I don’t think they exist. They just went through an absolute nightmare of hiring process that Fat Phil backstabbed the AD which he has done before and he hired a dummy in Pruitt that he can control.
Not to mention UF, UGA and even USCjr and Mizzou have won the east more recently than the Vols.
Fulmer had NOTHING to do with the firing of Currie. Currie's own incompetence( at ISU, he fired the men's basketball coach that went to SC and began kicking ass in the SEC. Your's is the most recent if I am not mistaken. The guy was and is good. That is Currie.
What we had at UT was one puppeteer, the BILLIONAIRE donor owner of the Cleveland Browns Jimmy Haslam( the WORST team in the NFL )imposing his will upon the University of Tennessee along with his brother Bill, the governor of the state and their donor pals over the last 10 years and he was doing it again. . Currie was his man. Greg Schiano was his hand picked coach. Even though Schaino had NO SEC experience, his coaching record was worse than Lane Kiffrat or Botch Jones and of course, the story of how he supposedly told Paterno and the PSU A/D about the little boy rapist and Paterno and/or the A/D did nothing..
The latter blew up when some state politicians got involved. But basically it was MILLIONS of UT fans and the "Other side" boosters who rose up and said HELL FRIKKIN' NO. WE ARE SICK OF HAVING THESE PATHETIC LOSER COACHES IMPOSED ON US WHO ARE NOT SEC EXPERIENCED".
After Currie disobeyed the University President and flew off to meet with some coach when he was supposed to be in Knoxville trying to straighten the Fluster Cluck out, she fired his incompetent ass and hired Fulmer to be the new A/D. UT had not had an A/D with Tennessee coaching experience since Doug Dickey retired.
Fulmer calmed everything down and hired one of Saban's top men, his N/C winning A/D and that is that. How Pruitt does is something for the future to decide. Your University took a gamble with a Saban OC and it didn't end well. So just having the Saban association isn't a guaranteed success.
But most high school coaches are better than the pathetic coach we had.
Now you can believe what you want to. But the supposed "Back stabbing" by Fulmer never happened. Johnny Majors got in Doug Dickey's face, demanding a contract extension right after getting out of the hospital after a heart attack. Dickey told him it would have to wait until the end of the season. Majors told him HELL NO, You will do it now. Dickey told him that he would be allowed to finish the season, but it would be his last. That IS it. Majors, a paranoid, mediocre coach did himself in. Had he not been a UT "hero". His sorry ass would have been fired a whole lot earlier. 71% of all his SEC victories came against the bottom feeders - Ole Miss, Vandy, & Kentucky. The ONLY other SEC team he had a winning record against was LSU at 2-1-1. He got an SECC in 1985 solely because Florida was on probation for the crap Charlie Pell pulled( Johnny lost at home lost to Galen Hall. Only loss that year)
Major's arrogance got his ass fired. Fulmer had managed the team very well in his absence and proved to be a very good( except against Florida) coach. Had we the old set up where the two teams played home and away every 6 years, he would have had far more SECCs. Spurrier was just a better field general while at Florida. At S/C, he got his ass kicked.
Now I expect mocking and being told I am full of $&it. Don't care.
But that is how it came down. Not exactly verbatim, but close enough.
You got a new coach and a bunch of new assistants. Same with us. Georgia is now the class of the East with Mizzu, Ky, S/C and even Vandy getting better. East will be tougher to win now than it has been over the last 6 or so years .Mullen has a lot of things to work out but he has the fortune of being in the 2nd best state as far as producing D-1 talent. Something that Mr Ed didn't take advantage of.
Pruitt doesn't have that luxury. But he has assistants with ties to California, Georgia, Texas, Florida,( the big 4) Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, and most have proven track records of success recruiting 4* and 5* talent.
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Adieu.
