Theory For Recruiting Problems

[1 in 102 455]

If you want a theory I’ll never be able to fully prove, I blame the extended nature of the Vol’s slump and the extended nature of other programs’ successes as having unfortunately coincided with the rise and boom of social media and instant access to information.

The public’s perception and due diligence research are now more widely available to recruits, and social media has also caused group think mentality and peer pressure.

All these things are bad news for the program that took a dive just as they are taking off.

 

[VOLINVONORE]

If you want a theory I’ll never be able to fully prove, I blame the extended nature of the Vol’s slump and the extended nature of other programs’ successes as having unfortunately coincided with the rise and boom of social media and instant access to information.

The public’s perception and due diligence research are now more widely available to recruits, and social media has also caused group think mentality and peer pressure.

All these things are bad news for the program that took a dive just as they are taking off.

Yep. The social media is full of lies and conspiracy theories and a to of people are willing to bet their lives on what they read there. I feel bad for those people. There are more scams on cell phone systems than factual information. Look what has happened to the oil pipeline and beef industries. One can hardly believe most of what is reported in today's information outlets.

 

[WhenUrVolUrVFL]

Phil didn't get lazy as much as OU hired Stoops, OSU hired Tressel, LSU hired Saban, USC hired Spurrier, UF hired Meyer, and UGA hired Richt....

Lol. You still double down and realize we fired an all time great coach at our school because of ungrateful people like you...you are the reason Tennessee football is what it is...

 

[butchna]

the lack of elite commits tells us how recruits view our latest hire, whether or not anyone wants to acknowledge it. he's going to have to overachieve with what he has this season or he will never get the kind of players he needs to win here.

Chip Kelly east, huh? What a worthless hack that “homerun hire” turned out to be.

 

[VolinMichigan]

Lol. You still double down and realize we fired an all time great coach at our school because of ungrateful people like you...you are the reason Tennessee football is what it is...

How do you explain Fulmers record against those coaches that were mentioned? He never beat Urban, never beat Saban, beat Richt only a few times (but who didn’t). Spurrier beat him his first year at SC with an awful team. It was obvious the gap between UT and the dregs of the SEC was closing and the gap between UT and UGA, UF, Auburn and Bama was widening. The stats are all there to justify his firing. Could he have turned it around? That’s debatable. But he wasn’t trending up against the teams he had to beat every single year.

 

[BeardedVol]

If you want a theory I’ll never be able to fully prove, I blame the extended nature of the Vol’s slump and the extended nature of other programs’ successes as having unfortunately coincided with the rise and boom of social media and instant access to information.

The public’s perception and due diligence research are now more widely available to recruits, and social media has also caused group think mentality and peer pressure.

All these things are bad news for the program that took a dive just as they are taking off.

Bollocks.

Myspace launched in 2003
Facebook opened to the general public in 2006
Twitter launched in 2006

Hamilton becomes AD 2003
Kiffin hired 2009
Dooley hired 2010
Dave Hart becomes AD 2011
Butch hired 2012
John Currie becomes AD 2017
Phillip Fulmer becomes AD 2017
Pruitt hired 2017

The extended nature of the Vols slump is 100% the result of nearly two decades or poor administrative and coaching hires. Any impact that the existence of social media has had on the Vols is negligible in the face of the complete and utter mismanagement of the program.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

Lol. You still double down and realize we fired an all time great coach at our school because of ungrateful people like you...you are the reason Tennessee football is what it is...

Dude, are you stupid or just a troll? I know reading comprehension may not be your strong suit but I was DEFENDING Fulmer's work ethic. I just pointed out that our recruiting went down when our competition hired coaches that were better than their predecessors...

 

[Volfan1000]

It is my strong opinion we have been falling short in our recruiting classes for some time now. This baffles me since, with our nice facilities, we should be having consistent top 5/10 recruit groups.

We were doing quite well in Fulmer's first years. Phil was a recruiting machine. Put him in a recruits living room with mom, dad, uncle's, etc. and the man would shine. He got more than his share of top recruits then the bottom fell out. What happenned?

I've heard more than a few posters say Phil got lazy but not one of those knows that for a fact. They're just looking for someone to blame.

Anyway, here is my theory for the downturn:

Historically Vols have made a living cherry picking top players from, among others, the eight states that abut our borders. We've all but owned the Carolinas. Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi and the like. And we could go into Alabama, Louisiana, Florida and others with great success.

What changed? As a group those state's colleges have improved their own football programs giving their star recruits more reason to stay instate. Hence, it's more difficult to harvest their prime players.

To me Fulmer didn't get lazy. He put forth the same effort he always did. This trend began to occur during his tenure and effected him.

Now, I am certainly not saying that group of programs in those state's became stellar but collectively they got better which appealed to their recruits.

