Poll: which HFC did the most damage to UT

Which HFC did the most damage to the program?

  • Coach Fulmer

  • Coach Kiffin

  • Coach Dooley

  • Coach Jones

  • Coach Pruitt

Results are only viewable after voting.
#51
#51
vols 30 said:
You can argue it was Kiffin. If he would've stayed, I think he would've been successful. Jumping ship after 1 season was disastrous
Click to expand...
UT then compounded that problem by panicking and hiring Dooley on short notice.
1 year interim and a 1 year search would have stopped the avalanche. 10 years latter its still gathering steam.
 
  • Like
Reactions: vols 30
#53
#53
Fulmer after winning the NC in 98 had the 29th recruiting class in 99. and then the fall continued. We waited to long to pull the trigger and have paid ever since. Now he's AD and keeps on giving.
 
#54
#54
Old Geezer said:
Kiffin, without a doubt. We were left holding the bag post-season, unprepared. This started the cycle of hiring out of desperation that we are still in today.
Click to expand...
The talent we lost in the coaching changes, lost recruiting cycles, and then having to scramble to get a new head coach late in the coaching search cycle was a huge negative. Started this entire cycle indeed. I count Kidding as 4 bags years.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Old Geezer
#58
#58
Illinoisvolfan2 said:
And we can thank Pete Carroll. If he’d stayed at USC Kiffin never would have left.
Click to expand...

We can thank Jeff Fisher. If he had lost a meaningless last game of season at Seattle, Jim Mora would not have been fired. The Titans would have had a higher draft pick. And, Pete Carrol wouldn't have departed USC and his co-ed friend.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Illinoisvolfan2
#61
#61
Kiffin, and it isn’t even close. Had he stayed even one more year, none of that has transpired would have. His leaving as late in the recruiting and coaching turnover cycle left us with Dooley and the cascading group of horrible since.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Old Geezer
#62
#62
Kiffin !! Hands down. It just blows my mind that some people want him back. I’d still like to put my foot up his @$$!!! Ive got to remember a lot of the people saying they want him here were barely even out of diapers when he left.
 
#63
#63
The Kiffin hire by Hamilton, when we were just 1 year removed from an East championship, had a top 5 defense returning w star Eric Berry; and the fiasco created by quick departure set us back maybe ten years. We could have hired Patterson or several outstanding HC at the time and made a horrible mistake.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bodaddy1
#64
#64
Are we asking who put us in the worst situation or who was the worst coach?

Kiffin easily put us in this position due to circumstance. Although you could argue the admin rushing to hire Dooley instead of just using an interim coach for a year was a terrible decision. I think settling for Pruitt is comparable. Dooley did at least have some HC experience but neither were ready to be the main guy at a program like Tennessee.

I didn't like the Jones hire but it really wasn't a bad hire. He had several years of HC experience and had won at both places he had been at. Of the 4 HC we've had post Fulmer he was the best on paper hire.
 
#65
#65
Fulmer and it isn't really close. That does not mean he did not do some great things at and for UT. He did. But he got lazy and complacent. He let discipline go to nothing on and off the field. He stubbornly refused to evolve with the game and recruiting. There were some good players on the roster when he was fired and also some gaping holes both in talent and depth. The roster has never truly recovered except for a couple of years with Jones... which were spoiled by his coaching incompetence.

The others tried and failed to pull the program out of the ditch. Fulmer put it there.
 
#66
#66
Yes,it takes an immense amount of skill to be able to teach football players the intricities of proper hand and foot washing instead of signing offensive linemen to scholarships.Dooley equals a pile of dog poop!
 
#67
#67
I felt like voting Kiffin since everything after him could have been prevented had he stayed. However, I voted Pruitt because I think the damage he’s causing will take longer to recover from. One could easily vote Fulmer and be completely justified though considering he was Kiffin’s predecessor and hired Pruitt.
 
#68
#68
Fulmer because he started this whole mess. His belief that he WAS Tennessee and was untouchable, along with his abject fear of bringing in people with different ideas who could possibly look better than him led to his eventual firing. Bad administration took it from there. from the decision on how (not if) to fire him, to the hiring decisions since then. Now he is back and still thinks the way college football worked in the 90s is the way it works now, and we have seen how that goes.
 
