Who Deserves the Blame?

#126
#126
sjt18 said:
By what measure do you claim it was not broken?
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Well, we had been to the SEC championship and won 10 games 1 year prior to his firing, haven't since, mostly this though:

Fulmer, 152-52 .745 (16 seasons & change)
Post-Fulmer, 62-63 .496 (10 seasons)

For comparison in the 25 full seasons before Fulmer we were:

196-87-11 .685

If you add Majors 5-3 record in 92' and it's:

201-90-11 .688

Also, you can't blame Fulmer for recruiting fallout and poor player development after the guy left. As mentioned Tajh Boyd was committed when Fulmer was fired. He was the foundation of what Dabo has built at Clemson.
 
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#127
#127
Behr said:
I never argued that. Unless I missed it you're the only one that has said a rebuild = 8-9 wins. He could win 8-9 this year or next, does that mean the rebuild is complete? If 8-9 wins is where he wants it to be, he needs to go now.

I can't believe you don't understand this.
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Well, to be fair, if you are Butch Jones and the head coach of The University of Tennessee Football team!
 
#128
#128
unfrozencvmanvol said:
When Fulmer was fired, our program was not really broke, firing Fulmer is basically what broke our program. In the last six decades, we have finished in the top 10 in wins once, the 1990's (4th). The other decades we were: 19th (1960's); 18th (1970's); 19th (1980's); 20th (2000's); and (71st) 2010-2018. In the "bad" Fulmer years, 2002-2008, we were still 24th, which is pretty near our baseline, it's this decade that has been the disaster. We weren't going to fall much farther under Fulmer, we were due for an uptick, Georgia and Florida both were down in 2010, if we hadn't have gotten so big for our britches and fired Fulmer, Tajh Boyd likely stays committed and we are on the upswing again.

Instead we rolled the dice, when the odds were low to start with that we'd get a better coach than Fulmer, and sure enough, we got burned bad. To make it worse Fulmer was one of our own, and our shoddy treatment of him, coupled with the high expectations and lack of the strong in-state recruiting bases our division rivals have made our job a lot less attractive than many think, as the last several coaching searches have proved. Anyway, I for one am glad he's back and I hope he gets the time to clean up the mess that was made by those who pushed him aside.
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How is having two losing seasons in four years not broke?
 
#129
#129
unfrozencvmanvol said:
Well, we had been to the SEC championship and won 10 games 1 year prior to his firing, haven't since, mostly this though:

Fulmer, 152-52 .745 (16 seasons & change)
Post-Fulmer, 62-63 .496 (10 seasons)

For comparison in the 25 full seasons before Fulmer we were:

196-87-11 .685

If you add Majors 5-3 record in 92' and it's:

201-90-11 .688

Also, you can't blame Fulmer for recruiting fallout and poor player development after the guy left. As mentioned Tajh Boyd was committed when Fulmer was fired. He was the foundation of what Dabo has built at Clemson.
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Right. Fulmer drove the program into the ditch. No one yet has pulled it out. He failed at the end. He didn't adapt. He became complacent. He didn't run the program well.

When you have time, check Fulmer with and without Cut.
 
#131
#131
Cartervol said:
I have my issues with how Fulmer left the program, he had it at low tide when he left. As AD though i can only see him as a benefit. He was a micro manager, it ultimately cost him is job as head coach. I can see where those traits actually benefit us as AD. I'm not going to elaborate, figure that out for yourself.
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Yeah Fulmer really left the program in terrible shape 🙄🙄
 
#133
#133
sjt18 said:
Right. Fulmer drove the program into the ditch. No one yet has pulled it out. He failed at the end. He didn't adapt. He became complacent. He didn't run the program well.

When you have time, check Fulmer with and without Cut.
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Tennessee All-Time Winning %: .674
Fulmer Without Cut Winning %: .670
Post-Fulmer Winning %: .496
 
#137
#137
XknoxvolsX said:
How is having two losing seasons in four years not broke?
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How was the other 2 years? We were considered cellar dwellars in the SEC at any point in those last 4 years? Were we a laughingstock? It was nowhere near broken. Was it as good as it once was? No. Was tge program in a ditch? Not even close. We were still a high profile program that should have been able to land a top flight coach. But because of brain dead leadership, we hired loser after loser.
 
#139
#139
1vol8 said:
Butch was a star gazer and the previous administration was more about trying to win without the COST it takes to win. Really bad combination. I think the 2019 class will be the one that starts the upward trend. I don't think its fair to start pointing fingers at a coaching staff that hasn't had time to get a full team of their own players on the field. Pruitt had basically half the time that is required to build relationships with recruits for the 2018 class. And we did see a little improvement from 2017 to 2018. I expect to see a little more in 2019. But it won't be until the 2021- 2022 season that we can judge how good of a coach Pruitt will be because that's the yr that every single player on the field is one he hand selected. I say until then just be patient. Anything less than that is a premature criticism.
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I can see your point and to an extent agree with it. Having said that did you feel butch jones deserved that much time as well? Some patience is good, but to much patience can land you in this horrible predicament we are currently in. If the people calling for butchs head after year 3 would have gotten there way we wouldn’t have been this far down the rabbit hole and would also be one year further along in the rebuild. Instead the people who attacked those who wanted butch gone got their way and look what it did to this program. Now those same people are telling us all the same stuff they were saying back when butch was the coach. Hard for some of us to just blindly follow those who were clearly either just blind homers or knew absolutely nothing about football. Not an attack on you ( I’ve no idea if you were an avid butch supporter or not.) just voicing my general opinion on the matter. Having said that I hope Pruitt is the guy. I can usually tell that about a coach after year 2.
 