The record shows that recruiting for UT has dropped and has been a challenge ever since.

It bothers me that we can't recruit with the Alabama's, Georgia's, and the Ohio State's.

JMHO

CJH and his staff have made northern states like Michigan, Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania a priority whereas CJP and his staff just basically recruited in the south for the most part. CPF dominated the Carolinas and Georgia during his tenure but really did not get a whole lot of northern talent.

Kentucky has made a living off Ohio and Indiana kids and Tennessee can be in the same boat now that CJH has such a diversified recruiting outlook.

 

[1 in 102 455]

Bollocks.

Myspace launched in 2003
Facebook opened to the general public in 2006
Twitter launched in 2006

Hamilton becomes AD 2003
Kiffin hired 2009
Dooley hired 2010
Dave Hart becomes AD 2011
Butch hired 2012
John Currie becomes AD 2017
Phillip Fulmer becomes AD 2017
Pruitt hired 2017

The extended nature of the Vols slump is 100% the result of nearly two decades or poor administrative and coaching hires. Any impact that the existence of social media has had on the Vols is negligible in the face of the complete and utter mismanagement of the program.

When they launched isn’t what’s relevant, it’s when they actually took off. MySpace was really a non-factor. Facebook was not really even “mainstream” until 2009. Twitter much later. Our mismanagement of the program caused the plummet. But the wide-spread access to opinion and information sure hasn’t helped us climb back out of the hole. The constant pour of information regarding our dire situation, I would contend, is a contributing factor (even if small) in perpetuating the struggle in righting the ship, because it is causing roadblocks in recruitment and public perception (when prior thereto there would have been less noise and groupthink mentality regarding the program).

To say otherwise would be to argue that widespread negative information regarding a program has no impact on the public perception and that public perception does not affect recruiting.

 

[WhenUrVolUrVFL]

How do you explain Fulmers record against those coaches that were mentioned? He never beat Urban, never beat Saban, beat Richt only a few times (but who didn’t). Spurrier beat him his first year at SC with an awful team. It was obvious the gap between UT and the dregs of the SEC was closing and the gap between UT and UGA, UF, Auburn and Bama was widening. The stats are all there to justify his firing. Could he have turned it around? That’s debatable. But he wasn’t trending up against the teams he had to beat every single year.

How’s that gap working out now? Lol.

 

[UTK]

Winning solves everything

True buts it's hard to win without top recruiting classes in this conference. That's the vicious cycle

 

[wmcovol]

1) Terrible last season
2) pending NCAA issues
3) unknown new coach.

Recruiting may change if Heupel shows he can coach in the SEC

 

[TNnative]

Don't believe everything you hear. Fulmer did come to Bruceton recruiting Willis and even told him he could pick any SEC team he wanted he was that good. Willis was taken in by an Ole Miss fan much like the Oher story. I can't say if Finley guided Patrick or not but there is enough out there to lead me to believe he did.

And who told you that? Fulmer? Sorry bud, but I tend to buy what Willis said.

And the part about someone from Ole Miss taking Willis in? Once they found out Tennessee turned him down? More power to them. The man was a helluva player. He could have been our next Al Wilson. And even though it took years for us to learn about all this, I am sure plenty of influential donors with inside info were well aware of such situations when the decision to can him came about. Unfortunately, the replacement hiring side of it was FUBAR.

 

[Remy]

And who told you that? Fulmer? Sorry bud, but I tend to buy what Willis said.

And the part about someone from Ole Miss taking Willis in? Once they found out Tennessee turned him down? More power to them. The man was a helluva player. He could have been our next Al Wilson. And even though it took years for us to learn about all this, I am sure plenty of influential donors with inside info were well aware of such situations when the decision to can him came about. Unfortunately, the replacement hiring side of it was FUBAR.

To support Patrick's side of the story, the guy who was actually inside looking out rather than outside looking in like us VN posters, he said he AND HIS FATHER ATTENDED UT GAMES ON THEIR OWN DIME. If an Ole Miss fan family did take him in, it doesn't sound like Patrick had a problem attending UT games with his actual father while "being taken in." I'll go with how things went down per Patrick than somebody that has no first hand on site knowledge of what occurred. If you were not there when and IF anything Fulmer may have said to PW and heard every word, quit calling PW a liar.

 

[TNnative]

To support Patrick's side of the story, the guy who was actually inside looking out rather than outside looking in like us VN posters, he said he AND HIS FATHE ATTENDED UT GAMES ON THEIR OWN DIME. If an Ole Miss fan family did take him in, ity doesn't sound like Patrick had a problem attending UT games with his actual father while "being taken in." I'll go with how things went down per Patrick than somebody that has no first hand on site knowledge of what occurred. If you were not there when and IF anything Fulmer may have said to PW and heard every word, quit calling PW a liar.

