Official Jon Gruden Thread 33

[OSVolFan]

Thought it was interesting just now on MNF, Gruden's partner talked about how they were ready for next weeks MNF game and Gruden didn't utter a word about next weeks game. There was some definite awkward silence there....

 

[Orange defense]

Look!
1. The recruiting will sell itself, and with Gruden after a visit or two, they will love ❤️ it here.
2. He knows x and o’s, and how to run a team that will win.
3. He knows how to develop quarterbacks, lineman, defensive backs into great players.
4. We have the best facilities in college football.
5. We have Kneyland stadium.
6. We have more money than most football programs to pay Gruden really well.
7. He will know how to get the players prepared for the NFL, like Saban does.
8. With a name like Gruden, he will bring in a winning staff with no problem. For ex: probably one phone call to someone and they aren’t going to turn him down.
9. He has the passion to win, and knows how to prepare for another team during practice.
10. He is just a household name that knows football!!
👍

 

[Vfl2407]

Haha.. Hubbs is going to report on every potential coaching candidate to fill out Gruden's staff then say, "I give it 10% chance that Gruden is the next coach."

Hubbs
Hyams
Kesling
And all of the worn out boring Peter Principle Knoxville sports media needs to retire.

 

[knoxswim890]

My apologies to everyone looking for Gruden news. This isn’t the post you’re looking for. Just skip to the next post. This is my working theory on how and why Gruden to the Hill is coming about. It’s going to be very long post.

For those with a little curiosity, here’s the bottom line up front (BLUF as my Army brethren call it). There is a booster or group of boosters attempting to secure the fruits of UT becoming a Top 25 research school. They’re working to ensure a continued stream of funding from Athletics to Academics by making a splash hire as the head coach and returning UT football to national prominence. You can now skip to the end if you aren’t interested in the gory details.

For those still reading here’s my take on the whole situation. Strictly my own opinion based on what I’ve read and my experience. Let’s start with the booster/Investor group because I think that once you understand what they’re trying to achieve, the roles of the rest of the players and the actions fall into place.

The booster group is leveraging the University’s drive towards becoming a top 25 public research school (top25.utk.edu). While the University has many good and valid reasons for this, the boosters see this as an opportunity to cash in on an increasing amount and quality of research coming from the University. Bubba on several occasions involvement of a (Silicon Valley) venture capital firm (not Castor Ventures). (1)(2) MIT_Beaver outs the reason. Early stage VC firms are interested in the intellectual property rights coming out of the research. (3) The boosters, in conjunction with the VC firm(s?), see this as an opportune time to develop a (binding?) relationship with an up and coming research University that funnels the valuable research results into their portfolios. I haven’t had the time to fully investigate all the players, but MIT_Beaver implies that Charlie Ergen is involved. (4)

Charlie Ergen’s possible involvement I think relates to Dish’s upcoming moves into the wireless connectivity area. Dish owns and continues to buy valuable wireless (cellular) spectrum. The first portion of which requires Dish to build out a wireless network by 2020 supporting narrowband internet of things (NB-IOT). (5) NB-IOT is one part of the proposed 5G specification. A large part of how NB-IOT is implemented is yet to be determined and will require a great deal of research (hint, hint). Dish, not being constrained by a legacy, voice-oriented network, has a tremendous chance to develop a different core network than the legacy carriers. Ergen called it “a blank sheet of paper”.

It sounds like the how this is being accomplished is through a combination of a venture capital firm advised by a MBB type management consulting firm. Together they’ve developed a plan, of which Gruden is a part, to assist the University in reaching its goal while, presumably, the VC firm gets in on the reaping of benefits. Here’s how the other major players are involved, in my opinion.

The football program is viewed as a key revenue source for the University. The Athletic Department already provides quite a bit of funding back to the Academic Department and people have noticed how the success of the Alabama football team has fueled an academic renaissance of the University of Alabama. How do you duplicate that success at Tennessee? By making a big-time splash hire as the new head football coach and give him the resources (monetary and otherwise) to compete with the Alabamas and Ohio States. This leads logically to Jon Gruden due to his connection to and past history with UT. No other coach excites the fan base and makes a national splash like him. You secure his services by making him an offer he can’t refuse (especially in light of ESPN’s well documented financial issues). Bubba says the base is $7.5M (6) but that is the least interesting part of the deal (7) and won’t all be in USD (8). Possibly a stake in the venture capital fund investing in the UT research?

