Pete Thamel's Take on the State of UT Football

#1
knoxvol16

knoxvol16

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#1
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#2
#2
knoxvol16 said:
The below article addresses multiple programs, and UT is one of the subjects.
It basically states what's already been mentioned here on Volnation, but it at least this shows that the same observations we're making here are being made nationally.

College football hot seat: Will emotion or economics dictate firings this season?
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You can't really argue any point he made. Unqualified Phil got schooled, athletic department is an ongoing mess, we got screwed and Pruitt is awful.
 
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#6
#6
airvols said:
FINALLY SOMEBODY NAIL IT!
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Which, to me, ultimately begs the question of how do you have HOF natty champion coach VFL Fulmer, Pruitt w/ resume of success/development and participating in NC's, and most every asst coach pretty accomplished on paper...all end up with a cumulative mess. When you could argue that the current staff is treading in bumbling Butch staff waters, it's not good. It's a real head scratcher to me.
 
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#7
#7
njvols said:
Which, to me, ultimately begs the question of how do you have HOF natty champion coach VFL Fulmer, Pruitt w/ resume of success/development and participating in NC's, and most every asst coach pretty accomplished on paper...all end up with a cumulative mess. When you could argue that the current staff is treading in bumbling Butch staff waters, it's not good. It's a real head scratcher to me.
Click to expand...

As crazy as this sounds, and as painful as it is to say, if Butch would've had the backing the Fulmer has given Pruitt, he may have (somewhat) succeeded here.
Pruitt has no excuse to fall back on that I can see.
 
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#9
#9
njvols said:
Which, to me, ultimately begs the question of how do you have HOF natty champion coach VFL Fulmer, Pruitt w/ resume of success/development and participating in NC's, and most every asst coach pretty accomplished on paper...all end up with a cumulative mess. When you could argue that the current staff is treading in bumbling Butch staff waters, it's not good. It's a real head scratcher to me.
Click to expand...

Fulmer's weakest trait professionally was his inability to hire competent coaches. He was a disaster at that. Go look at the wiki page for every national championship coach from 1980-2010, virtually all them have a branch called "Coaching Tree" on their page. Fulmer's page doesn't. He coached 17 years and never hired or trained a viable head coaching candidate that had even modest success anywhere. It's almost impossible for that to happen but his inability to identify staff weaknesses and hire upgrades cost him his job.

Pruitt has never driven anything but Ferraris in his career. So it's no surprise he drove fast every where he was before he took over. Here he wasn't handed a Ferrari, he was expected to build one. So far he's built a Gremlin.
 
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#10
#10
knoxvol16 said:
The below article addresses multiple programs, and UT is one of the subjects.
It basically states what's already been mentioned here on Volnation, but it at least this shows that the same observations we're making here are being made nationally.

College football hot seat: Will emotion or economics dictate firings this season?
Click to expand...
Seems he has his finger on the pulse of the issue. No doubt this administration will lead us to a complete bungled situation.

Can someone competent please rise to the forefront here? Pretty Please with sugar on top.
 
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#12
#12
VolArmy74 said:
Fulmer's weakest trait professionally was his inability to hire competent coaches. He was a disaster at that. Go look at the wiki page for every national championship coach from 1980-2010, virtually all them have a branch called "Coaching Tree" on their page. Fulmer's page doesn't. He coached 17 years and never hired or trained a viable head coaching candidate that had even modest success anywhere. It's almost impossible for that to happen but his inability to identify staff weaknesses and hire upgrades cost him his job.

Pruitt has never driven anything but Ferraris in his career. So it's no surprise he drove fast every where he was before he took over. Here he wasn't handed a Ferrari, he was expected to build one. So far he's built a Gremlin.
Click to expand...
Fulmer was incredibly lucky to have David Cutcliffe on his staff. He didn't even have to hire him - he was already on staff when he took over as HC. Fulmer's offenses were down a gear at least without him, and occasionally outright stunk. And Cutcliffe probably saved Fulmer's job for a couple years when he came back as OC in 2006-07.

And Chavis, IMO, was always overrated as a DC. His defenses were always less than the sum of their parts. Chavis had to have elite (not just good or really good, but elite) talent to field a good defense. If he didn't have incredible talent, his defenses were always just OK.
 
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#14
#14
It doesn't matter the coach. You can have Bill Belicek or Nick Saban walking the sidelines, if you dont have a QB you are gonna look bad. I know its on Pruitt and Co to get a QB ready, but if they had a competent one right now everyone would be going on about how great of a coach he is. Its the position that starts and ends everything with an offense. Its even imperative for a good defense. Name a good coach or successful team that has a mediocre or bad QB?
 
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#15
#15
05_never_again said:
Fulmer was incredibly lucky to have David Cutcliffe on his staff. He didn't even have to hire him - he was already on staff when he took over as HC. Fulmer's offenses were down a gear at least without him, and occasionally outright stunk. And Cutcliffe probably saved Fulmer's job for a couple years when he came back as OC in 2006-07.

