You can’t fire your way to success.

Which ones? IIRC, Bama in particular avg'd between 3 and 4 years per coach between Bryant and Saban.


Never said there was a "cookie cutter" method only that you cannot "tolerate" your way to success.

Using even your example, Dooley by some reports had quit by the end of year 2 and was actually talked into trying one more year. Why? Now most people agree with what many attacked me and others about while Jones was still HC... He NEVER got the most out of a roster. He was a poor developer of talent. If someone was looking at the internal stuff... he should have been gone after year 3 or 4.

Muschamp won the East and 11 games. Shula won 10 games in year 3. Hoke had an 11 win season. Dubose seemed to be improving and won the SEC over a Spurrier coached UF team in his 3rd year... in a blowout. He was named SEC COY. Then promptly fired after producing a losing season the next year.

Harbaugh? Really? He's currently 32-12 after taking over a down program. He has a successful NFL resume to go with that. He's also a favorite son come home to resurrect their program... and if he keeps losing to OSU they'll still fire him.

You're proving my point. Your examples are guys who won enough to get the extra year... then got fired when they didn't make good on their chance.

It's the other way around, SJT. You're proving mine.

One simple example: Will Muschamp went 4-8 and 6-5 his last two years at Florida. If you were SJT-Gator, you'd be screaming about how Florida "tolerates" inept coaches far longer than other programs, lets them stick around long enough to "do damage," that the Gators should be more like Tennessee, Alabama, and Michigan, where they get rid of coaches quickly if they're not working out.

"Heck," you'd be saying, "Alabama went through four coaches in ten years (Stalling, DuBose, Franchione, Shula) before landing on Saban, and Tennessee is on their fifth in ten years (Fulmer, Kiffin, Dooley, Jones, Pruitt) looking for Mr. Right. Why can't we Gators be like them?!?"

You just made my point, brother.
 
Cat, you guys (Kentucky) have actually heard this tune a few times in recent years:
  • 2017 -- 5-1, then 2-5 --> ended up 7-6
  • 2015 -- 4-1, then 1-6 --> ended up 5-7
  • 2014 -- 5-1, then 0-6 --> ended up 5-7
I wish you well (except when playing us), I actually kinda like the Wildcats. But it's too early to say you're going to have a great season, given recent years' results when September flows into October and November.

Yea, I'm not sure what to think about them. I wondered why you left out 2016, so I looked it up. 2016 didn't have a great start at 3-3, but they did end up 7-5 4-4 with that win against #11 Louisville. They have been showing progress, whatever that is.

Their game with A&M this weekend is the one I'm most interested in. Not that it means anything, but I hope the win and beat GA too. Screw it, if we beat them, great! If we lose, wth, everyone else did too. Haha. Is what it is.
 
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It's not the coaches you fire that matter. Its the coaches you hire. The plain fact is, after firing Fulmer, we hired a jack@ss who left after 1 year, then we hired a clueless manchild, then we hired a clueless manchild who was a liar and snake oil salesman.

Now we have a head coach who's never been a head coach before who was a last-resort hire after a HUGE debacle ensued.

Could it work out finally? Sure it could. But my point is, how many people you fire doesnt matter. What matters is that you finally hire the guy who can win and UT's track record of hiring an impact guy doesn't look good at all.

Fulmer had not been a HC either and the mid to late 90's Vols seemed to do ok. At least we have a football guy instead of the snake oil salesman.
 
Fulmer had not been a HC either and the mid to late 90's Vols seemed to do ok. At least we have a football guy instead of the snake oil salesman.


Correct, the only difference being he spent his entire career in the Vols football program as a player and assistant and worked for the guy he replaced. He completely understood Tennessee football and how to win there. It was also the early 90s and the SEC wasnt as uber competitive as it is now. These days you have to know what you're doing and do it QUICKLY. That's just the world we live in now.
 
Yeah, I know. I'm saying. It's not like Butch went 5-7 every year he coached here, either.

Look, SJT used those programs (and others) to argue that Tennessee "tolerates" head coaches and allows them to "do damage" while other programs cycle through coaches faster until they find the right one.

Just pointing out that those other programs, they're not cycling every 1-2 years, either. They're spending as much time as needed, sometimes as much as 4-5 years, to find out if they got the right guy. Then moving on when they know they don't. Just like our program has been doing.
Fair enough.

My only point was that some of those you listed hit a pretty high mark at some point during their 4 year run. And 1 of them while not being what their base wants yet hasn't been bad either.

Jones was probably a couple wins over average to bad football teams away from being retained by Currie if he didn't have a stoke before.

Im probably landing somewhere in the middle on the idea. If not for the admin circus at the time I was fine with moving on from Jones after 16'.
 
Fair enough.

My only point was that some of those you listed hit a pretty high mark at some point during their 4 year run. And 1 of them while not being what their base wants yet hasn't been bad either.

Jones was probably a couple wins over average to bad football teams away from being retained by Currie if he didn't have a stoke before.

Im probably landing somewhere in the middle on the idea. If not for the admin circus at the time I was fine with moving on from Jones after 16'.

This crowd is never gonna agree on when it would've been best to pull the plug on Butch.

In retrospect, the right time was 2012, just after hiring him (or don't hire him at all). But we know a hell of a lot more about him now than we did in 2012.

There are plenty of folks on these boards who say they knew already, in 2013, that he wouldn't work out. Most of those are fos, enjoying their 20/20 rear view mirror vision. But there probably are a few who really did know, way back then.

More got an inkling in 2015, when we didn't close out some key games we were winning. Today, in 2018, a lot of those "inklings" have turned into "Oh, I knew it for a fact back then, and was screaming bloody murder about him settling for a FG on the 1 foot line!" Okay, buddy, yeah, you are Nostradamus, could see the 2017 season coming from your 2015 vantage point.