#140
#140
Alex10 said:
I can see your point and to an extent agree with it. Having said that did you feel butch jones deserved that much time as well? Some patience is good, but to much patience can land you in this horrible predicament we are currently in. If the people calling for butchs head after year 3 would have gotten there way we wouldn’t have been this far down the rabbit hole and would also be one year further along in the rebuild. Instead the people who attacked those who wanted butch gone got their way and look what it did to this program. Now those same people are telling us all the same stuff they were saying back when butch was the coach. Hard for some of us to just blindly follow those who were clearly either just blind homers or knew absolutely nothing about football. Not an attack on you ( I’ve no idea if you were an avid butch supporter or not.) just voicing my general opinion on the matter. Having said that I hope Pruitt is the guy. I can usually tell that about a coach after year 2.
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I can't say I was a Butch supporter no. But I am man enough to admit that he was simply the "face" of the downfall. I actually believe that had the AD and upper administration not thought they they could win without the cost financially they would've never hired him in the first place. So I put it more on them than him. Now I will say that it's obvious that most couch coaches sitting at home making 30k a yr could've had the same or better success in developing players he brought in.

Pruitt is a night and day difference. He may be a 2nd yr HC but he knows what it takes to win and he's got tunnel vision. Accompanied with Fulmer that has won NCs wearing the hat that Pruitt wears now and no $ amount is too much to win with him as the AD. Pruitt has the support that Butch never had
 
#141
#141
BigOrangeTrain said:
More delusion
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Sorry but you saying it doesn't make it true. Take the time to check Fulmer's results with and without Cut. The program steadily went down hill offensively and discipline wise after Cut left the first time. It temporarily got better when Cut came back then started back down again when he left.

Every leader has to have people that compliment them in leadership around them. Fulmer somehow didn't have the wisdom to find the right chemistry without Cut.
 
#142
#142
unfrozencvmanvol said:
Tennessee All-Time Winning %: .674
Fulmer Without Cut Winning %: .670
Post-Fulmer Winning %: .496
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I notice you avoided the relevant statistic... Fulmer with Cut.

You also ignore what Saban, Meyer, and others were starting to do to Fulmer both on the field and in recruiting by the late '00's.
 
#143
#143
sjt18 said:
I notice you avoided the relevant statistic... Fulmer with Cut.

You also ignore what Saban, Meyer, and others were starting to do to Fulmer both on the field and in recruiting by the late '00's.
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Nobody here has argued that Fulmer wasn't better with Cut, but Fulmer without Cut was in a virtual statistical tie with our all time program winning percentage which is good enough for 10th among college football programs, that's hardly running the program in the ditch. Was Fulmer the greatest coach of all time? No, but at the time he was fired, the odds were very slim that we'd get anyone better. Hiring and firing coaches is like playing black jack. Firing Fulmer, one of the handful of active coaches then in the game with a national championship, and a 75% career winning percentage, one year removed from the conference championship game was like playing black jack and sitting on 18 and choosing to hit, sure, we could have caught just the right card to hit 21, but it was WAY more likely we'd bust, and boy did we ever. Those who clamored to run Fulmer out of town, and the power brokers who yielded to that mob, that's who really ran the program into the ditch.
 
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#145
#145
sjt18 said:
I notice you avoided the relevant statistic... Fulmer with Cut.

You also ignore what Saban, Meyer, and others were starting to do to Fulmer both on the field and in recruiting by the late '00's.
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The fact is Fulmer ran nothing into a ditch. And who. Knows what he would have done in 2009. Kiffin sucked so PF would have at least been as good as LK.
 
#147
#147
This may be Pruitt’s one and only chance to head coach an SEC football team. If he doesn’t produce wins here, no one else will touch him. He may be better suited to be a defensive coordinator. He may end up as NCOY. We just don’t know. there are a lot of positive things going for him right now. But Gotta produce wins.

I will tell you one group you 100% cannot blame.... us fans
 
#149
#149
And then there is the other little thing that nobody seems to realize: Everybody else has gotten better. Better at coaching, better at recruiting, better at selling their program and Clemson is in another conference that is in a hotbed of talent. We used to get that talent and then compete against Florida and that's about it. Heck, we couldn't even beat them most years and they were the only elite team we played every year. If everybody is equal, then most will go .500 against the field. Those are the facts that most people just don't want to accept.
 
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