Front Porch FootballWhy Can’t Tennessee Football Climb Out From Rock Bottom?
by John Lamm
Rock Bottom for Tennessee
Surely now Tennessee has hit rock bottom. Of course fans and spectators have thought this for years, but somehow Tennessee has found a way to stoop even lower. It appeared to be rock bottom for Tennessee when fans rioted after Lane Kiffin left; it wasn’t. It appeared to be rock bottom during the Dooley years; it wasn’t. It appeared to be rock bottom when fans protested the potential hiring of Greg Schiano at the steps of the football facility; yet again, it wasn’t. Finally, though, after Tennessee fired Jeremy Pruitt along with nine other members of the staff for an estimated 50 recruiting violations, including giving recruits cash inside of McDonald’s bags in the parking lot, it appears that Tennessee is actually at rock bottom, and it quite possibly won’t get any worse from here.
Of all the times it felt as if the Vols had hit “rock bottom,” I think they have finally truly hit rock bottom, which is actually a good thing. Once you’ve hit rock bottom, you can’t get any worse, and work on rebuilding.
Tennessee has turned into a shell of the program it once was, and I think I speak for all Tennessee fans and anyone associated with the football program that they wish they could just forget the past 12 years and escape what feels like a never-ending pit of misery. Tennessee must learn from its mistakes, so it doesn’t repeat the past. This isn’t 1998 anymore. Heck, this isn’t 2007 anymore. Tennessee has crashed and burned, but it’s still possible to rise from the ashes and back to prominence.
It Wasn’t Always Bad for Tennessee
Not only was Tennessee football not always bad, it was actually quite amazing. So many people today like to refer to 1998 as the golden year of Tennessee football, and while that is the best and most memorable season in Volunteer history, it isn’t the only great year, or even the most recent great year (we’ll get to that). Tennessee is one of the best and most historic programs in college football history. The school recognizes six national championships, dating all the way back to 1938. But to start with the glory days of Tennessee football, we have to go all the way back to the 1920s.
Robert Neyland, for whom the Vols’ stadium is named, coached Tennessee during three stints in the years 1926-1952. He led the Volunteers to four claimed national titles, two Southern Conference titles, and five SEC titles to go along with nine undefeated seasons. Neyland’s overall record was 173-31-12 with the Vols. There were few programs in the country as good as Tennessee from the 20s through the 50s. After several down years, head coach Doug Dickey took over the program from 1964-1969, and in six seasons he went 46-15-4 with the program. Even though the Vols lost their bowl game in 1967, they were granted a national championship by the Litkenhous math ratings.
From 1977-1992, college football coaching legend Johnny Majors coached the Volunteers, and like Neyland and Dickey, he had great success. Although he did not win a national championship with the Volunteers, he did finish with 116 wins, six seasons ranked in the top 15, and three seasons ranked inside the top 10 in the AP polls.
In 1992, Majors was forced to step down due to health concerns, which led to the famous and legendary head coach (you can now add infamous Athletic Director to the resume) Phillip Fulmer stepping in as interim head coach. Fulmer is often viewed as the face of Tennessee football when any fan reminisces about the golden days of Volunteer football. Going 4-0 in the remaining games as interim head coach in 1992 in Majors’ place, Fulmer was granted the full-time job. Coach Fulmer was the perfect man for the head football coaching job at the University of Tennessee. He grew up two-and-a-half hours from Knoxville, played guard for the Vols from 1968 to 1971, and was an assistant coach of the program from 1980 until taking over the head coaching job.
Under Fulmer, the Volunteers were as good as any program in the SEC, as well as the whole country, during the 1990s. With a little help from star quarterback Peyton Manning, the Vols finished in the top 10 three consecutive years (from 1995 to 1997), falling just short each year of a national title.
And in the year after Peyton Manning went to the NFL, Coach Fulmer and the Volunteers, led by quarterback Tee Martin, went 13-0, with a victory over powerhouse Florida State in the Orange Bowl to win the national championship. This was the height of Phillip Fulmer’s career and represented the only national championship the Volunteers have won in the past 50 years.
