Pete Thamel's Take on the State of UT Football

#26
#26
Volsfaninva917 said:
Had Florida not fired Jim McElwain then Dan Mullen is the HC here and Currie is a hero
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Until McElwain got fired the next year and Mullen bolted for Gainesville. As much as I wanted Mullen, feel like in hindsight, he always wanted to be in Gainesville and would've left any other job to go to Florida.
 
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#27
#27
VolRage said:
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.
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Official car of UGA’s last national championship:
FFE094C6-00B1-4785-AD82-61833F0DDD8B.jpeg
 
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#32
#32
Florida fired McElwain during the season before the end of October, allowing them to get out in front of the free-for-all for coaching talent, Currie rode Butch all the way into a winless conference season, spooked by a $8 million buyout, Fulmer was $6 million four year sheet show, but again, zero leadership in the university administration, nobody willing to step forward and articulate what fans had been saying for years, hire a proven head coach from an established power five conference,

The dollars are too high and not easily replaceable to have a bunch of incompetent inexperienced administrators futzing around while other state schools in the south don't make the same mistakes the Tennessee administration makes time and time again, Tennessee spends tens of millions of dollars replacing coaching staffs, which other schools don't spend, further putting Tennessee at a competitive disadvantage time after time,
 
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#33
#33
TartanTurff said:
Florida fired McElwain during the season before the end of October, allowing them to get out in front of the free-for-all for coaching talent, Currie rode Butch all the way into a winless conference season, spooked by a $8 million buyout, Fulmer was $6 million four year sheet show, but again, zero leadership in the university administration, nobody willing to step forward and articulate what fans had been saying for years, hire a proven head coach from an established power five conference,

The dollars are too high and not easily replaceable to have a bunch of incompetent inexperienced administrators futzing around while other state schools in the south don't make the same mistakes the Tennessee administration makes time and time again, Tennessee spends tens of millions of dollars replacing coaching staffs, which other schools don't spend, further putting Tennessee at a competitive disadvantage time after time,
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I wouldn't count out Randy Boyd, he's a smart guy
 
#34
#34
Is any of this unexpected? We know the university doesn’t care about the football program. Some want to believe that us fans have power, that we actually have a say in what happens. Lol. We don’t. Instead of hiring a real deal AD in David Blackburn, the university hired Fulmer. I was initially excited about that hire. Now I see the error.

The university not only accepts mediocrity when it comes to football, it seems to encourage it. Until massive overhauls are made, we will be nothing more than below average.
 
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#35
#35
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.
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And yet he is 152-52 with all the staff weaknesses
 
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#36
#36
Something to think about. Fulmer won our only National Championship in the modern era just maybe he does not want anyone else to do it! 🤷‍♂️
 
#37
#37
Butch s said:
And yet he is 152-52 with all the staff weaknesses
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He was left a lot of talented players and coaches from Johnny Majors which greatly helped keep the program rolling. David Cutcliffe did a whole lot for the program and Fulmer, Manning's love for Cutcliffe took Tennessee to the roster stocking stratosphere. He never was able to recover after losing Cut. We all know the story. Fulmer won 81 percent of games when Cutcliffe was here, 69 percent without him and most of that success was right after Cutcliffe left and we had an NFL All-Pro roster.

You will never escape Fulmer's coaching tree being absolutely barren as an indictment on his ability to hire a great staff. It is the main way he set the program back, even beyond him falling hopelessly behind the top 5 coaches in the SEC at the time of his firing. Phil could recruit, and with Cutcliffe there to instill discipline in the program, things were great. Phil wasn't good at bringing in talented assistants to keep things fresh. It cost him in the end when Cut got hired by Duke. The program was stagnant and his massive talent advantage had been stolen away by Saban, Miles, Tuberville, Richt, and Meyer. Thus the 5 win season and his firing, though it was already too late at that point, we'd slipped too far down the chain in the head coaching arms race by then.
 
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#39
#39
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.
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It's quite simple, Pruitt had little to do with that success and a team is only as good as its head coach unless you have elite level talent. UT doesn't have elite level talent so we are handicapped by an inexperienced head coach who isn't up to the task.
 
