The Athletic - “The Worst Coaching Search Ever?”

Fulmer was a bad AD, good coach. Won us a natty and if nothing else as an AD, he did what he had to do to keep Rick Barnes. So there’s his two big accomplishments. Time to move on.
He had nothing to do with keeping Rick Barnes. Randy Boyd handled that.

The players won the national championship. Fulmer had nothing to do with the Stoener fumble or Florida State having to play their 3rd string QB

Fulmer was a great recruiter
 
He had nothing to do with keeping Rick Barnes. Randy Boyd handled that.

The players won the national championship. Fulmer had nothing to do with the Stoener fumble or Florida State having to play their 3rd string QB

Ya know what…you’re exactly right. They could’ve won even with Dooley or Pruitt as coach. Damn Fulmer, accomplished nothing here. Didn’t recruit any of those players either.
 
Ya know what…you’re exactly right. They could’ve won even with Dooley or Pruitt as coach. Damn Fulmer, accomplished nothing here. Didn’t recruit any of those players either.
I edited the post to include the fact that Fulmer was a great recruiter right before your post. He certainly deserves tons of credit for keeping the team loaded with talent. That 98 team wasn't as talented as several others. So what coaching decisions in that 98 season merit a statement as broad as "he won us a national championship"
 
Fulmer was a bad AD, good coach. Won us a natty and if nothing else as an AD, he did what he had to do to keep Rick Barnes. So there’s his two big accomplishments. Time to move on.

Fulmer did nothing to keep Rick Barnes, he blew off Barnes' receipt of the Naismith Award and the recognition ceremony, didn't bother to attend at all, Randy Boyd stepped up to retain Barnes, made men's basketball a direct report to the university president, paid the extra money, gave him free rides on his jet, Boyd could not allow Fulmer to hire a basketball coach after he reeled in such a disaster on the football side.

Time to move on, but Randy Boyd has poured millions into the coffers to retain Barnes and buy up those contracts on the football side that were terminated earlier this year.

When your UT Sports tickets next year cost three times what they did this year, you can thank Fulmer for fixing UT football.
 
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I edited the post to include the fact that Fulmer was a great recruiter right before your post. He certainly deserves tons of credit for keeping the team loaded with talent. That 98 team wasn't as talented as several others. So what coaching decisions in that 98 season merit a statement as broad as "he won us a national championship"

He should be given credit for not wearing black jerseys as well.
 
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LOL! He lost to North Texas State in Neyland. He lost to Arkansas with a team ranked in the top 5, when Arkansas was winless and had lost to THE CITIDEL on their home field! Don't get me started on Majors, he constantly underachieved.

Capable staff....Johnny never got along with his staff. Constantly blamed them for his problems, ran them off, fired them. It's one of the reasons he was let go, is he couldn't get along with anyone.

I do agree that Fulmer's reign as AD was not successful, I don't see how that's even a talking point.

Fulmer was the king of underachieving.

Johnny took over Iowa State, one of the worst programs in CFB history after they posted back to back 2 win seasons. They went 8-4 by year 4. They hadn't won 8 games since 1907 at the time.

Pitt went 1-10 in 1972, Johnny took over and won the NC at 12-0 in year 4.

Johnny brought us from the grave yard with a massive rebuilding project and turned us into an NFL factory that had 3 SEC titles in a 7 year span before he was fired in the coup.

Johnny rebuilt 3 programs from the dirt, he won more games than Phil, more conference titles than Phil, as many national titles and built a great coaching tree.

Phil took over a loaded program from Johnny and improved it by basically win or two a year for a couple of years then slowly ran it back into the ground to the point it was almost as bad as it was when Johnny came home.

Johnny was a better football mind. He was brash, brazen, never failed to let you know what he thought. He was an alpha type. That's why he brought in so many big time successful assistants over the years.

Phil was not an alpha type. He was paranoid and stubborn. He never wanted to go out the way he sent Johnny out. His paranoia meant he kept around assistants who lacked ambition or skill to advance. Assistants he could control. The program paid the price for that hiring trait. We are still paying to this day and will until the NCAA case is resolved because that's where he went in Pruitt. A guy he could control. One who was willing to accept him swinging by to coach a little. One who let him set in coaches meetings.
 
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He had nothing to do with keeping Rick Barnes. Randy Boyd handled that.

The players won the national championship. Fulmer had nothing to do with the Stoener fumble or Florida State having to play their 3rd string QB

Fulmer was a great recruiter
He was a great recruiter until he got lazy and complacent. The draft picks (number and early round picks) between 1995 to 2001 versus 2002 to 2007 clearly show the slide. That and his stubbornness on assistants led to his downfall. His legacy at UT will show successes and failures. Personally I don’t know why we have to re-visit this twice a year. Water under the bridge.
 