"But I have proof, look at my posts and how negative they were about Butch, even back then!" Yeah, but your posts have been negative about every Tennessee coach all eight years you've been on VN.com. Being right that the market hit a downturn after years of being a Wall Street bear doesn't make you a genius. It just makes you right 50% of the time.

Anyway, sorry, I got a bit off on a tangent. *endsoapbox*.

Yeah, we're never gonna agree on when it would've been "the right year" to can Butch, other than the retrospective that we'd have been better off never hiring him.
 
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It's the other way around, SJT. You're proving mine.

One simple example: Will Muschamp went 4-8 and 6-5 his last two years at Florida. If you were SJT-Gator, you'd be screaming about how Florida "tolerates" inept coaches far longer than other programs, lets them stick around long enough to "do damage," that the Gators should be more like Tennessee, Alabama, and Michigan, where they get rid of coaches quickly if they're not working out.
No I wouldn't because they clearly don't. Ron Zook had a better record and was recruiting better than Jones at the end of 3 years. UF fired him. McElwain took over a pretty significant mess and won the East twice with 10 then 9 wins and was fired because UF didn't like what they viewed as the direction of the program and his management of players. UT's leadership and to a large measure the fans ignored much worse from Jones in his first 3 years.

"Heck," you'd be saying, "Alabama went through four coaches in ten years (Stalling, DuBose, Franchione, Shula) before landing on Saban, and Tennessee is on their fifth in ten years (Fulmer, Kiffin, Dooley, Jones, Pruitt) looking for Mr. Right. Why can't we Gators be like them?!?"

You just made my point, brother.
Nope. Like I said... UF doesn't tolerate coaches who they don't believe are headed in the right direction even if they're winning at the time. UF won the East 3 times in 7 years and fired 2 HC's who had only one losing season between them. Both had winning records overall and in the SEC.

Do you really think that UT would have fired Jones with the same internal problems the Vols had if he'd won the East twice and had a 5 year record comparable to 50-33 overall and 33-23 in the SEC? Not a chance. Hopefully Fulmer will change that but the blind loyalty he showed assistants while HC concerns me.
 
You’d think the last ten years would be enough proof for fans to realize this, but it’s evidently not as I have seen a thread calling for the oc’s Head 4 games into his 1st year. Stability is the key to success, not farhing a coach everytime your team struggles.


Your statement is correct, but we have made enough bad hires to make our program irrelevant. The problem at Tennessee has never been who we’re firing, it is who we are hiring. The Mission Statement at UT only ascends to average.
 
You’d think the last ten years would be enough proof for fans to realize this, but it’s evidently not as I have seen a thread calling for the oc’s Head 4 games into his 1st year. Stability is the key to success, not farhing a coach everytime your team struggles.

Worked for Bama...

How can so many people not understand that it's not about who you fire, it's about who you hire....


Tennessee is cheap and hires garbage low level coaches. Hence, the firings...
 
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Everybody needs to think back to our glory days. We lost to Memphis with Peyton Manning at QB. Vandy usually took us down to the wire but we always won. Kentucky had some good offenses but we out scored them, USC east basically was the doormat, and Arkansas was another team we beat 4 out of 5. Now we have Missouri which seems to always get favorable scheduling against everybody they play in there as well. All those teams had to do was get a little bit better and us a little bit worse and now the end of our schedule is not the "cake walk" (even though it really wasn't, we just always won) it used to be. Now the front end of our schedule is horrendous. If Saban had come here we would likely be right where we are and we will be 2 and 6 before we win again. The problem now is we don't have the depth. If we get through this stretch without losing any starters, which is unlikely, we have a shot at winning 5 games this year. I think some potential coaches looked up this year's schedule and thought: Looks like 3 or 4 wins there. That fan base...I wouldn't have a chance! They were right. What if we only win 3? What if we only win 5 next year? What if we only win 6 the next? He took the job at the wrong time. He will probably be here 3 years and then what? We will hire a proven coach and after 3 years, we won't be any better either. Heck, lets hire somebody who can score some points. Dooley with Chaney scored tons. It was Sals lack of defense that killed us...Just one less score and we would have won a lot of games.
 
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Stability with the right coach is the key. If we had kept Dooley we'd have almost a decade of stability and still be losing.
And I think it's just a miniscule minority who actually wants us to fire a coach in the first year, let alone just a month into the season,

In most circumstances I favor giving a coach at least 3 years. But I do think you can tell if we're moving in the right direction in less time than that, but they still should be given enough time to bring their own players in. And in the last decade we have given coaches at least 3 years. Unfortunately we keep hiring the wrong ones and it just makes it that much harder to have the right one want to take over the next time.
we have the wrong one!!!!
 
the SEC had changed and Fulmer was getting his butt handed to him by better coaches in the conference. While I think we all would take 2007 over any of the last 10 years, I dont feel like firing Fulmer was a mistake.

The mistake was in who we hired, not who we fired.
absolutely correct
!
 
You’d think the last ten years would be enough proof for fans to realize this, but it’s evidently not as I have seen a thread calling for the oc’s Head 4 games into his 1st year. Stability is the key to success, not farhing a coach everytime your team struggles.

You are correct BUTT it gives something for the crazies on message board to talk about...……….
10424320_878249182207285_8424266744193191949_n.jpg
 
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Agreed. Pruitt needs to win an SEC game this year. Next year, need to beat 2 of 3 from Mizzou, KY, Vandy + either Ms State, FL, or SCjr. That equals progress.
While id love to see a.couple SEC wins this year, I dont think it matters all that much. Most good coaches show major improvement in year 2 and our schedule is very favorable. If ee dont see a major difference next year, its probably time to be very concerned.
 
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