The Athletic Director doesn’t really have much of a role in this. He was given the coach as part of the package deal and does not have a BANTA, although it appears he did do his due diligence and checked. The only real option he had was the timing. It appears that, while the decision to not retain Butch was made early in the season, the plan was to allow him to coach out the rest of the season and resign with a renegotiated buyout. However the performance (or lack thereof) of the team on the field and the Kendrick situation made that position untenable and Butch was let go early. At this point Currie has a replacement and is waiting a suitable amount of time to announce him. This may be due to commitments by Gruden, pressure from certain boosters, a desire to see Butch hired elsewhere, or a combination of some or all of these plus other unknown conditions.

Peyton Manning was brought in to help seal the deal on Gruden as the new head coach and to provide an incentive to accept the deal on the part of the Academic Department in the form of potential fundraising. I think Peyton’s involvement was actually predicated on the football team having a reasonably successful year and needing to provide rationale and support for changing the coach. Events have shown that part was unnecessary.

The Academic Department gets increased funding and other resources to help them with their goal of becoming a top 25 public research school. They also get a built in outlet for the results of the research in the form of a relationship with the VC firm. In exchange, they’ve agreed to give up some of the control they had over the Athletic Department. This helps the Athletic Department become more competitive and increases the revenue stream from Athletics.
The Haslams are probably the only losers in this whole scenario. Their influence on the University is being minimized. This is probably to ensure there is no interference, intentional or otherwise, with all the other arrangements. I’m not into the politics of the situation but it wouldn’t surprise me if there weren’t personal reasons behind it as well if some of the speculation about past power struggles is true.

MIT_Beaver basically laid out his role for us as an influencer. His job was to help develop the strategy (it’s unclear on whether in whole or in part) and serve as the public influencer. He’s using VN and the Vol fan base to increase public pressure on the University to ensure that all aspects of the deal are approved.
Bubba appears to be part of the venture capital team arranging things. His posts indicate knowledge of the details and indicates his own involvement (9).

(1) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(2) Official Jon Gruden Thread XXI
(3) Official Jon Gruden Thread XXV
(4) Official Jon Gruden Thread XXVI
(5) Dish: We already have RAN vendors for our NB-IoT network | FierceWireless
(6) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(7) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(8) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(9) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX

Great post, I agree with a lot of that :good!:. Just to nit-pick, because I have experience in this field, NB-IOT (Narrow-Band, IoT) is really a variation of the LTE spectrum and is more a branch of 4G than 5G, as determined by the 3GPP (governing certification body for wireless standards). NB-IOT is for super low bandwidth applications and absolutely will not support streaming. It's designed for a few pings of data per day, max. Use cases include asset tracking and low-use applications (e.g. electrical meter reporting).

If Dish is doing anything, they're straight-up going for a full 5G (super high bandwidth) play. They'll probably go the way of a centralized communication hub in the home that can hot-spot wireless and provide all media (internet, phone, and probably home security & automation). I see all the major carriers going that way to be honest. Dish already has the tv market, they just need to capitalize on the other media market.

 

[Stoked]

Thought it was interesting just now on MNF, Gruden's partner talked about how they were ready for next weeks MNF game and Gruden didn't utter a word about next weeks game. There was some definite awkward silence there....

You serious Clark?

 

[COOKEVOL]

AC, Escape Goat was fun. You too. The old Gruden thread almost caused me to jump off the Batman Building after Butch's introduction so I have intentionally stayed away from here best I can this time around!

That said, good to see you this time around and let's hope we see Goat soon. You're right, the Gruden thread isn't the same without him

I don’t think he’s been on since May. Miss the dude.

 

[LazhilUT]

Isn’t there a poster on here called Ron Swanson?
A screen shot of one of his posts is making the rounds on Facebook saying an announcement before LSU is happening and Gruden would be in town to meet the team...

Not sure if it’s legit or if the guy is reliable

 

[peerless98]

My apologies to everyone looking for Gruden news. This isn’t the post you’re looking for. Just skip to the next post. This is my working theory on how and why Gruden to the Hill is coming about. It’s going to be very long post.