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If David Ubban and the other "stellar"writers have nothing more to write about during the middle of a college football season than last coaching searches,then their subscribers should.dTnrop them and have those same writers to go work for the Star of National Enquired for traan articles.
Not even the last search...it was search before last.

Ubben needs to go back to his Big 12 beat and write about the demise of the conference. That would be a good fit with his style.
 
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LOL! He lost to North Texas State in Neyland. He lost to Arkansas with a team ranked in the top 5, when Arkansas was winless and had lost to THE CITIDEL on their home field! Don't get me started on Majors, he constantly underachieved.

Capable staff....Johnny never got along with his staff. Constantly blamed them for his problems, ran them off, fired them. It's one of the reasons he was let go, is he couldn't get along with anyone.

I do agree that Fulmer's reign as AD was not successful, I don't see how that's even a talking point.
The Mean Green, I was at that game and still cringe at the mention of that school. Pretty dejected feeling walking back to the car after that one.
 
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He knew how to build a program. Fulmer didn't


Right! That's why one day he would beat bama, the next lose to Georgia Tech. Or let Auburn come from 18 points down to tie us.

Or, again. Lose to a winless Arkansas team at home with a top five ranking.
 
Fulmer was the king of underachieving.

Johnny took over Iowa State, one of the worst programs in CFB history after they posted back to back 2 win seasons. They went 8-4 by year 4. They hadn't won 8 games since 1907 at the time.

Pitt went 1-10 in 1972, Johnny took over and won the NC at 12-0 in year 4.

Johnny brought us from the grave yard with a massive rebuilding project and turned us into an NFL factory that had 3 SEC titles in a 7 year span before he was fired in the coup.

Johnny rebuilt 3 programs from the dirt, he won more games than Phil, more conference titles than Phil, as many national titles and built a great coaching tree.

Phil took over a loaded program from Johnny and improved it by basically win or two a year for a couple of years then slowly ran it back into the ground to the point it was almost as bad as it was when Johnny came home.

Johnny was a better football mind. He was brash, brazen, never failed to let you know what he thought. He was an alpha type. That's why he brought in so many big time successful assistants over the years.

Phil was not an alpha type. He was paranoid and stubborn. He never wanted to go out the way he sent Johnny out. His paranoia meant he kept around assistants who lacked ambition or skill to advance. Assistants he could control. The program paid the price for that hiring trait. We are still paying to this day and will until the NCAA case is resolved because that's where he went in Pruitt. A guy he could control. One who was willing to accept him swinging by to coach a little. One who let him set in coaches meetings.

I can't believe there are still people making excuses for Johnny after all these years.

Fulmer >>> Majors
 
LOL! He lost to North Texas State in Neyland. He lost to Arkansas with a team ranked in the top 5, when Arkansas was winless and had lost to THE CITIDEL on their home field! Don't get me started on Majors, he constantly underachieved.

Capable staff....Johnny never got along with his staff. Constantly blamed them for his problems, ran them off, fired them. It's one of the reasons he was let go, is he couldn't get along with anyone.

I do agree that Fulmer's reign as AD was not successful, I don't see how that's even a talking point.
Majors didn't lose to North Texas. That was Battle
 
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I can't believe there are still people making excuses for Johnny after all these years.

Fulmer >>> Majors
Johnny did cause some of the issues on himself. There's no doubt about it. That being said, there's no world where Fulmer was a better coach. Heck, no one gave him a sniff after 2008 when Fulmer threw his name out there to coach again. It was obvious other programs didn't think nearly as much of him as he thought of himself. The problem was that everyone else knew Fulmer had never rebuilt a program as head coach. Fulmer was severely deluded as we saw with his arrogant comments all through the dismal 2005 season.
 
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Boy, hindsight is interesting. I remember when Fulmer took over, Will West and Brian Rice did a good 30 minute segment on the culture of the athletic program. In general, they felt like the "family" environment had died under the last couple of AD's and Fulmer was bringing it back (e.g. bringing back VFL's, allowing media in, etc.). Of course, every one claims to have the inside knowledge. It seems to me that Fulmer loves Tennessee and genuinely wants what is best for us. However, he is also confident in himself and thinks he is the one to run all shows. Those two things can be true at the same time.
 
Johnny did cause some of the issues on himself. There's no doubt about it. That being said, there's no world where Fulmer was a better coach. Heck, no one gave him a sniff after 2008 when Fulmer threw his name out there to coach again. It was obvious other programs didn't think nearly as much of him as he thought of himself. The problem was that everyone else knew Fulmer had never rebuilt a program as head coach. Fulmer was severely deluded as we saw with his arrogant comments all through the dismal 2005 season.

doesn't mean we should have fired him the way we did. Should have eased him out the door more gradually
 
doesn't mean we should have fired him the way we did. Should have eased him out the door more gradually

Had we not done what we did, we would have kept losing more games each year.

