Top 5 All Time Vol Coaches

#52
#52
Fulmer is kinda like Dean Smith. With all that consistent talent you’d think there’d be more nattys. I appreciate almost everything Fulmer did except for running it into the ground, and hiring Pruitt.
 
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#54
#54
OffTackleVol said:
I understood that happened during the LSU game in '92.
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This is where it happened. Several coaches left locker room and were not going to coach for Majors anymore. Fulmer convinced them not to do that. Career suicide.

Fulmer and Cut did same for Sanders in 2005 when he wanted to quit after Carolina game. Diff reason. Sanders kids werecryi g and not wanting to ho to school. Randy didnt want them to suffer more. They convinced him to wait until season was over.
 
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#56
#56
LWSVOL said:
Did Majors make a mistake putting Fulmer in as OC instead of Cutcliffe? Seems many feel that is only reason for Fulmer success was Cut.
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Fulmer's record with and without Cutcliffe sort of speak for themselves:

91-25 (with)
61-27 (without)
 
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#58
#58
VFL-82-JP said:
Some haters go waaaaay out of their way to 'splain why Phillip Fulmer is a nobody who happened to be in the right seat when the Vols won a national title. It was all Johnny Majors and David Cutcliffe who won it, Fulmer was simply there to collect the accolades.

Utter horse poop.

Give the man his due. You don't win a national title and two SEC titles, as well as 152 football games (at a win rate of 75%) unless you've got it going on.

Fulmer absolutely the 2nd best head football coach we've ever had.

break/break

The guy who is getting short shrift is John Barnhill.

Robert Neyland took two sabbaticals from coaching the Vols in his career. The first was only a single year, while he was deployed by the Army down to Panama. In that year he was gone, the Vols fell hard to a losing season (4-5). Fell so hard that it took Neyland two recovery years (6-2-2 followed by 6-3-1) before he was back to 10- and 11-win seasons.

But get this: Neyland's other break was for five years, during World War II. The guy who filled in for him, John Barnhill, just did this:
8-2-0
9-1-1
(didn't play football in 1943)
7-1-1
8-1-0

If I remember right, that puts John Barnhill at the pinnacle of Tennessee head football coaches, measured by winning percentage. Yep. Better even than the General.

If there's one coach in Vols' history that we under-appreciate, John Barnhill is the fella.

Go Vols!
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I supported Fulmer for years, I didn't want him fired and argued against it, however the whole debacle of his return from Elba and the subsequent Waterloo of the Pruitt scandal convinced me that much of his prior accomplishment had be due to him standing on the shoulders of the program Majors built. As a head coach, Phil was born a third base, he did not hit a triple. I credit him for getting home from third and being a much better football coach than the Star Wars Bar of replacements who have followed him before Heupel (the last and worst of whom he hired). As I mentioned above, his record with Cutcliffe (91-25) and without (61-27) speaks for itself.
 
#61
#61
unfrozencvmanvol said:
Fulmer's record with and without Cutcliffe sort of speak for themselves:

91-25 (with)
61-27 (without)
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This may not go the way you want it to...

As you yourself just pointed out, Fulmer's win rate without Cut, 61-27, is 69.3%. That's a full 5% points better than Johnny Major's record (64.5%).

Say that again: Fulmer without his best assistant coach is 5 points better than the 3rd-best Tennessee head coach.

That tells me Phillip Fulmer is one helluva football coach.

And sure, yes, it also says that Cut is one helluva offensive coordinator. But we all agree on that part.


p.s. OffTackle beat me to it. Great minds think alike. :)
 
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#62
#62
VFL-82-JP said:
This may not go the way you want it to...

As you yourself just pointed out, Fulmer's win rate without Cut, 61-27, is 69.3%. That's a full 5% points better than Johnny Major's record (64.5%).

Say that again: Fulmer without his best assistant coach is 5 points better than the 3rd-best Tennessee head coach.

That tells me Phillip Fulmer is one helluva football coach.

And sure, yes, it also says that Cut is one helluva offensive coordinator. But we all agree on that part.


p.s. OffTackle beat me to it. Great minds think alike. :)
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There is no comparison between the state of the programs Fulmer and Majors took over. None. Like I said, I am not a long time Fulmer detractor but this clown show he ran as athletic director is damaging to his legacy.
 
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#63
#63
unfrozencvmanvol said:
There is no comparison between the state of the programs Fulmer and Majors took over. None. Like I said, I am not a long time Fulmer detractor but this clown show he ran as athletic director is damaging to his legacy.
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My recommendation is you keep his time as coach and his time as AD separate.

The man was a great coach. He was a lousy administrator.

Two-sided lifetime achievements happen that way sometimes. A fella is an incredibly good division commander, gets promoted, and turns out to be a lousy corps commander. Because different skill sets are required.

History is littered with examples. Phillip Fulmer was yet another.

So honor the man for what he excelled at, and hold him to account for what he screwed up.

He was a great coach. Our second-best ever.