For those with a little curiosity, here’s the bottom line up front (BLUF as my Army brethren call it). There is a booster or group of boosters attempting to secure the fruits of UT becoming a Top 25 research school. They’re working to ensure a continued stream of funding from Athletics to Academics by making a splash hire as the head coach and returning UT football to national prominence. You can now skip to the end if you aren’t interested in the gory details.

For those still reading here’s my take on the whole situation. Strictly my own opinion based on what I’ve read and my experience. Let’s start with the booster/Investor group because I think that once you understand what they’re trying to achieve, the roles of the rest of the players and the actions fall into place.

The booster group is leveraging the University’s drive towards becoming a top 25 public research school (top25.utk.edu). While the University has many good and valid reasons for this, the boosters see this as an opportunity to cash in on an increasing amount and quality of research coming from the University. Bubba on several occasions involvement of a (Silicon Valley) venture capital firm (not Castor Ventures). (1)(2) MIT_Beaver outs the reason. Early stage VC firms are interested in the intellectual property rights coming out of the research. (3) The boosters, in conjunction with the VC firm(s?), see this as an opportune time to develop a (binding?) relationship with an up and coming research University that funnels the valuable research results into their portfolios. I haven’t had the time to fully investigate all the players, but MIT_Beaver implies that Charlie Ergen is involved. (4)

Charlie Ergen’s possible involvement I think relates to Dish’s upcoming moves into the wireless connectivity area. Dish owns and continues to buy valuable wireless (cellular) spectrum. The first portion of which requires Dish to build out a wireless network by 2020 supporting narrowband internet of things (NB-IOT). (5) NB-IOT is one part of the proposed 5G specification. A large part of how NB-IOT is implemented is yet to be determined and will require a great deal of research (hint, hint). Dish, not being constrained by a legacy, voice-oriented network, has a tremendous chance to develop a different core network than the legacy carriers. Ergen called it “a blank sheet of paper”.

It sounds like the how this is being accomplished is through a combination of a venture capital firm advised by a MBB type management consulting firm. Together they’ve developed a plan, of which Gruden is a part, to assist the University in reaching its goal while, presumably, the VC firm gets in on the reaping of benefits. Here’s how the other major players are involved, in my opinion.

The football program is viewed as a key revenue source for the University. The Athletic Department already provides quite a bit of funding back to the Academic Department and people have noticed how the success of the Alabama football team has fueled an academic renaissance of the University of Alabama. How do you duplicate that success at Tennessee? By making a big-time splash hire as the new head football coach and give him the resources (monetary and otherwise) to compete with the Alabamas and Ohio States. This leads logically to Jon Gruden due to his connection to and past history with UT. No other coach excites the fan base and makes a national splash like him. You secure his services by making him an offer he can’t refuse (especially in light of ESPN’s well documented financial issues). Bubba says the base is $7.5M (6) but that is the least interesting part of the deal (7) and won’t all be in USD (8). Possibly a stake in the venture capital fund investing in the UT research?

The Athletic Director doesn’t really have much of a role in this. He was given the coach as part of the package deal and does not have a BANTA, although it appears he did do his due diligence and checked. The only real option he had was the timing. It appears that, while the decision to not retain Butch was made early in the season, the plan was to allow him to coach out the rest of the season and resign with a renegotiated buyout. However the performance (or lack thereof) of the team on the field and the Kendrick situation made that position untenable and Butch was let go early. At this point Currie has a replacement and is waiting a suitable amount of time to announce him. This may be due to commitments by Gruden, pressure from certain boosters, a desire to see Butch hired elsewhere, or a combination of some or all of these plus other unknown conditions.

Peyton Manning was brought in to help seal the deal on Gruden as the new head coach and to provide an incentive to accept the deal on the part of the Academic Department in the form of potential fundraising. I think Peyton’s involvement was actually predicated on the football team having a reasonably successful year and needing to provide rationale and support for changing the coach. Events have shown that part was unnecessary.

The Academic Department gets increased funding and other resources to help them with their goal of becoming a top 25 public research school. They also get a built in outlet for the results of the research in the form of a relationship with the VC firm. In exchange, they’ve agreed to give up some of the control they had over the Athletic Department. This helps the Athletic Department become more competitive and increases the revenue stream from Athletics.
The Haslams are probably the only losers in this whole scenario. Their influence on the University is being minimized. This is probably to ensure there is no interference, intentional or otherwise, with all the other arrangements. I’m not into the politics of the situation but it wouldn’t surprise me if there weren’t personal reasons behind it as well if some of the speculation about past power struggles is true.