This is where many people often talk about the end of Tennessee’s football success. But that really isn’t the case. Fulmer would go on to win at least a share of the SEC East four more times and go to three more SEC Championship games. In fact, the 2001 Tennessee football team was one of the best he ever coached. This team finished 11-2 and was ranked fourth in the country. One of the first football memories I have watching SEC football was as a first grader in 2001, as #5 Tennessee, led by quarterback Casey Clausen, beat #2 Florida, coached by Steve Spurrier, 34-32. Tennessee unfortunately lost to LSU in the SEC Championship that year, or they would have been in their second national title game in four years.
Although Tennessee hasn’t duplicated their success of 2001 since, they continued to compete at the highest level in their conference for years to come. The Vols had three 10-win seasons from 2003 to 2007 and played in the SEC Championship game twice, including losing in 2007 to the eventual national champion LSU Tigers on a pick-6. Even though Tennessee has not won a championship since 1998, the Vols remained one of the best teams in the conference until 2007.
The Downfall Begins for Tennessee
Tennessee’s downfall came fast and furious after 2008, Fulmer’s last season with the Vols. It was not a good one at 5-7, and although in hindsight, it really wasn’t all that bad compared to what was to come, it nonetheless led to Fulmer losing his job. AD Mike Hamilton wanted to get the program back to the national championship level days and felt Fulmer could no longer do so. He decided he wanted a new, younger head coach who could restart the program.
This decision by Hamilton started the downfall of Tennessee football. In Hamilton’s defense, there is no telling what Coach Fulmer could’ve done with the program in the upcoming years, but at the same time, firing a hall-of-fame coach one year removed from an SEC Championship game seemed bizarre. Ultimately, though, removing Fulmer really wasn’t where Hamilton went wrong. At the time, Tennessee was still very much a top-10 job nationwide, one where many coaches seeking the job thought a national title was possible.
Hamilton’s greatest mistake was the coach he hired. He passed up on several current great head coaches in college football, including Brian Kelly, who this year got his Notre Dame team to the College Football Playoff for the second time in three seasons, and Mike Leach, who has consistently won with his air raid offense everywhere he’s coached. Instead, Tennessee decided to hire a 33-year-old head coach by the name of Lane Kiffin.
Lane Kiffin
Today, Kiffin has turned into a fine head coach for Ole Miss. But at the time, Kiffin was an awful hire. Sure, he had a lot of positive attributes – his big personality, his ability to recruit, and a great offensive mindset. But those attributes did not outweigh his many flaws. For starters, he was too young and immature to be a head coach, having just been fired by the Oakland Raiders after refusing to resign from the job. Second, he committed multiple recruiting violations within months of taking the coaching job. Those two combined are problematic, but Tennessee could’ve found a way to overcome such issues, if it were not for one massive shortcoming that the Volunteers couldn’t overcome. Kiffin’s “dream job” was in Los Angeles, at a place called the University of Southern California, whose head coaching job became available after Kiffin’s first season with Tennessee.
Kiffin left Tennessee to take the USC job, which did not sit well with Volunteer fans and students. In fact, students literally rioted at the University while screaming “F— Lane Kiffin,” among other chants, and holding up signs revealing how much they hated Kiffin; they even caused property damage. Rioters blocked the coach’s car, and as a result, Kiffin was not able to leave the football facility until 4:00 am.
This was a shocking moment for what had historically seemed to be a pretty stable fan base (I mean, you’ve got to be pretty nuts to start fires over a football coach), but I believe what upset and shocked these fans to the point of rioting was that a coach chose to leave without being fired. The program had embodied a top job in the country for 80 to 90 years, and a young, up-and-coming head coach left them after one season for a college job he felt was better.
Kiffin’s leaving the program and the reaction of fans put the program in a difficult situation. They no longer had the same coaching options they had the previous year for the head position, so their chances to get an elite coach were limited. The Vols ultimately decided to give the job to Louisiana Tech coach Derek Dooley.