Wait a second. I am not calling Willis a liar. Aim that at whoever claimed it.

 

[vegasvolfan]

Saban was staunchly against the spread. He changed with no problem. Won another National Championship right after changing. Other programs changed and were successful.

Fulmerhad two losing seasons in four years! Enough said about him!

Enough said when I say enough said. It was as absurd to fire him as it is to compare him to Saban. Additionally, those two losing seasons were separated by a 9 win and a 10 win season. The fact people still justify that decision when we have done that only twice since then goes to show how little has changed on Rocky Top when it comes to the mentality that got us in this crap hole.

 

[volsknx]

Enough said when I say enough said. It was as absurd to fire him as it is to compare him to Saban. Additionally, those two losing seasons were separated by a 9 win and a 10 win season. The fact people still justify that decision when we have done that only twice since then goes to show how little has changed on Rocky Top when it comes to the mentality that got us in this crap hole.

Two losing seasons in four years and you don’t think it was time to go?

Add on to that he really had not accomplished much since that fiasco of the ‘01 SECCG. Everybody knows he backdoored the last two SECCG appearances. Had it been anybody else in ‘04 Auburn would have been in the NC game.

It wasn’t the firing of Fulmer that got us into this mess. It was the hires after him!

 

[jcvols24]

And who told you that? Fulmer? Sorry bud, but I tend to buy what Willis said.

And the part about someone from Ole Miss taking Willis in? Once they found out Tennessee turned him down? More power to them. The man was a helluva player. He could have been our next Al Wilson. And even though it took years for us to learn about all this, I am sure plenty of influential donors with inside info were well aware of such situations when the decision to can him came about. Unfortunately, the replacement hiring side of it was FUBAR.

I am from Bruceton. I was in the gymnasium when Fulmer visited and spoke at our pep rally. Finley didn't take him in after the Vols didn't want him, he took Patrick in before he was a star player. Guy is a legit good person but he was an ole miss fan nonetheless. Finley would open the high school gym on weekends for us all to play basketball cause our park court was well....trash. Patrick is a good person as well and still goes to Bruceton a couple times a year. He gave Orey (his brother) a mustang shelby gt a few years back and stopped to give me a jumpstart when my battery died and this was when he was with the 40ers. So ya he is an outstanding person. But Fulmer did come to see him. Like I said, i don't know the details on if he had a commitable offer or not and on that part I will believe Patrick. I was just refferring to the Fulmer did at least come down to see him. So he WAS recruited in some aspect. The head coach doesn't visit someone they ain't recruiting.

 

[thehill98]

Two losing seasons in four years and you don’t think it was time to go?

Add on to that he really had not accomplished much since that fiasco of the ‘01 SECCG. Everybody knows he backdoored the last two SECCG appearances. Had it been anybody else in ‘04 Auburn would have been in the NC game.

It wasn’t the firing of Fulmer that got us into this mess. It was the hires after him!

How did TN backdoor themselves in the last 2 championship game appearances? I’ve seen this before about the 07 season, never heard it about the 04 season. Both years we had the best record in the East, in 04 we only had one conference loss. We played toe to toe with both opponents those years, even with Rick Clausen as quarterback in 04.

 

[FranklinVol16]

He started worshipping at the altar of recruiting services instead of evaluating in-house. Willis was a 3 star…he went with 5 star Chris Donald. Current star hoggers woulda been thumbsup with that move.

You have Donald and Daniel Brooks confused.

 

[butchna]

You have Donald and Daniel Brooks confused.

Were they any different?

 

[Remy]

Wait a second. I am not calling Willis a liar. Aim that at whoever claimed it.

Sorry did not mean that for you. I agreed with you, the other guy who claimed Fulmer went to Bruceton and made PW offers. PW said it never happened. I believe him, HE LOVED UT. UT wouldn't have him.

 

[jcvols24]

He started worshipping at the altar of recruiting services instead of evaluating in-house. Willis was a 3 star…he went with 5 star Chris Donald. Current star hoggers woulda been thumbsup with that move.

Its been a few years so my memory may be hazy on this but i think Fulmer was high on a kid out of Jackson that year, not chris donald. Chris was a few years later than Patrick and from nearby Huntingdon. And he tore Bruceton up.

 

[butchna]

Its been a few years so my memory may be hazy on this but i think Fulmer was high on a kid out of Jackson that year, not chris donald. Chris was a few years later than Patrick and from nearby Huntingdon. And he tore Bruceton up.

Brooks.

 

[Longshank]

Lol. You still double down and realize we fired an all time great coach at our school because of ungrateful people like you...you are the reason Tennessee football is what it is...

Phil had lost his momentum. Meyer, saban, and richt all had his number. He had proven he could do less with more as far as players by the time he was let go. 2-7 vs Steve S showed he could be out coached even when he had manning.