#69
#69
peyton4heisman said:
Which coach’s last downward spiral did the most damage to the UT program. Right now feels like the worst we’ve ever been in, but I’d like to know if that’s a common sentiment.
Click to expand...
I don’t know how anyone in their right mind can blame this entire disaster on Pruitt and say he’s the main cause. That’s almost laughable. It actually is very laughable if it wasn’t such a stupid thing to actually believe. Just get freeze and be done, and then if our fans don’t wanna give him time they need to change their van card to something else.
 
#70
#70
OldVol said:
Fulmer was one year removed from playing for the Conference Championship. That's hardly in the ditch.
Click to expand...


Exactly. Fulmer shouldn't even be in consideration. He set the standard UT now wishes they could get a sniff of again.

Some of this fanbase is getting exactly what they deserve.
 
#73
#73
From my perspective, in my opinion, Fulmer did the most damage to the program in 1992, going behind Majors and Dickey directly to the big money boosters to line up their support for the job once he had the interim head coach title while Majors and Johnn Ward recovered from heart surgery and procedures, creating deep, unacceptable and painful divisions within the the fan base, boosters, donors and sponsors, that still linger today. What might be acceptable in the Corleone or Gambino family business has always been unacceptable on Rocky Top. Big time college athletics does not work that way.

Fulmer's tenure as head coach featured capable coordinators, questionable position coaches, however he hired no one during his coaching career who had head coaching abilities nor sufficient skill sets to lay a foundation for any succession planning, given the manner he elevated himself into the position as head coach. Such that Tennessee is pained by no capable coaching tree from Fulmer's tenure as head coach suitable for top tier competition in a power 5 football conference. None. Zip. Nada.

While the 1998 championship was one of the seasons when all the breaks went Tennessee's way, Tennessee was essentially non competitive against Florida while Manning was here the four years beforehand and afterwards the gap between Tennessee and the top of the conference began to widen as Richt and Saban settled into their chairs atop the divisions.

As other schools continued to upgrade their staffs, facilities, and recruiting framework, Fulmer lost the ability to capture top flight talent in state, from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Florida. While the coaching skill set failings were exposed in 2001 blowing the SEC championship and embarrassed by Kansas State in the Cotton Bowl that year, the game had changed too fast and too far for his coaching skill set to be competitive at the top levels and the recruiting failings were fully confirmed in 2005 when Fulmer could not land in state stars, Michael Oher (Ole Miss) and Patrick Turner (USC), yet, much like the 2001 SEC debacle, no help, game changers, or other coaching or recruiting talent was brought on board to better the cause, the team or the program. Fulmer continued to flail away with losing seasons in 2005 and 2008, boosted by the return of David Cutcliff in 2006 and 2007 after his termination at Ole Miss prior to the relocation in Durham, again with no enhancement of the staff until the failed Dave Clawson experiment in 2008 when there were an abundance of other successful and experienced OC's available, such that in the span of 10 years, the program had gone from championship caliber to middle of the road SEC talent and coaching, while the warning signs had been there all along, but completely ignored, again probably going back to the methodology of how he got the job to begin with. Fulmer claimed "equity in the program", although boosters and donors had to financialy perform every year in a what have you done for me lately routine with no recognition for any dollar that had been thrown into the program previously. Nobody has equity in anything at a public state land grant university.

He was appropriately terminated in 2008, generously compensated and never coached another down in the NFL nor any level of the NCAA and the damage to the Tennessee program remains to this day. In my opinion, he went behind John Currie and Bev Davenport in 2017 as occurred in 1992 to get a job he craved but was not otherwise qualified for and his abilities that eventually destroyed his coaching career and damaged the Tennessee program are fully upon us again to permanently place the football program as a cemented bottom feeder in the SEC.
 
#74
#74
peyton4heisman said:
Which coach’s last downward spiral did the most damage to the UT program. Right now feels like the worst we’ve ever been in, but I’d like to know if that’s a common sentiment.
Click to expand...
Put the Fans on the list for vote. Just to see something.
 
#75
#75
PandamoniumReigns said:
Kiffin didn't help, but Dooley left the program in arguably it's worst state when Butch took over. Remember the O-Line?
Click to expand...
I'd agree with that except for the O Linemen that Dooley had on roster weren't the kind of twinkle toes agile linemen Butch wanted. Butch didnt build an SEC line here ever. So, to me, that's a moot point because no matter what Dooley had, he wouldnt have wanted them anyways. Though I do realize a warm body is better than none at all and Dooley did skip a class recruiting OL.
 
New posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

VN Store



Back
Top