The Dooley Dilemma
Dooley did not have much success at all with the Vols in his three years with the program from 2010-12 (many Vols fans will tell you his time with the program was a dumpster fire), but I think he wasn’t completely to blame. While I do not believe he was a great head coach for the Vols, he was thrust into a difficult position the moment he arrived. With Kiffin leaving, NCAA sanctions looming, and many players and recruits for the 2010 season leaving for other schools, (it’s believed Kiffin actively recruited players to leave with him to go to USC), it would have been nearly impossible for any coach to have any early success.
In Dooley’s first season, the team finished the regular season on a four-game winning streak before losing to North Carolina in their bowl game to finish 6-7. Unfortunately, that was as good as it would get for Dooley at Tennessee; he would only coach two more seasons, with the team finishing 5-7 and 4-7 prior to Dooley being fired before the last game of the 2012 season. Dooley only won four SEC games during his tenure at Tennessee. Had Dooley been given more time with the program, he may have been able to turn things around, but winning only one game in the conference in two years just wasn’t good enough for the Board of Trustees, so he was let go.
With Dooley fired, Tennessee, a once storied program, was looking for its fourth coach in six seasons. Tennessee would hire Butch Jones out of Cincinnati, which many thought was a great hire for the program. While he had never been a head coach for a Power 5 program, he had found success at both Central Michigan and Cincinnati, leading both programs to ranked seasons.
Tennessee Under Butch Jones
All things considered, Jones did well in his first two seasons. He went 5-7 in his first season and then 7-6 in his second season in 2014, with a bowl win over Iowa. In 2015, the Vols made a big jump, led by quarterback Josh Dobbs, when they went 9-4 and finished the season ranked for the first time since 2007. The 2015 season is often overlooked, but this Tennessee team was good. In fact, Tennessee could’ve had a better season than 9-4. They lost all 4 games by 7 points or less; they lost by one point to Florida, nearly beat Alabama, and lost in double overtime to a Top 25 Oklahoma. Had a few plays gone Tennessee’s way that season, they very easily could have been 11-1 or 10-2 and on their way to the SEC Championship Game.
Jones’ team was ranked top 10 in the country going into 2016, and many expected the team to compete with Alabama that year for the SEC. Sadly for the Vols, the season did not go as planned. They once again finished the season 9-4 with a Hail Mary win over Georgia and a bowl win against Nebraska, but they did not do nearly as well as many expected. They lost to a rebuilding South Carolina team and to Vanderbilt, along with a blowout loss at home to Alabama in a game which many thought at the beginning of the season they had a chance to win. While the season wasn’t a bad one, the Vols did not make the jump to the elite level that many within the athletic program thought they would.
It wasn’t until 2017, though, that the team completely collapsed under Jones. They lost on a Hail Mary to a struggling Florida team, got blown out by Georgia and Alabama, and did not win a single game in SEC play. This resulted in Jones being fired before the end of the season. While Jones had been fairly successful up to 2017, the Board of Trustees showed once again that they will not tolerate a poor season, and even just one four-win season will get you fired.
The Schiano Struggle
As Tennessee was looking for its next head coach in the late fall of 2017, it seemed as if Greg Schiano, who at the time was the defensive coordinator of the Ohio State Buckeyes, would be named the head coach on Sunday, November 26. However, before a press conference could be held to announce Schiano as the head coach, some crazy events took place. Although not quite a riot this time, over 100 Tennessee fans showed up at the steps of the football facility to protest the hire and demand that AD John Currie hire someone else. The protestors claimed to believe Schiano had helped cover up defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s child sexual assaults during Schiano’s time as a defensive backs coach at Penn State. In fact, some fans painted, “Schiano covered up child rape at Penn State,” on The Rock.
State representatives Jeremy Faison and Eddie Smith also disagreed with the hire, and demanded Tennessee go with someone else as well. If these fans genuinely believed that Schiano had covered up the child rape cases and if he truly had, then he definitely should not have been named head coach. But many people outside the program did not buy the motives. Many thought the real reason for the protests and the anger directed toward the AD and the University had nothing to do with Sandusky. Instead, they didn’t think Schiano was a good enough head coach and used the Sandusky rape case to demand Tennessee hire someone else. Regardless of the reasoning behind the protests, the whole situation was handled horribly. Schiano was not hired as head coach, and Currie was promptly fired as AD after only one season for not being able to find the right coach.
