Pete Thamel's Take on the State of UT Football

#51
#51
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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Wow...interesting article. Thanks for posting. He makes a solid case for what many on here have already opined: Pruitt isn’t going anywhere. Our football program and university have been laughing stocks far too many times in recent years and paying Pruitt $12.5M to not coach for us would just be the latest national embarrassment.

We are stuck with this guy. We have to hope that he learns how to be an SEC head coach on the job, that grows into the job. He needs to learn that, yes, recruiting is a critical, core, primary need for all the coaches on staff...but they also must be able to coach football and develop the players in their care into winners. Coaching championship football is as much a core competency as recruiting and they are very much interdependent. I get the clear sense that Pruitt places such an emphasis on recruiting that he de-emphasizes a coach’s ability to coach...that anybody can go out there and learn to coach SEC-quality linebackers, for example...even learn it on the job during the season.

Who among us would not take Tracy Rocker back right now?

Expect some of our coaches to leave after the season. We all know the handful who have earned their places in the crosshairs. If Pruitt wants to save his job, he needs to surround himself with the best he can find and let them do their jobs...and not interfere. That said, I’m not sure he has it in him to do that. Let’s hope he can find it somehow. Maybe the blowtorch he has on him will help him focus.
 
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#52
#52
I'll give the muckrack, yellow print, Sh!t-Sifting, tabloid journalist Pete Thamel due credit. He actually wrote a pretty accurate and good article(for once......). This is more of a 'Sun shines on a dog's a$s' day kind of coincidence than any merit of Thamel being a credible journalist worth more than the corn & peanuts he sifts through sh!t for.

The closest Thamel has come to actually breaking a story was being one of the first to report on Manti Te'o's GF and grandmother dying on the same day.........., before the hoax was exposed.....

Even if every coach listed in that article gets canned during/after the Covid season, they still have stronger career arcs than Pete Thamel.

Thamel's career has literally gone from NYT, to Sports Illustrated, to Yahoo.
That is not the way the progression works for credible journalists.

I don't like Pete Thamel in case anybody is wondering........
 
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#55
#55
"complete administrative mess is the baseline expectation ".....Says it all.

We can't, and haven't been able to just, get out of our own way.

Someone who truly is an insider, and really is aware of the hourly, daily, and weekly going on's inside the program, doesn't talk too much about it.

We really have no clue about anything.

It is simple.

We are a company, run by first an foremost a Board of Trustees and one ex officio voting member, 10 voting members appointed by the Governor, and single non-voting student member appointed by the board (for what purpose....?) and all administrated under a President......

Short version, our company is a mess and actually a quasi social political club who pretends to run things.

Layers of bureaucratic indecision makers. You would think competency would be a minimal requirement........apparently, after 2 decades, it is not so.

There is no easy fix. Unless, we put people in the places where it matters. Football issues are not our primary issues hurting the football program.
 
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#56
#56
DiderotsGhost said:
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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So we’re basically Bama and UF without Saban and Meyer. They made their fair share of bad hires and lived below the football poverty line for a decent amount of time, but were able to reel in their big fish. Somehow we have to also.
 
#57
#57
DiderotsGhost said:
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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He was in the upper half of the Big East all 3 years at Cincy, and the teams who ranked ahead of him in any given year (West Virginia, Pitt, Rutgers, L'ville) he had trouble beating. It's also interesting that all of those teams are in P5 conferences now.
 
#58
#58
m1al said:
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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COVID rules (some needed, some just for 'plague theater') have impacted revenues pretty heavily....yet, we see no real change in AD attitudes or policies (so far).
 
#61
#61
Volnation forums never seem to disappoint. UT doesn't care about football, Fulmer doesn't want to hire a good coach, Pruitt is a dumb redneck....man, some of you guys are idiots. Yeah i said it.
And by the way, every University has "Haslams", none would survive without them.
Fulmer was hired for two main reasons, IMO, to calm down the fan base, and to raise money. He did both. It's still ludicrous to me that some of you think he doesn't want to see success in the football program, and all other athletic programs at UT. He hired Pruitt because he was under time constraints and Pruitt was, in many opinions, the best available that would take the job. He also made the difficult choice of getting rid of Holly. The basketball programs and baseball program seem to be doing pretty good under Fulmer, and other athletic programs are not doing too bad either. Fulmer has essentially made one hire, and it is yet to be seen how that's gonna work out. It doesn't look very promising right now, but time will tell. If things go bad next season, we will see and be able to more accurately judge Fulmer on the job he is doing as AD.
 
#62
#62
Volsfaninva917 said:
Answer this question, name one good hire Fulmer made as a coach?
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There were several. Rodney Garner recruited well in the brief time he was Tennessee. Mike Barry was a fine OL coach. Dan Brooks was a good DL coach. DB coach Lovie Smith was a good hire. So was Kevin Ramsey.
 
#64
#64
vettefool said:
What’s his record without Cut? And Rodney Garner recruiting? Garner was Cheating of course, but didn’t get caught.
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Fulmer was using the Vols Hostesses before Kiffin to lure players to Knoxville.
 
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