BeardedVol
Pigeon Fancier
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- Nov 6, 2012
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This isn't going to be received well. Most of us don't want to hear it, much less believe it. If we really take that long, hard look in the mirror, though, deep down we'll know it's the truth.
Tennessee is tarnished and we, the fans, are PART of the problem.
We demanded that a Hall of Fame coach with 100 more wins than losses, multiple SEC championship and a national title be fired. We ran a guy out of town who pulled us out of the gutter, led us to back to back 9 win seasons and three straight bowl wins. We rioted to block the hire of a coach who built a program from basically nothing, taking it to multiple bowl wins.
Of course Dave Doeren is the best we can get now. No big name coach wants to come near this job. Would you want to bring yourself and your family into that kind of environment? I sure as hell wouldn't. Not when there are other places offering similar jobs without that toxicity.
Tennessee is tarnished. It's toxic. The athletic department shares some blame. The boosters share some blame. We, the fans, have to accept our share of it too.
No.
If John Currie really, and truly believed that Greg Schiano was the right coach for Tennessee, then he should have gone to bat for him. Should have had a press conference stating that he believed that Greg Shiano's statement that he knew nothing of Jerry Sandusky's raping children at Penn State, and moved forward with the hire. If Bev Davenport came to him and told him to kill the deal, he could have stood up to her as AD, and stood by his hiring of Greg Shiano, and staked his job on that decision, as he was hied as the Athletic Director, to make these decisions, and he had chosen the only candidate he felt comfortable chooosing.
He did not do this though, he abandoned his decision, because he never had any faith in it; he was told to offer Greg Schiano, and he did the bidding of another without a seconds notice, and only after the near-universal outrage in the State and the fanbase, he abandoned that decision and Schiano.
Since doing so, Currie has been in self-preservation mode, and is making poor decisions because his primary focus is not finding the best coach for Tennessee, it's in preserving his current job, and protecting his future job prospects. Regardless of the hire he makes, Currie won't be here to see it through, he'll leave before it implodes so as to not be tainted by his poor choice of coaches.
So no, this debacle is not on the fans, this is 100% on John Currie and the fools that hired him.