At this point, Tennessee was a complete mess; they were coming off the 0-8 conference record, did not have a head coach or an AD, and had a pissed-off fan base, while everyone on the outside was thinking they were imploding as a football program. Desperate, Tennessee’s administration asked Fulmer to step in as interim AD to help find a new head coach, eventually naming him as permanent AD in 2018. With the Schiano fiasco over, the options for Fulmer to hire for the head coaching position were bleak. Very few coaches around the country with a great track record had any interest in the job, including Super Bowl-winning head coach Jon Gruden, who was rumored to have been interested in the job every single time the job was open in the 2010s but never took it. Fulmer ultimately hired Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt.
Jeremy Pruitt
At the time of Jeremy Pruitt’s hire, most people didn’t know what to expect. He was a respected assistant who had been on staff with 5 national championship teams at both Florida State and Alabama, but he didn’t have any head coaching experience. Most Vol fans and media outlets weren’t sure he would work out, but at the same time they recognized he was the best option at this point. Pruitt showed a ton of promise by year two and appeared to be a great hire. The 2019 team started the year 2-5 but finished the year strong, with a six-game winning streak to end up at 8-5.
Pruitt was also recruiting extremely well (as we later learned why). By the spring of 2020, Tennessee was ranked in the top 5 in the country for the 2021 recruiting classes, and it seemed that bright years were on the horizon. The hype for Tennessee entering the 2020 football season was high, as they were ranked 16th in the preseason rankings. Most people did not think they would win the SEC East, but many experts thought that they would finish third in the division and at least compete with Florida and Georgia. Unfortunately, yet again Tennessee would completely implode.
They went into halftime in the third game of the season ranked 14th in the country and up 21-20 against 3rd ranked Georgia, appearing to have a real chance of making a statement win and entering the Top 10. But in the second half, the wheels fell off and remained off for the rest of the season. They lost that game 44-21, getting shut out in the second half, and were only able to beat a winless Vanderbilt the rest of the season. Tennessee finished 3-7 on the year, losing the remaining 7 games by double digits, and was even blown out by a less-than-stellar Kentucky team.
Recruiting Violations
Yet again, the hopes of Tennessee returning as a top program in the SEC were fading. To make matters worse, more and more recruits had decommitted during the season, as rumors of recruiting violations began to develop. By year’s end, it was clear that the Board of Trustees wanted yet another coach fired. At the same time, Tennessee began self-reporting serious recruiting violations.
As of now, there appears to be upwards of 50 recruiting violations, which include the football program literally having a “bagman” who was paying recruits in the McDonald’s parking lot with money inside fast-food bags. This is both hilarious and unbelievable. If there was ever an easy way to get caught paying players, it would be in a fast-food parking lot. Tennessee wasn’t even trying to hide it, and as many analysts have jokingly pointed out, the team also wasn’t winning much. If you are going to cheat so much and so obviously, at least do well enough to win some games. The NCAA will now look much further into these violations, and some severe penalties can be expected.
What angered many outside of the program, though, is the real reason Tennessee reported these violations. It had nothing to do with being moral, but everything to do with finding a reason to fire Pruitt for cause, voiding his buyout clause. Whether Pruitt was deeply involved, or it was all a big conspiracy to have him fired – it’s yet to be determined – everyone seems to have an opinion on the matter. I personally have a hard time believing Pruitt was completely oblivious to the cheating if it was as blatant as alleged.
Regardless, Tennessee was able to fire Pruitt and nine others without paying any buyout clauses and move onto a new coach, as was their goal all along. Fulmer also stepped down as AD, as his time as AD had involved much more chaos than the administration and the Board of Trustees had ever anticipated. To add even more confusion to an already chaotic situation, Fulmer made some questionable remarks during his press conference announcing Pruitt’s firing. Fulmer mentioned how he believed Tennessee’s future was bright because the recruiting was so good. I have no idea what Fulmer thought he was accomplishing with that statement. The reason the recruiting was great was because they were paying players, and that’s the reason he was supposedly firing Pruitt.
