In this UTAD Civil War.....
who's on which side?
Call them the Haslam's and the Anti-Haslam's.
Does anyone know who is on which side and what kind of power they have?
John Currie was hired essentially by Jimmy Haslam.
In Beverly Davenport's eyes, John Currie did not represent the "good ole boy" factions so she went along with Haslam's recommendation.
Now Currie is both Haslam's & Davenport's guy.
Currie was never sold on Butch Jones and rejects the call for an extension.
Charlie Anderson (Chair of the Athletics Board and perhaps the second most active football booster) drove a group of boosters that essentially demanded Butch's removal after the debacle in games 3-6 this year.
Currie and Haslam went along with this group and presented a united front all committing to do whatever it took to restore UT football.
Anderson and his group began working the Gruden angle with neither success or rejection. Ultimately, Gruden agreed to entertain a formal offer that never came.
While Anderson was working the Gruden angle. Other interests worked other angles (Frost, Mullen, Petersen, etc) however Currie and Haslam did nothing to tip their hands. Secrecy and waiting till the end of the season to hire someone was important because they had a different former Tampa Bay coach lined up to come and without those two elements to the search, their plan would be exposed.
At this point you have essentially two camps with some being willing participants and others being stooges:
- House of Haslam had Currie as a co-conspirator and had Davenport, DiPetrio and ultimately Manning possibly unwittingly in their corner.
- "The others" thought the first group was on board with them and didn't realize there was a problem until "Sabotage Sunday."
At this point "the others" coalesced as a group and began waging war. At this point everyone not in the HoH became an "other" and that includes all of us.
Davenport is apparently more savy than we expected because on Tuesday she began distancing herself from HoH, by leaking that she did not sign any MOU for Schiano. I suspect that The Others spent most of Sunday evening and Monday working her to show her why that alliance would ultimately be unwise for her.
By Wednesday she was fully out of HoH as demonstrated by her sabotaging the Brohm hire. I suspect at this point DiPetrio also decided to try to appear to be neutral. Peyton has been accused of all sorts of stuff. I'm not ready to crucify him yet, but its clear he has refused to publicly join "The Others" and by doing so, he's publicly still in HoH. What he's done behind closed doors, I have no clue. That's why I want us to let this play out before we decide about Peyton.
Once Davenport joined "The Others"; and let's be clear she joined only because she decided that was the avenue by which she could gain the most leverage and power; it was a matter of time. She would deny approval of Currie's desperation hire attempts and wait for him to screw up where she could save some severance money.
It appears Currie finally realized that he had screwed up on Wednesday night. He decided that his only possible play was to throw himself on the mercy of the fanbase and attempt to bolt HoH and go hire Mike Leach, someone he knew Haslam would have no power over, but someone the majority of the fanbase would support given what he had done to them over the past 96 hours.
Perhaps in doing so though, he gave Bev her out. If she in fact directly forbade him from making the trip or demanded his return and he did not do so, she now has cause of insubordination and the ability to distance herself from HoH completely. She can now fire Currie and absolve herself of any complicity or stooge status from the initial HoH conspiracy.
Ironically as soon as Haslam and Currie realized the trap had sprung the old narrative of Fulmer the back-stabber reappeared. This struck a cord with me because when he was first accused of that, he also was in alliance with Charlie Anderson who was done with Majors and didn't want to see Fulmer go to Clemson. Majors behavior allowed them to supplant him and perhaps, just perhaps that was not the Haslam agenda. Interesting that the same "back-stabbing" accusation has been used twice against Fulmer when he was involved in something happening that was out of order with the HoH.
So, Currie is out. Currie and Haslam blame Fulmer because he's an easy target and they don't dare publicly go after the power players in "The Others" the same way "The Others" didn't publicly go after HoH.
Who's on what team now? Here's my take:
- Joe D is not going to join a team. He's too close to retirement.
- Bev is on her own team, but she owes some allegiance to "The Others" so she'll support their moves so long as she doesn't feel they threaten her increased power.
- HoH is probably down to just the family and their purchased loyalists at this point.
- Peyton is probably trying not to be on a team at all after realizing he picked the wrong one to start with likely without fully realizing what was going on. He trusted the Haslams and Corker and he's likely second guessing that today and trying to stay out of the rest. If he wasn't willing to coach because he knew it would ruin his image, I can assure you he didn't willingly walk into this clown show.
- The rest are no doubt jockeying for position in different factions of "The Others". If they believe they've won an initial victory, it will be very hard to keep that many people all lock-in-step and the posturing within the sub-group will begin.
You asked who was on who's side, there's my opinion on how this is playing out...
