the man but I'm stunned at the lack of interest in our program from nationally recognized coaches.
Click to expand...

This is just my opinion and I have no real facts to back it up but...

I think that just proves that the ones that run the show (big time donors) aren't really concerned with competing for championships on a serious level. As long as mediocrity is profitable, they are content with the status quo. They aren't interested in investing in the short term in order to bring even bigger profits in the long run that championships would bring. It's really a good system they have in place. Hire an unproven head coach on the cheap and if he wins? Great. If he fails, fire and hire another one. The fan base gets excited with the new guy. Rinse and repeat.

Proven coaches realize there is a fan expectation to win here without a real commitment from the money people. Imo, that's why there's no real interest from elite coaches to come here.
 
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#3
#3
I see why schools can’t afford to pay players now. We’re barley scraping by.

/s
 
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#4
#4
OrangeSoddyDaisy said:
... and that was our worst year ever!

I think Pruitt is the man but I'm stunned at the lack of interest in our program from nationally recognized coaches.
Click to expand...


It's not about the school making $$$ or not for the coaches.

It's about the perception that coming to UT as head footVol coach is a career ender as a HC.

Fulmer spoiled us, as has some other good coaches, so we OVERexpect most years.

Reality is that we've always averaged a little over 9 Wins per season but we're Loyal and rabid fans so we got to where we expected 10 or 11 WINS every season and less than that wasn't nearly good enough.

Even Fulmer wasn't good enough but if we'd kept him a few more years he WOULD have broken the record of General Neyland and then we'd look dumb if we didn't have a statue of Fulmer in front of Neyland stadium.

Another perception to coaches, even a Hall of Fame coach that WON a National Championship was badly mistreated and fired midseason so the odds of them having a long term career at UT wasn't good at all.

Deck is already stacked against a new coach by starting the season with 1 LOSS before a game is played because we play alaBubba every year and we fans do NOT want that rivalry to end since it's 1 of the best, most hallowed Traditional games ever.

A good coach nearing the end of his career might be willing to come to UT but we do NOT want a older, proven coach, we want a younger coach that can WIN consistently and stay on the hill for 20 years or longer.

It's great that UT is making some $$$ finally but that doesn't mean anything at all to a football coach with many years ahead in his career.

1 bad season and the fans beat him to death and want him beheaded.

VFL...GBO!!!
 
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#5
#5
The identities, titles, and functions of the suits at the UTK sports dept are possibly a foggy area to many or most in the fan base but to coaches and their agents the issues, reputations, and standard operating procedures are all too clear. Don’t get me wrong I believe things are improving maybe even dramatically improving, but I’m speaking about the past 12 years or so. My thinking is the reason the university has looked inept in personnel hiring is because they have been unorganized and unprepared and I think that scares top ten coaches away. That and hillbillies aren’t very popular no matter how much they have in the bank.
 
#6
#6
As a business man, I can't criticize administration's approach when financial success really is the best measure. If my department could fund the whole company after the most embarrassing year ever, I'd probably run with it.
 
#7
#7
Until we start spending that money, we aren't going to succeed. Hopefully Fulmer can sway some people
 
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#8
#8
Doyle Hargraves said:
This is just my opinion and I have no real facts to back it up but...

I think that just proves that the ones that run the show (big time donors) aren't really concerned with competing for championships on a serious level. As long as mediocrity is profitable, they are content with the status quo. They aren't interested in investing in the short term in order to bring even bigger profits in the long run that championships would bring. It's really a good system they have in place. Hire an unproven head coach on the cheap and if he wins? Great. If he fails, fire and hire another one. The fan base gets excited with the new guy. Rinse and repeat.

Proven coaches realize there is a fan expectation to win here without a real commitment from the money people. Imo, that's why there's no real interest from elite coaches to come here.
Click to expand...

Certainly expectations from a devoted fan base could be part of it. But there are too many instances of really good coaches (Gary Patterson??) that we had the opportunity to get that tells me there is something else going on.

I think that something else is pretty poor leadership from the AD office and above. A succession of Mike Hamilton, Dave Hart and then John Curry as well as the people they reported to have not inspired many to come to the Hill.

Also, an unwillingness to open the purse and pay for quality coaches is apparent. Remember when UT competed for championships in all sports? It hasn't just been football.
 
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#9
#9
I think college football programs do a lot of Hollywood accounting. I think in reality that number is much larger.
 
#10
#10
Link? Is this for just football or for the ad as a whole? Lots of smaller sports get funded through football money

NVM op, I took the time to link for others

Tennessee allocated $5 million of the $10.8 million surplus to the funding plan for the Neyland Stadium renovation project, athletic department spokesman Tom Satkowiak wrote in an email to USA TODAY Network - Tennessee. The remaining $5.8 million was used to fund ongoing facilities projects, such as the Haslam Field expansion, new stadium scoreboards for soccer, baseball and softball and exterior painting for Neyland Stadium.
Click to expand...

UT Vols: Tennessee athletic department operated at $10.8M surplus in 2016-17
 
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#12
#12
OrangeSoddyDaisy said:
... and that was our worst year ever!

I think Pruitt is the man but I'm stunned at the lack of interest in our program from nationally recognized coaches.
Click to expand...