Go Vols!
 
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#64
#64
VFL-82-JP said:
My recommendation is you keep his time as coach and his time as AD separate.

The man was a great coach. He was a lousy administrator.

Two-sided lifetime achievements happen that way sometimes. A fella is an incredibly good division commander, gets promoted, and turns out to be a lousy corps commander. Because different skill sets are required.

History is littered with examples. Phillip Fulmer was yet another.

So honor the man for what he excelled at, and hold him to account for what he screwed up.

He was a great coach. Our second-best ever.

Go Vols!
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The downward trajectory of his career as a football coach is undeniable though. He was 84-18 through 2000. That's elite. He was 68-34 from that point forward. Majors went in the opposite direction, he was 35-32-2 through 1982 and 81-30-6 thereafter.
 
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#65
#65
unfrozencvmanvol said:
The downward trajectory of his career as a football coach is undeniable though. He was 84-18 through 2000. That's elite. He was 68-34 from that point forward. Majors went in the opposite direction, he was 35-32-2 through 1982 and 81-30-6 thereafter.
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Well, now you're just stuck in the same groove as most Fulmer haters. Been down this track scores of times, no need to repeat it.
 
#66
#66
VFL-82-JP said:
Well, now you're just stuck in the same groove as most Fulmer haters. Been down this track scores of times, no need to repeat it.
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I don't hate Fulmer, but he got worse as time went on, not better. If I wanted to be unfair to the guy I'd have cut 2001 out and just talked 2002-08 and he'd have looked alot worse.
 
#67
#67
How can people put Dickey on the list and not Barnhill?

The only reason Barnhill was not a lifer as the coach of the Vols was there was not room for both him and Neyland when Neyland never retired.

Neyland
Fulmer
Barnhill
Majors
Dickey
 
#69
#69
RDU VOL#14 said:
Being a good recruiter is a big part of being a successful college football coach. Nobody GAF that a lot of people think that Kirby is a mediocre Gameday coach right now bc he is winning w/ elite talent.
Phil was 150+ and 51 or something close to that. He won a National Championship, our only one since 1967 or 51 depending on who you ask. He also won 2 SEC Titles. I think at 1 point he was 45-5 over a 4 year stretch. I’ll take mediocre again.
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It depends on the definition of a "great coach".
To me a great coach is one who can achieve the most from which he/she has to work. Considering that and based upon one year's achievement Heupel passes. Fulmer doesn't.
 
#72
#72
tennrich1 said:
Wow! Some have forgotten Fulmer was a recruiter extraordinaire. His abilities to coach/keep the program on a high level may be debatable but the amount of talent he brought to the Vols is probably unparalleled.
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When the other traditional SEC powers were down Fulmer recruited well. When they came back he wasn't so elite
 
#73
#73
VFL-82-JP said:
Some haters go waaaaay out of their way to 'splain why Phillip Fulmer is a nobody who happened to be in the right seat when the Vols won a national title. It was all Johnny Majors and David Cutcliffe who won it, Fulmer was simply there to collect the accolades.

Utter horse poop.

Give the man his due. You don't win a national title and two SEC titles, as well as 152 football games (at a win rate of 75%) unless you've got it going on.

Fulmer absolutely the 2nd best head football coach we've ever had.

break/break

The guy who is getting short shrift is John Barnhill.

Robert Neyland took two sabbaticals from coaching the Vols in his career. The first was only a single year, while he was deployed by the Army down to Panama. In that year he was gone, the Vols fell hard to a losing season (4-5). Fell so hard that it took Neyland two recovery years (6-2-2 followed by 6-3-1) before he was back to 10- and 11-win seasons.

But get this: Neyland's other break was for five years, during World War II. The guy who filled in for him, John Barnhill, just did this:
8-2-0
9-1-1
(didn't play football in 1943)
7-1-1
8-1-0

If I remember right, that puts John Barnhill at the pinnacle of Tennessee head football coaches, measured by winning percentage. Yep. Better even than the General.

If there's one coach in Vols' history that we under-appreciate, John Barnhill is the fella.

Go Vols!
Click to expand...
Actually, Jim Chaney is the greatest Tennessee football coach by winning percentage with a perfect 100% record 😉
 
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#74
#74
Neyland
Majors
Dickey
Barnhill
Fulmer
Barnhill over Fulmer for lack of harm done as head coach.
 
#75
#75
SonOfGodVolforlife said:
I agree with this 100% .
We get it what fulmer did at the end of his tenure but you cannot argue the fact how dominant Tennessee was in the 90s n early 2000s bc of fulmer. You can say it was coach cutcliff or majors who built the foundation. No coach in football does it by himself give fulmer his due.
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The other thing that clouds Fulmer’s tenure, apart from the drift into mediocrity at the end, was his inability to deal with Spurrier and the gators. Except for a handful of games, we didn’t exactly look like a dominant program going against them. A few more wins in that series, and Fulmer would have risen in the esteem of the fans to a remarkable degree
 
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