Fulmer’s statement made it clear to me. Tennessee was admitting, possibly by accident, they weren’t upset about how players were recruited to the school, and instead had looked for a reason to fire a struggling coach without paying him his multi-million dollar contract. Make no mistake – Pruitt was fired for not winning enough games; had he been winning 9-11 games a year, Tennessee would not have wanted knowledge of the violations to get out.
Starting from Scratch… Again
With both Fulmer and Pruitt gone, Tennessee had cleaned house and yet again had to hire both another AD and another head coach for the school. But, for the first time since 2008 when everything started going downhill, I think Tennessee finally made a good decision in their hiring. On January 21, 2021, Tennessee named Danny White as Athletic Director. White had been the AD at Central Florida fr0m 2015-21 and had overseen the hiring of Scott Frost, who led the team to an undefeated season and a Peach Bowl victory over Auburn in 2017. The same Central Florida who was winless just two years earlier. White, only in his early 40s, saw a ton of success at UCF, especially with the football program (and that’s the sport Tennessee truly cares about and clearly needs the most help with), but White has his work cut out for him.
His most important job as AD was to find the right head football coach and figure out a way to turn this disaster around. White has since hired the same head coach he had last season at UCF, Josh Heupel, on January 27th. Heupel is not a name that many Tennessee fans are extremely excited about, and I believe most people have the feeling he very well may not work out long term.
Heupel’s teams got progressively worse while at UCF. In 2018, he inherited a team that had gone undefeated a year prior under Scott Frost. After a 12-1 season in his first year, UCF recorded a 10-3 in 2019, and finished 6-4 in 2020. While I’m not sure that this was a home-run hire by any means, Tennessee was low on options. Not many people seem to have any interest in the job. Who can blame them? Heupel has a good offensive mind, and while his record got worse each year at UCF, he still had good teams. The 2020 6-4 team lost three of those games by a single possession and easily could have gone 8-2 or 9-1. Heupel is a guy that White has worked with in the past, and by the quick hire, clearly is a man White has faith in to turn things around.
What’s Next for Tennessee?
Surely, Tennessee has officially hit rock bottom (although the severity of any NCAA sanctions may determine how long the program stays there), and the healing can begin. But several things are crucial for fans, students, administration, and maybe most importantly, the Board of Trustees to understand. First and foremost, this is no longer an elite college football program, and far from it. That is not to say it can’t be one again someday, but people within the football program and University have to stop thinking of this team like Georgia or Florida and start thinking along the lines like Kentucky or Missouri. They are going to have some pretty serious sanctions down the road, and the next few years, like many in the last decade or so, will probably see a lot of losses.
The school needs to realize Heupel will have struggles. In two or three years, he could have a seven- or eight-win season and then turn around and have a four-win season. Unlike what we’ve seen in the past with this program, though, THEY CAN’T FIRE HIM AFTER ONE BAD SEASON. If Heupel is just brutal and they are barely winning three games per year over the next 3 seasons, then he probably does need to be fired. But this program needs to give its coach more than a few seasons to see if Heupel can turn this program into one that is at least consistent. Tennessee is along the lines of Kentucky and Missouri for now, but they don’t have to stay at that level.
If Heupel is given somewhere from five to ten years with the program and can start to show some consistency for the next few, where they are winning six to nine games every season, I believe this program can turn things around. Heupel may not be the option for 20 years, but he needs to be the guy for at least five. He can lead the Vols out of this terrible disarray and help Tennessee endure the NCAA sanctions arriving soon. The hopes to be a Top 10 team is not something that fans or the University need to think about right now. They must find a way to stop being a laughingstock in the conference and develop some consistency with leadership and coaching.
As great a program as Tennessee was for so many years, I truly hope one day they can return to that elite level again. They have one of the best stadiums in the country, are in a great college town, and have some of the best fans you will find. It is left to be determined if Tennessee has truly hit rock bottom, and with sanctions on the way, Tennessee isn’t returning to their elite status anytime soon. Hopefully the administration and Board of Trustees have learned from their past, fans understand the impossible situation this coaching staff faces, and Heupel can navigate this team through the challenges. One thing is certain, Tennessee has a long road ahead.