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#40
#40
BigOrangeTrain said:
Is any of this unexpected? We know the university doesn’t care about the football program. Some want to believe that us fans have power, that we actually have a say in what happens. Lol. We don’t. Instead of hiring a real deal AD in David Blackburn, the university hired Fulmer. I was initially excited about that hire. Now I see the error.

The university not only accepts mediocrity when it comes to football, it seems to encourage it. Until massive overhauls are made, we will be nothing more than below average.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, our AD is an entire political system with different factions fighting over it. Fulmer got hired because he was the only realistic candidate from the rival faction to the Haslam faction. Fulmer not being a good AD seems a bit predictable; he wasn't very good at hiring and firing as a football coach either. He won in the 90's, because Johnny Majors already did all the important work on the staff, and all Fulmer had to do was recruit and keep everything together.

But it seems like the alternative is just another Haslam puppet. I'm not even convinced that Currie was a bad AD; it's just that it's difficult to conduct a coaching search when Haslam has veto power over any candidate.
 
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#41
#41
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.
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Butch will never “succeed” until he learns to have some integrity.
 
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#42
#42
Butch s said:
And yet he is 152-52 with all the staff weaknesses
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Yes. They kept making hay out of his winning percentage in the first few years until he fell out in comparison to other coaches of the day. He was only successful at the beginning because Johnny had built the program for him. He took over a team that had won 3 SEC Championships in the previous 6 years. In the following 17 years he only won 2. What was his record in his final 4 years?
 
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#45
#45
DiderotsGhost said:
Unfortunately, our AD is an entire political system with different factions fighting over it. Fulmer got hired because he was the only realistic candidate from the rival faction to the Haslam faction. Fulmer not being a good AD seems a bit predictable; he wasn't very good at hiring and firing as a football coach either. He won in the 90's, because Johnny Majors already did all the important work on the staff, and all Fulmer had to do was recruit and keep everything together.

But it seems like the alternative is just another Haslam puppet. I'm not even convinced that Currie was a bad AD; it's just that it's difficult to conduct a coaching search when Haslam has veto power over any candidate.
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Why couldn’t David Blackburn have been hired? But you are right about one thing. As long as the Haslams are affiliated with TN, we are in trouble.
 
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#47
#47
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.
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This response was spot on. Fulmer should send Cutcliffe a huge gift card every year.
 
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#48
#48
BigOrangeTrain said:
How many seasons did Spurrier go undefeated with all that talent he had?
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LOL...so Spurrier is only "good" if he went undefeated in a season? The fact that he won the SEC 6 times in 12 seasons, the division 8, had a national title and was 82-12 in SEC play doesn't mean anything, right?
 
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#49
#49
jp1 said:
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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Yes. But you’re right it’s absolutely 1000% on him. Every casual fan could tell how bad Jg was. But Pruitt honest to god believed that he just needed more experience (in a new offense) and that he would develop into a good QB. That’s not the way it works. JG sucks because he has a few massive flaws. All of which have nothing to do with knowing a playbook. Pruitt should’ve played kryst the first year and then kept the qb hill and had multiple guys challenge for the job. Instead d we hear that Bailey had like 10 love snaps since he got here. And all of us were sitting hoping he’d win the job in the preseason. He wasn’t even getting snaps. There was no competition. That’s absolutely on Pruitt.
 
#50
#50
BigOrangeTrain said:
Is any of this unexpected? We know the university doesn’t care about the football program. Some want to believe that us fans have power, that we actually have a say in what happens. Lol. We don’t. Instead of hiring a real deal AD in David Blackburn, the university hired Fulmer. I was initially excited about that hire. Now I see the error.

The university not only accepts mediocrity when it comes to football, it seems to encourage it. Until massive overhauls are made, we will be nothing more than below average.
Click to expand...
If the fans stop buying tickets and merch, you'll see how much power fans have...

Unfortunately that seems to be the ONLY way you get their attention. Cut off a BIG chunk of their money...
 
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