As a matter of fact, most of us did. You say Fulmer had a terrible run in the 2000s but you apparently forget that the Vols won the SEC East 3 times and tied for 1st in another year during that time frame. Not to mention 7 bowl trips including 2 Cotton, 2 Outback, 2 Peach and one Citrus.
His winning pct from 2000-2008 (76-38 .667) was better than Majors' career winning pct at Tennessee (116-62-8 .645) and career (185-137-10 .563). Plus his recruiting class at the time of his dismissal was the 4th best in the country including QB Tajh Boyd who later started Clemson's resurgence after Kiffin told him to go elsewhere.
Yep. Majors is overrated as a HC, IMO. You can split both Phil and Johnny's tenures into two roughly equal pieces, with one piece being a lot better than the other. Johnny's second half was better than his first. Phil's first half was better than his second. However, Phil's better half was much better than Johnny's better half.
I put the line of demarcation for Phil after 2001. From 1993 to 2001 (starting with Phil's first full season) Tennessee was 91-20 (59-13) with 2 conference titles, 3 division titles, and a national title. That level of success was surpassed by only few other programs in the country at that time (Nebraska, Florida, FSU?). In particular the 1995-1998 period was successful: 45-5 (29-3) and ended the season #3, #9, #7, and #1 in the AP Poll. Those marks only seem unimpressive when you compare it to someone like Saban. This far surpassed anything Johnny did from 1985-92.
Phil's "bad" period, in hindsight, wasn't so awful: 57-32 (35-21). We were actually winning almost 2/3rds of our conference games then. IMO, what did him in wasn't his overall record but it was his record against Florida, Georgia, and Alabama from 2002-08. He went 8-13 against those teams over a 7 year term, which just isn't good enough.