MIT_Beaver basically laid out his role for us as an influencer. His job was to help develop the strategy (it’s unclear on whether in whole or in part) and serve as the public influencer. He’s using VN and the Vol fan base to increase public pressure on the University to ensure that all aspects of the deal are approved.
Bubba appears to be part of the venture capital team arranging things. His posts indicate knowledge of the details and indicates his own involvement (9).

(1) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(2) Official Jon Gruden Thread XXI
(3) Official Jon Gruden Thread XXV
(4) Official Jon Gruden Thread XXVI
(5) Dish: We already have RAN vendors for our NB-IoT network | FierceWireless
(6) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(7) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(8) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX
(9) Official Jon Gruden Thread XX

I was about to say the same exact thing:whistling:

 

[volinjackson]

So babyvol’s post was like a boom enema for ya?

No but maybe Thursday I can release the boom.

 

[OldTimer]

Thought it was interesting just now on MNF, Gruden's partner talked about how they were ready for next weeks MNF game and Gruden didn't utter a word about next weeks game. There was some definite awkward silence there....

true, mainly because I don't think they like one another. Gruden is gone from MNF.....

 

[CoachClick]

Isn’t there a poster on here called Ron Swanson?
A screen shot of one of his posts is making the rounds on Facebook saying an announcement before LSU is happening and Gruden would be in town to meet the team...

Not sure if it’s legit or if the guy is reliable

Lol. We are global

 

[colvol]

Isn’t there a poster on here called Ron Swanson?
A screen shot of one of his posts is making the rounds on Facebook saying an announcement before LSU is happening and Gruden would be in town to meet the team...

Not sure if it’s legit or if the guy is reliable

''Twas a joke in the RF

 

[RikidyBones]

Isn’t there a poster on here called Ron Swanson?
A screen shot of one of his posts is making the rounds on Facebook saying an announcement before LSU is happening and Gruden would be in town to meet the team...

Not sure if it’s legit or if the guy is reliable

lol 😂😂

 

[peyton4heisman]

gtfo

The Hell is your problem? I think I'll stay.

 

[SandoVOL]

That's actually my biggest concern with him. His biggest failure in the NFL was QB development. It was ultimately his undoing.

he took a back up qb in rich gannon at kc and made him a star in oakland. And then went to the superbowl with brad freaking johnson and beat gannon. Brad. Freaking. Johnson.

 

[VolAlum24]

Shoot me an email. Bkwvols@hotmail.com and I can get it taken care of for you.

You're quick with it :lolabove:

 

[VOLNPA]

Brad Johnson doesn't agree

U serious? Go look at the numbers. Johnson was hardly"developed" by JG. He was 10 years in before JG even got him. His best season was 3 years before JG even met him. BJ was always a good QB. He had a very nice run at TB, but was already developed. What other QBs in Tampa did a damn thing?

 

[LazhilUT]

''Twas a joke in the RF

Ah gotcha. I figured seeing as there was not a big frenzy on here

 

[Stoked]

Isn’t there a poster on here called Ron Swanson?
A screen shot of one of his posts is making the rounds on Facebook saying an announcement before LSU is happening and Gruden would be in town to meet the team...

Not sure if it’s legit or if the guy is reliable

It's fake. It was a joke made by another poster. This is exactly why you have to take most rumors with a grain of salt. Look how easily that spread lol.

 

[B EaZy40]

Shoot me an email. Bkwvols@hotmail.com and I can get it taken care of for you.

Any chance you could post the T-shirt again?

PS. I’m a sucker for buying T-shirt’s online after drinking.

 

[Souce]

Isn’t there a poster on here called Ron Swanson?
A screen shot of one of his posts is making the rounds on Facebook saying an announcement before LSU is happening and Gruden would be in town to meet the team...

Not sure if it’s legit or if the guy is reliable

 

[LazhilUT]

It's fake. It was a joke made by another poster. This is exactly why you have to take most rumors with a grain of salt. Look how easily that spread lol.

It got texted to me lol

 

[volmark]

Dont forget the winning smile... that alone will have mommas telling their babies where to play

 

[jakez4ut]

Thoughtful input, thanks!

no sweat.:hi:

 

[OSVolFan]

You serious Clark?

I get the Christmas Vacation reference, but yes, serious.........as a heart attack.