How many times recently have we made hire and were optimistic about them. Only to realize what reality was a couple of years later? Then disappointment set in. Dooley Jones.
I am not at all excited. I will stay even keeled and if things are going well in 5 years then I will get excited
Initially both Dooley & Jones recruited well and both got us in bowl games but Dooley was a dufus and lost them team support. Jones played favoritism and make bad game day decisions and lost the team
I am sure that Michigan was ecstatic when Harbaugh showed up but he has woefully under performed
Lets wait and see about Pruitt
 
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#15
#15
Doyle Hargraves said:
This is just my opinion and I have no real facts to back it up but...

I think that just proves that the ones that run the show (big time donors) aren't really concerned with competing for championships on a serious level. As long as mediocrity is profitable, they are content with the status quo. They aren't interested in investing in the short term in order to bring even bigger profits in the long run that championships would bring. It's really a good system they have in place. Hire an unproven head coach on the cheap and if he wins? Great. If he fails, fire and hire another one. The fan base gets excited with the new guy. Rinse and repeat.

Proven coaches realize there is a fan expectation to win here without a real commitment from the money people. Imo, that's why there's no real interest from elite coaches to come here.
Click to expand...


Nailed it
 
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#16
#16
This program is an annual sh-t show from top to bottom and will never spend on a big name coach.

Why should they when they are in the black almost every season and can get away with jacking up donations and ticket prices every year?
 
#17
#17
OrangeSoddyDaisy said:
... and that was our worst year ever!

I think Pruitt is the man but I'm stunned at the lack of interest in our program from nationally recognized coaches.
Click to expand...

If you were smart enough to be a nationally recognized coach, would you really want to bring you're career under the control of Currie & Haslam?
 
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#18
#18
OrangeSoddyDaisy said:
... and that was our worst year ever!

I think Pruitt is the man but I'm stunned at the lack of interest in our program from nationally recognized coaches.
Click to expand...

If you were a big time coach, would you want your "boss" to be the family that owns the Cleveland Browns and a FBI-investigated business?
 
#19
#19
OrangeSoddyDaisy said:
... and that was our worst year ever!

I think Pruitt is the man but I'm stunned at the lack of interest in our program from nationally recognized coaches.
Click to expand...

Why? Its been a train wreck.
Looking from an outside view.....coach has to good years followed by a bad year and he is fired, lots of fans wanted him fired after b2b 9 win seasons,
Roited over a potential coaching hire
Ran off a coach that reached sweet 16.
Admin is a complete disaster
Schedule plays alabama 2 times to win sec

Could go on, i personally agree with some of the things we have done as fand but could see how its a turn off
 
#20
#20
There is a false premise that a lot of our fans like to believe, that there are homerun coaching hires out there just waiting to be plucked and we just aren't interested in doing what is necessary to attract them.

The facts are that there are only a few coaches that could be looked at as sure bets to turn us into a contender -- and even among those few (maybe a half-dozen or so at most), they don't come with a money-back guarantee of winning championships. And these are guys that would be at the top of the list of any school looking for a new coach. But they are comfortable where they are. Nothing we, or any other program, can offer them is likely to dislodge them.

It's not because anyone in Knoxville is lacking the will to win or has some secret scheme to sell us mediocrity. That's just an over-simplistic way of looking at things, IMO.
 
#21
#21
Hacksaw said:
There is a false premise that a lot of our fans like to believe, that there are homerun coaching hires out there just waiting to be plucked and we just aren't interested in doing what is necessary to attract them.

The facts are that there are only a few coaches that could be looked at as sure bets to turn us into a contender -- and even among those few (maybe a half-dozen or so at most), they don't come with a money-back guarantee of winning championships. And these are guys that would be at the top of the list of any school looking for a new coach. But they are comfortable where they are. Nothing we, or any other program, can offer them is likely to dislodge them.

It's not because anyone in Knoxville is lacking the will to win or has some secret scheme to sell us mediocrity. That's just an over-simplistic way of looking at things, IMO.
Click to expand...

Of course, that doesn't explain how two " historically lesser programs" (UCLA and A&M) got coaches that have either won or played in the Championship this offseason.
 
#22
#22
And Curry and friends tried to make another bargain hire while Tam and UF were dropping 10 and 7 mil a year out there..
 
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#23
#23
Doyle Hargraves said:
This is just my opinion and I have no real facts to back it up but...

I think that just proves that the ones that run the show (big time donors) aren't really concerned with competing for championships on a serious level. As long as mediocrity is profitable, they are content with the status quo. They aren't interested in investing in the short term in order to bring even bigger profits in the long run that championships would bring. It's really a good system they have in place. Hire an unproven head coach on the cheap and if he wins? Great. If he fails, fire and hire another one. The fan base gets excited with the new guy. Rinse and repeat.

Proven coaches realize there is a fan expectation to win here without a real commitment from the money people. Imo, that's why there's no real interest from elite coaches to come here.
Click to expand...
I think and hope Pruitt was a good hire and Tennessee got lucky after Haslam tried to sabotage it like he has done to his Browns. I went from a donation to $2400 to $400 because Pruitt is unproven. To me 2000 is a quite a chunk of change and probably effect University if several 1000’s fans drop out at $2000 a year but then again probably not considering big time billionaire boosters we have probably
cover the bill.
 
#24
#24
JonGrudensAgent said:
This program is an annual sh-t show from top to bottom and will never spend on a big name coach.

Why should they when they are in the black almost every season and can get away with jacking up donations and ticket prices every year?
Click to expand...
True about most things and face value for big games are ridiculous at $95.00 to see us get our face kicked in by the big boys but donations has stayed the same.
 
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