Heupel (not going) to Penn St

It did not seem like the Clawfense was in any way going to come to fruition. Pretty well known he didn’t get along with the rest of the staff. Fulmer didn’t even let him know he’d been fired.

 

Fulmer:
Two losing seasons out of 16
.74 win %
NC
CF-HOF
11 9+ winning seasons
3 8 win seasons
2 losing 5 win seasons fired after the second one.

and 4-0 as interim.

Majors:

Tthe famed halfback had 16 seasons and was .65 @UT and .57 as a HC overall. I doubt he wins a NC without Dorsett.

If he wasn't the local hero halfback he would have been fired early.

In his defense if he had not returned to Pitt he might have gotten into the CF-HOF as a coach. But the return was a disaster and dropped him below the acceptable threshold.

3 total losing seasons.
4–7 1977
5–6 1980
5–6 1988 Year 11
Never fired for this!

3 of his first five years:
5–5–1 1978
7–5 1979
8–4 his BEST of the five in year 1981

Next he had seasons
6–5–1 1982
7–4–1 1984
7–5 1986

9 mediocre to losing seasons out of 16

Fulmer came in and spoiled us. An above average coach who was a top notch recruiter. He was doomed by his own success.

 

I was talking about the firing of Fulmer and the idea that we were better off keeping him.

But if we are going there, who hired Fulmer, Cutcliffe, and Chavis? You must be related to Fulmer if you feel the need to run down anything Majors did this much. He should be in the hall of fame as a coach. I have no reason to run down either’s accomplishments. It was more than likely time for both of them to go when they did. Fulmer was a great recruiter as an assistant and head coach and Johnny was a great identifier of coaching and player talent who could’ve probably had Bear Bryant level success if he had coached more in the era without scholarship limits. The real transformation probably had as much do with cutcliffe becoming the oc and play caller as any other change.

 

Fulmer & Co.'s mix of laziness/arrogance is the reason all those schools began out recruiting Tennessee.

 

Fulmer without Cutcliffe was a painfully average coach. 05-08 in particular proved as much.

 

It always seemed to me Fulmer was bridging a couple of eras, he was from the previous one where you had more guys who came up the ladder at their alma mater and were there for 30 years or whatever, then you had the rise of all these new younger workaholic mercenary guys like Saban & Meyer who had a different mentality and he just couldn’t keep up with them

 

Stop and think for just a minute. Who was the OC calling those plays?

Hot (and unpopular) take - the program would have been better served long term had Fulmer taken the Arkansas job with Majors promoting Cut to OC and Cut eventually succeeding Majors.

 

How many years until we are past Fulmer conversations? Or is it until we win hardware again?

 

Ding ding ding

 

When the Fulmer supporters are dead. They are a loyal bunch.

 

The haters are pretty staunch too

 

This is not a bad way to look at it. He could not (or did not start soon enough) make the transition from old school to new school required to succeed. Let's face it, we also had incompetent leadership above the HFC. Saban was a talented CEO. Fulmer was not, he was more of a Senior VP. He needed strong competent senior leadership above him.

 

So, never?

 

I never hated JM. But he will not be a HOF coach because of his win percentage. I said had he not returned to Pitt he probably would be in HOF as a coach. He was robbed of the Heisman.

My point which I failed to actually make is that CJH has been more successful in his first 5 years than CJM was. Should we give Heupel 16 years like we did Majors and Fulmer? I dont thinks so. I think Fulmer was fired too soon. But that is hindsight. I understand that since Majors was a legend he got a lot of leeway. Also, he would probably not have been fired when he was if he had not gone in and pushed Dickey.

Maybe we still win a NC with him but I doubt it. Johnny ball was too conservative on offense in many games. For me it was inexplicable how we could be wide open say against Miami in 86 and go old school against Bama in 91 running all day,leaning on defense, trading punts and FGs when you had Morgan,Harper and Pickens. They were having an awesome season except in that game. IMHO, Majors tried to play it close to the vest because of the name of the team on the other side and he choked.

Now are we going to allow Heupel to have a couple of 5-6 seasons like Majors and Fulmer or are we going to James Franklin him for mediocre but winning records? Pedo St is in a pickle now and have been turned down by multiple coaches.

Last points. If we fire Heupel for a crappy record thats understandable but regardless of the reason, IMO, we better have the next hire in the bag before the firing. If not we will repeat the crap after Fulmer and the current issue at Pedo. We better get our Billionaires to pony up for a Kiffin/Saban style hire with the highest salary per year offered to a proven coach. And currently we better join the lawsuit when the NIL/Deloitte scheme gets its Sherman act challenge. I dont trust the CFB powers that be. They will tell Deloitte what to do behind the scenes. They will screw UT on NIL and let Bama skate if the scheme is unchallenged. Then DW needs to be in the donors ears to make sure we have LSU/OSU/Texas type NIL money. If we are not working these angles it will not matter if its CJH or someone else on the sideline.

 

Fulmer lost his Joker when Suprrier went to the NFL. And add that in with complacency (or did it cause it?) and you get 02-08.

 

Later in my career, if I knew I was gonna make bank no matter how hard I worked (or if I worked), most of us would ease off.

I, personally think we have allowed ourselves to be contractually trapped. There is little, to no incentive, to win when you know you'll make millions if you don't.

 

Let's not forget, it was Fulmer who evaluated and hired Pruitt.

 

If I knew a million fans wanted to win and my players wanted to win and my assistant coaches needed to be successful to have good careers, I would like to think I would be all in.

 

$40-$50m severance package might make you rethink your "all in".

 

The important thing is that Fulmer had a losing record against every coach that was at even a half decent SEC school when he was let go. He was never bouncing back. Saban, Meyer, and Spurrier means you start the season with three losses and Richt was going to beat you 80% of the time. And the draws we were getting for our SEC West opponents those next few years were brutal. He’d have struggled to find seven wins.