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!