Baylor, the historical doormat and Tennessee, the historical top ten program differences over the last approximate 20 plus years.......
At Tennessee, Academia went to war with Athletics in the 1990s. Some professors and others on the academia side despised, decried, and actively worked to destroy athletics. There was basically a war between Fulmer and rogue members of academia. Doug Dickey (AD) and Fulmer did a good job trying to keep these rouge individuals in their places. They were loud, the were hateful, they were bad people who were miserable people and wanted everyone else miserable like them. Sound familiar? They hated sports (football especially) and either too ignorant or didn't care to realize that a healthy athletic department paid dividends (literally) to the academic side. I feel it's the latter. The enemy within.
Doug Dickey retired. That's when Tennessee made their first critial error. They hired Hamilton as AD. The complete opposite of Doug Dickey, polar opposite. The infestation of self-hating reprobates on the Academia side lick their chops. They took over. Shortly after a domino effect took place that further drove the University of Tennessee into the depths of nearly athletic nonexistence.
The hires of Jimmy Cheeks, Dave Hart and others further suppressed what Mike Hamilton had already started.
The University was infested with haters, spineless so-called leaders, reprobates with loser mentalities. Individuals that either didn't understand that a healthy and top-notch winning athletic program was actually great for the academia side or knew and purposefully conspired to further drive UT athletics below the ground. I think the latter.
Well, like all things that are driven by corruption, evildoers and people with bad intentions eventually they have their day. Eventually goodness will come out of darkness.
I think that's where UT has finally gotten to. Tennessee has nearly rid itself from the infestation of incompetence from certain administrators and rid itself of those purposefully seeking to harm Tennessee. Slowly but surely they have stamped out the enemy within.
I believe Tennessee finally has a leader in the AD position. A winner. A competitor. A person that understands athletics and academia can live together and benefit one another. I believe Danny White is this kind of individual. We need to get behind him 100 percent.
Baylor: an excellent school academically basically took the opposite path. They started building their athletic department in all sports.