Where did it die?

#27
#27
KarnsTownVol said:
If I'm honest I don't think I can even pin point where the kill shot to the program was. I know use to if we lost a game I was miserable to even be around for a week.
But if im being honest I can't even remember when it was I stopped caring. I've went from being extremely invested to it just is what it is. If I have anything to do I won't go out of my way to watch a game anymore. I scheduled my wedding around UT football now I wouldn't even cancel a dentist appointment. The culture is dead and I don't think UT football will be back anytime soon. The only thing I have faith in is the administration is gonna drop the ball on this hire. Sad times on the hill.
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People point at Fulmer. But it was Kiffin leaving us in Jan. The program still had enough prestige in the eyes of recruits that a solid coach could have done some great things. Tenn used to be able to sell itself as one of the best, particularly when it came to NFL production. That is no longer the case and most recruits can barely recall a time when TN was good.

After Kiff Stiff, we went out and hired an extremely underqualified Google coach in Derek Dooley. The decision by our AD to not hire/promote an Interim may go down as the worst AD decision in Tenn history. Set the program back years there.

I believe that, more than Fulmer becoming lazy and complacent towards the end, was the kill shot.
 
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#29
#29
Brave Volunteer said:
The day it truly died was the day we decided to hire Dooley.
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Honestly, I think it was before that. It was the day we hired Mike Hamilton as AD.

He let the football program decline when Fulmer was still here. Instead of hiring an experienced coach with a proven track record, he hires an immature 33 year old coach who went 5-15 and managed a complete trainwreck in the NFL. When that move predictably doesn't work out, he makes an even worse hire of a guy who just went 4-8 at La Tech (Dooley). He created a massive fiscal black hole that we still haven't fully recovered from.

Of course, can't really blame Hamilton for some of the problems in the past 5 years. We just seem to have permanent dysfunction now. But certainly, Hamilton was the guy who started our downward spiral.

And watching this whole drama unravel, I still think our dysfunctional administration is an even bigger problem than any of the coaches.
 
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#30
#30
The program isn't dead, it's just suffering and the suffering never seems to end.

The wheels got wobbly in 1999 when Cut was gone. That is to this day the most underachieving team Fulmer ever fielded, which is saying a lot because 2002 underachieved so badly. Then came the Kiffin bolt, the direct opposite of Kiffin with Dooley, the inexplicable collapse of Butch with no medium. He didn't just get sort of bad, he went from 9 wins to historically bad in 11 months.

It comes down to never hiring the right guy. Every coach we've ever fired expect for possibly Majors, had earned their firing when they got it. But I've never seen so long a run of sheer incompetence in hiring head coaches. We turn down Brian Kelly, Gary Patterson and Mike Leach's of CFB for Kiffin, Dooley, Butch and Pruitt. The first group has 486 career combined wins. The group we hired has 199 career combined wins. We are stupid. We did it in basketball for the longest too. We once turned down Jay Wright who has won 2 basketball championships at Villanova, we hired Buzz Peterson instead.
 
#31
#31
The Dooley hire was the kill shot imo.......I'm sure he interviewed well......he is well-spoken, a nice face for the program, a good overseer for the building of the athletic complex, but a crappy coach....couple that with two additional bad hires and an NCAA investigation that we brought on ourselves in order to save 12 mill in buyout money and what do you have? a shiteshow that has all the toothless bammers showing their gums.
 
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#32
#32
Every time we stop the bleeding we find new and creative ways to maim ourselves.

This recent Wile E Coyote episode is one for the ages.

To answer your question, I think it began around the time Mike Hamilton took over.
 
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#33
#33
It hasn't...

Just too many eff ups. We're waaay down. But not even close to being dead.

There is still a bunch of support.
Talent on the team.
Coaches, good coaches wanting to coach here...
 
#34
#34
KarnsTownVol said:
If I'm honest I don't think I can even pin point where the kill shot to the program was. I know use to if we lost a game I was miserable to even be around for a week.
But if im being honest I can't even remember when it was I stopped caring. I've went from being extremely invested to it just is what it is. If I have anything to do I won't go out of my way to watch a game anymore. I scheduled my wedding around UT football now I wouldn't even cancel a dentist appointment. The culture is dead and I don't think UT football will be back anytime soon. The only thing I have faith in is the administration is gonna drop the ball on this hire. Sad times on the hill.
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Death by a thousand cuts. LSU, AUB, UF, UGA...they all survive mistakes and rebuild. We continue to make massive errors up and down the board. However, just thinking about it, maybe the first cut was Fulmer hiring Clawson as OC...don't know if it was Clawson or Fulmer not letting him do his job, but that misjudgement lead to his firing...then the flood of clown cars begins.
 
#35
#35
It was sinking.......then they hired Doofy......and that killed it.

Butch tried I guess......but it was WAY too big for him.

Pruitt was simply too ignorant to handle this mess......Want to revive it though.....for real?

Hire Freeze
Sure it will look bad, sure it won’t help with the NCAA....but regardless.....he would revive the program.

Don’t want to do that?

Ok - open up the bank and throw top 3 money at Bieniemy. No one has given him a shot yet.......maybe.....just maybe 8 or 9 million and the shot to be a head coach would bring him in for a few years.

Probably not......but your first real offer and paying you top 3......that may be flattering enough.
 
#36
#36
It was a gradual death. Part of it was staff changes. We lost Garner and never again outrecruited Georgia in their state again. We lost Cutcliffe and generally lost our way on offense.