And Chavis, IMO, was always overrated as a DC. His defenses were always less than the sum of their parts. Chavis had to have elite (not just good or really good, but elite) talent to field a good defense. If he didn't have incredible talent, his defenses were always just OK.
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Yea it didn't look good for fulmer after the 05 season he got cutcliffe to come back he straightened things out particularly the QB development then as soon as he left 2 years later things went down hill again
 
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#16
#16
preacherwebb said:
As crazy as this sounds, and as painful as it is to say, if Butch would've had the backing the Fulmer has given Pruitt, he may have (somewhat) succeeded here.
Pruitt has no excuse to fall back on that I can see.
Click to expand...

Butch didn't fail because he didn't have AD support. He failed because he (not unlike Pruitt) was convinced that his "system" would work in the SEC, and Josh Dobbs reinforced that fallacy in his head, and when he no longer had Dobbs to shore up the deficiencies in his system, the crows came home to roost with his poor oline recruiting, and his bad coaching hires.

There's a reason that Jones tended to follow Brian Kelly around, and then skip town before he had to recruit and develop his own players.
 
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#19
#19
BeardedVol said:
Butch didn't fail because he didn't have AD support. He failed because he (not unlike Pruitt) was convinced that his "system" would work in the SEC, and Josh Dobbs reinforced that fallacy in his head, and when he no longer had Dobbs to shore up the deficiencies in his system, the crows came home to roost with his poor oline recruiting, and his bad coaching hires.

There's a reason that Jones tended to follow Brian Kelly around, and then skip town before he had to recruit and develop his own players.
Click to expand...
Butch can only be successful at a level where he can purely out-talent people, because his only asset as a coach is being able to attract players highly rated by the recruiting services to his school.

Butch actually had a lot of attrition from each of those Kelly teams he inherited, Cincy in particular. By year 3 in both cases, when he was playing with the guys he had recruited, they were pretty good. Not as good as they were under Kelly, but they were competing for and in some cases winning a conference title. The gaps between the haves and have-nots is bigger at the lower levels, and I imagine he had simply out-recruited everyone else in the conference and was winning games purely on that basis, because the dude can't do anything else as a coach. He has more in common with a high school coach than he does with a high-end P5 coach.
 
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#20
#20
05_never_again said:
Butch can only be successful at a level where he can purely out-talent people, because his only asset as a coach is being able to attract players highly rated by the recruiting services to his school.

Butch actually had a lot of attrition from each of those Kelly teams he inherited, Cincy in particular. By year 3 in both cases, when he was playing with the guys he had recruited, they were pretty good. Not as good as they were under Kelly, but they were competing for and in some cases winning a conference title. The gaps between the haves and have-nots is bigger at the lower levels, and I imagine he had simply out-recruited everyone else in the conference and was winning games purely on that basis, because the dude can't do anything else as a coach. He has more in common with a high school coach than he does with a high-end P5 coach.
Click to expand...

Butch's recruiting rankings at Cincy were on par with most of the other teams in the conference. That's why when he came to UT, people were concerned about his recruiting. But I think his staff at the time was better at player evaluation. And Bajakian was an underrated part of his success.

Essentailly, Butch is just Ron Zook. A special teams coach who talked his way into being an HC. Butch got lucky with assistant hires at Cincy and CMU, but when he was forced to hire new assistants, he was completely lost.
 
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#21
#21
05_never_again said:
Butch can only be successful at a level where he can purely out-talent people, because his only asset as a coach is being able to attract players highly rated by the recruiting services to his school.

Butch actually had a lot of attrition from each of those Kelly teams he inherited, Cincy in particular. By year 3 in both cases, when he was playing with the guys he had recruited, they were pretty good. Not as good as they were under Kelly, but they were competing for and in some cases winning a conference title. The gaps between the haves and have-nots is bigger at the lower levels, and I imagine he had simply out-recruited everyone else in the conference and was winning games purely on that basis, because the dude can't do anything else as a coach. He has more in common with a high school coach than he does with a high-end P5 coach.
Click to expand...

Eh, he didn't do terrible in recruiting, but his best year at Central Michigan was still 50% or more players he didn't recruit or develop, and the same for the 2011 Cincinnati team.

Brian Kelly's recruiting masked a lot of Butch's shortcomings, and helped him get the next big job; he doesn't make it to UT without the leg up.
 
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#22
#22
orangerush said:
This write-up is well known. That said, the directionless, apathetic, and lack of a pulse from the UT administration, AD, and football program is beyond belief.
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Well, we did can our D Line coach 5 games into his tenure. Surely that put CFB on notice that we now have a commitment to excellence
 
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#23
#23
VolArmy74 said:
Pruitt has never driven anything but Ferraris in his career. So it's no surprise he drove fast every where he was before he took over. Here he wasn't handed a Ferrari, he was expected to build one. So far he's built a Gremlin.
Click to expand...

Gremlins, I forgot about those things. Was the Gremlin a bigger piece of junk than the Yugo? Whichever was the worst, that’s what Pruitt has built. Is there a worse coach out there? If he had any integrity he’d quit to prevent us from having to pay him a buyout.
 
#24
#24
njvols said:
Which, to me, ultimately begs the question of how do you have HOF natty champion coach VFL Fulmer, Pruitt w/ resume of success/development and participating in NC's, and most every asst coach pretty accomplished on paper...all end up with a cumulative mess. When you could argue that the current staff is treading in bumbling Butch staff waters, it's not good. It's a real head scratcher to me.
Click to expand...
Answer this question, name one good hire Fulmer made as a coach?
 
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