There was no way he was going to out recruit or out coach Urban Meyer/Saban with his refusal to adapt to today’s football.

It was the right call at the time.
 
doesn't mean we should have fired him the way we did. Should have eased him out the door more gradually
Well, he was asked to retire and refused forcing their hand. That press conference the day after was extremely
unprofessional and self serving of Fulmer. Typical of him. It's why I scoff at any ridiculous notion that he cares so much about UT
 
Boy, hindsight is interesting. I remember when Fulmer took over, Will West and Brian Rice did a good 30 minute segment on the culture of the athletic program. In general, they felt like the "family" environment had died under the last couple of AD's and Fulmer was bringing it back (e.g. bringing back VFL's, allowing media in, etc.). Of course, every one claims to have the inside knowledge. It seems to me that Fulmer loves Tennessee and genuinely wants what is best for us. However, he is also confident in himself and thinks he is the one to run all shows. Those two things can be true at the same time.
You can't put yourself ahead of the University and then claim you want the best for it. You're confusing confidence with arrogance. He should NEVER be allowed anywhere near the program ever again
 
You are what you achieve.

Phillip Fulmer is the second-best coach in Tennessee history. Period. Without caveat. We all owe him for 152 wins, 16 mostly great years, a national title, two SEC championships, and a handful of trips to Atlanta. Will forever think well of him for that, and because of it will forgive him for screwing the pooch when he served briefly as AD.

So it goes: #1 General Neyland...#2 Phillip Fulmer...#3 John Barnhill (Neyland's excellent stand-in during WW II)...and then an argument over #4 between Dickey, Majors, and--if you wanna go waaaaay back in time--Clevenger.

But this is all old news.

I'm a LOT more interested in where Josh Heupel is taking us, and building his legacy into something to rival that list.

Future is much more fun than the past, even if parts of the past were stellar.

Go Vols!
 
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You are what you achieve.

Phillip Fulmer is the second-best coach in Tennessee history. Period. Without caveat. We all owe him for 152 wins, 16 mostly great years, a national title, two SEC championships, and a handful of trips to Atlanta. Will forever think well of him for that, and because of it will forgive him for screwing the pooch when he served briefly as AD.

So it goes: #1 General Neyland...#2 Phillip Fulmer...#3 John Barnhill (Neyland's excellent stand-in during WW II)...and then an argument over #4 between Dickey, Majors, and--if you wanna go waaaaay back in time--Clevenger.

But this is all old news.

I'm a LOT more interested in where Josh Heupel is taking us, and building his legacy into something to rival that list.

Future is much more fun than the past, even if parts of the past were stellar.

Go Vols!
Nice post, BUT lots of details are omitted. Always remember, stats are meaningless without detail
 
Not even the last search...it was search before last.

Ubben needs to go back to his Big 12 beat and write about the demise of the conference. That would be a good fit with his style.
He’s basically a freelancer on there and writes about whatever he desires. And oh he desires to write on anything negative about us!
 
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Nice post, BUT lots of details are omitted. Always remember, stats are meaningless without detail

It's funny that the stats show Johnny with more career wins, more championships, and he had to completely rebuild with every stop and left every program better than he found it. The same can't be said of Fulmer. Fulmer won more games at Tennessee than Johnny but Johnny was handed a Pinto and Fulmer was handed a Ferrari here.

I also found it particularly funny that the other poster thought Phil should have been allowed to gracefully exit while approving of Johnny being exiled the way he was by Phil. Johnny was Peyton before Peyton and he left a national championship program he built because Tennessee called. Tennessee doesn't have the lopsided run with UF/Spurrier had he stayed. With Bama about to get nailed by the NCAA and fade, I expect Johnny grabs the NC himself in the next few years.
 
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He’s a snake. He stabbed Majors in the back, he stabbed Currie, and he benefitted from both. Hell, even the move to hire Steele with no head coach in place was theft from the university to pad his buddy’s bank account.

He won a NC because he took an elite program from Majors. Then he eroded it because he mismanaged it and couldn’t hire competent assistants after the ones Majors had left him were gone. I think he feared hiring someone too good and too unfamiliar as OC because they might do to him what he did to Majors.

A lot of coaches could have taken what Majors built and won more than one NC. Certainly more than 2 SEC titles. Hell, Cutcliffe is the only reason he won anything. Probably should’ve hired him to replace Majors.

Pretty accurate. And it is about time some of you all figured it out. Instead of hoping he returns like so many did over the past few years.
 
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