Once the SEC started hiring better coaches, Phil got complacent. And he was no match for sharks like Saban and Meyer. But in 2008 we were still an attractive job. Each search provided worse candidates from which to choose. And now we have probation of top of it.
 
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#37
#37
DiderotsGhost said:
Honestly, I think it was before that. It was the day we hired Mike Hamilton as AD.

He let the football program decline when Fulmer was still here. Instead of hiring an experienced coach with a proven track record, he hires an immature 33 year old coach who went 5-15 and managed a complete trainwreck in the NFL. When that move predictably doesn't work out, he makes an even worse hire of a guy who just went 4-8 at La Tech (Dooley). He created a massive fiscal black hole that we still haven't fully recovered from.

Of course, can't really blame Hamilton for some of the problems in the past 5 years. We just seem to have permanent dysfunction now. But certainly, Hamilton was the guy who started our downward spiral.

And watching this whole drama unravel, I still think our dysfunctional administration is an even bigger problem than any of the coaches.
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Hiring Hamilton was when the sickness first crept in. But even under Hamilton we managed a couple of 10 win seasons and a couple of East titles. We weren't "dead" then. Even after we fired Fulmer, that lone season with Kiffin, while only managing 7 wins was a LOT of fun and there was a lot of buzz around the program. We were all very positive that we were going to have success under Kiffin. Once Kiffin bolted for USC and we made a panic hire in Dooley, that was the day the program truly died.
 
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#38
#38
The problem came in the form of Mike Hamilton and the admin didn't know how to fix the problem he created. They just made it worse.

Fulmer is a man who loves UT and wanted to be part of it again but simply didn't have the capability to do it in an admin role.
Pruitt is who he is. A great coordinator with a terrible disposition who nobody likes. He can't lead.

Mike Hamilton screwed the pooch with Kiffin and most every other facet of athletics at our beloved UT.
The merry go round of admin officials since had no clue how to handle boosters and knew nothing about running a successful athletic program. So they simply did what the boosters told them to do.

There is promise in Randy Boyd and all of what ruined this program are now close to being as an old as Moses and a new regime is now in place. There is promise. However, it will take a long while for it to generate some results. You can't win consistently without good players and good coaches. The good players and good coaches aren't coming here for a while.
 
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#40
#40
Losing the 2001 SEC title game against a 3 loss LSU team that we had already beaten once with a chance to play for our second national in four years.
 
#42
#42
billemert11 said:
2001
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There is a lot of bad that begins at that point. The decision to grant Kelley Washington a different set of rules to play by than others hurt discipline. Later on, we have an athletic director granting contract extensions and raises for win totals that were below his own professed standard of an average season.

Off the field, I think we lost touch with matters involving the fanbase. Moving people who were promised grandfathered seats in one section of the stadium in return for their donations, and being called out for it by none other than Curt Watson, was a poor public relations move motivated by a bean-counter's love for money over common decency.

Somewhere around that point in time, UTAD and the Sunshine and Lollipops set started blaming the fanbase for problems of their creation.

Part of me looks back at 1998 and the decision to replace John Ward with Bob Kesling as a sign this program was willing to accept mediocrity over pursuing a standard of excellence in all phases of their operation (23 years later and his penchant for sucking the life out of a game is only rescued by Tim Priest's absolute passion for Tennessee.). But you are right, the real rot starts in 2001 and only grows with several bad decisions over time.
 
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#43
#43
The university hasn’t been right since Phil Fulmer and Bill Johnson’s coup against Coach Majors. That was a shameful, dirty deal that upset a lot of people and was the beginning of what has snow balled into a real culture problem amongst university leadership, alumni and boosters.
 
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#45
#45
KarnsTownVol said:
If I'm honest I don't think I can even pin point where the kill shot to the program was. I know use to if we lost a game I was miserable to even be around for a week.
But if im being honest I can't even remember when it was I stopped caring. I've went from being extremely invested to it just is what it is. If I have anything to do I won't go out of my way to watch a game anymore. I scheduled my wedding around UT football now I wouldn't even cancel a dentist appointment. The culture is dead and I don't think UT football will be back anytime soon. The only thing I have faith in is the administration is gonna drop the ball on this hire. Sad times on the hill.
Click to expand...

The Day Kiffen dumped us for USC..... We haven't been competitive since.
 
#48
#48
mikepotts said:
And yeah, i know people will argue Phil had a good tenure here... not saying he didnt.
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That scenario created the difficult division within the fan base and the booster base that simply will not go away, the majority of our peers in the conference do not have to carry that division and devisivness around and the Tennessee program simply can't get past it partially because Fulmer just won't go away, he keeps lurking around the program and the administration, looking for a paycheck, claiming "equity in the program" and now, unlike Majors, Battle or Dickey, he is now the proud owner of the full demolition and unconscionable destruction of a once proud program, reaching the highest levels of humiliation and rank embarrassment with the lowest levels of support, finances, integrity and stability, all on his watch as Athletic Director earning millions in the process. I'm not sure how or why he would ever show his face in Neyland Stadium ever again.
 
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#50
#50
SmokeyDog1973 said:
Losing the 2001 SEC title game against a 3 loss LSU team that we had already beaten once with a chance to play for our second national in four years.
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Yep; I've long thought in hindsight halftime of the SEC Championship is the last time were in that elite conversation. It didn't totally start falling out until 2005 and yeah we had SEC East wins in 2004 and 2007 but 2007 espeically felt still not quite right considering we still got destroyed by UF and Alabama. And after that is been a cliff dive.
 
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