Published on: December 05, 2012 | Written by: Clay Travis Let's not pretend that Tennessee's coaching search has been anything short of a disaster. Because it has. It's gotten so bad a prominent Tennessee booster just texted me this, "Dave Hart couldn't get laid in a whorehouse with a fist full of hundreds." Athletic director Dave Hart wanted complete control of the UT coaching search. He didn't want a search firm, or a group of advisors, he wanted all the control, all the glory...the complete blame. Hart's decision making ended in a crescendo of failure today, but his poor decisionmaking began before today. First, Hart refused to go all in with the Jon Gruden pursuit despite prominent boosters having wooed Gruden for months. Instead, Hart failed to woo Gruden, fiddled while Knoxville burned, and eventually offered the job to Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy, a coach who interviewed in his Stillwater house and actually picked him up at the airport. Wouldn't this raise a red flag for you? That's like your new high school girlfriend insisting that you take her out to eat at the only restaurant in town where her ex-boyfriend works. It was clear that Gundy just wanted to make Oklahoma State jealous, show that he couldn't be taken for granted. Has any other coach with a job even admitted to interviewing for another job? Yet Gundy, the former quarterback at Oklahoma State who has spent his entire career in town, picks up Dave Hart at the Stillwater airport and then drives them to his house. His house! Wouldn't you feel like maybe you were being used when Gundy talked to you from a lazy boy surrounded by Oklahoma State trophies? Yet Hart still offers the job to Gundy and then also manages to offer the job to Charlie Strong at the same time. (Yes, there was a period of time when many believe that Tennessee had two outstanding offers at the same time. Although, to be fair to Hart the idea of Strong and Gundy as co-head coaches would have been quite the coaching coup). Gundy, as every single person with a working brain knew he would, decided to stay at Oklahoma State and Louisville did exactly what they said they would do -- matched any offer for Charlie Strong. Uh oh. At this point Hart decided he needed to raise his offer to four million dollars and he hopped on a plane flight to Louisville. With, accoreding to Volquest.com, his wife in tow. His wife! What the hell was she going to do? (There are so many inappropriate jokes here, I'll leave them to you). Strong decides to stay at Louisville. Louisville! They can't even fill a 60,000 seat stadium. Hell, Strong himself even said earlier this week that he wishes Louisville fans would be more like Kentucky fans. Yes, the head coach of Louisville wishes his fan base was more like Kentucky football fans. And he chose to stay there rather than come to Tennessee, where even 70,000 fans are willing to show up to see [ddiapos] coach. Earlier tonight a buddy of mine who played at UT called and said, "Louisville! When I was a kid they used to give out free football tickets to Louisville games if you had perfect attendance in elementary school." How bad is it for UT fans? We might as well have put Xander, the buttchugging UT fraternity boy, and his buttchugging attorney in charge of this search. It couldn't possibly have gone any worse. Meanwhile, Larry Fedora, UNC's coach and the only other person that Hart purportedly interviewed, is so blown away by Hart's incompetence that he supposedly won't even take the job now. Which means UT's search has devolved into a comedy pyramid. We're back at square one. Several years ago, we had a big discussion about how major programs in the SEC couldn't completely screw up anymore because the dollars at stake were too substantial. We surmised that complete failure at a major program wasn't possible. Then Tennessee fired Phil Fulmer. Now Tennessee fans expect for the house to catch on fire. We just hope the whole building isn't engulfed in flames. Only, generally, the whole building is engulfed in flames. Is there any other program in America where you could predict the outcome of everything by simply picking the worse option. Fire Phil Fulmer, hire Lane Kiffin. Lie to the NCAA about a BBQ, lose the winningest coach in basketball history. Hell, it's not even really fair to include it because it's the worst of all, but our women's basketball coach even got Alzheimers. Now Cuonzo Martin's basketball teams haven't even broken 40 points in two consecutive games. Bruce Pearl's team once scored 121 in an NCAA tournament game. 121! So I guess the coaching disaster shouldn't have come as a surprise. I mean, hell, it's not like UT is one of the eight winningest programs of all time, with an athletic department bringing in over $100 million a year, in a rapidly growing state, with a stadium that seats over 100,000 people, and the best facilities in the SEC. Wait. All of these things are true? I give up. So who are the realistic options at this point? I think the two best possibilities, honestly, are Phil Fulmer and John Chavis bringing back the Tennessee Volunteer family to Knoxville or Bobby Petrino. You either go with the classy former Vols -- Fulmer, Chavis, Tee Martin -- or you go with Bobby Petrino and his shenanigans. I'll break both of these options down for y'all tomorrow. In the meantime, the boosters are about to take control of this wild ride. Remember when Alabama tried to hire Rich Rodriguez and he turned the Tide down? That was the final straw for Alabama fans. They'd finally had enough embarrassment. The big boosters stepped in and said, we're handling it from here. Alabama hired Nick Saban. (Can you imagine what the Saban search would have been like in the Twitter age). I think we're very close to seeing the same thing happen in Knoxville. You can say lots of bad things about rich boosters, but trust me, they can all get laid in a whorehouse with a fist full of hundreds.
Decent read until he wrote Fulmer. Really? Winning-est coach who was lowering his average every season he stuck around.
Was to me. To each there own. It really confirms to me there is a real fight going on between UT and the Boosters. It is big it is real. Strong has verified he was offered. If the boosters have Gruden back on board followed by some resignations so be it. I will be super excited. But it is fantasy land to say Hart and Cheek are on board with Gruden.
It was to me too. If the way he has portrayed the search here is accurate, then my fears about Hart have been realized. Hopefully the boosters make it right. The part about Fulmer is crazy talk. Chavis wouldn't come back here for that.
It's amazing how bad our AD has been since Dickey left. They need to fix it. We are rotting from the inside out.
The thing that caught my eye is about the boosters taking over and comparing it all to when Rich Rod turned down Bama and they ended up getting Saban. Does that sound familiar at all to what's been posted here?
i tend to agree with the OP. he isnt necessarily saying bring back fat Phil...just that we are actually looking that dead in the face. Is it Hart, is it the fact that the way we let phil go publicly and without fan fare and the honor he deserved reguardless of his last couple of seasons, and that has for ever damaged our reputation and percieved "quality". Your guess is as good as mine. But i truely feel that unless we want Phil back or that South Pittsburg HS coach we need to offer Petrino or Tressel. They are the only two coaches in this whole train ride that havent been mentioned by anyone in any media outlet. One likely reason is that no one else is in as crappy of a position as we are. FWIW i have blood family who know the Haslam family and there is no doubt in my mind that Gruden is a dead, not gonna happen situation. Where do we go from here?? Who knows. Kinda venting a little
I thought the article somewhat interesting... Indeed, forget about Gundy and OSU for a second.. because Louisville sure as hell ain't OklaState. If Charlie Strong at f'n LOUISVILLE was offered and decided to stay at Louisville, that says a hell of a lot about Hart. I've been in that kind of scenario before, too.. "No thanks, I'm not gonna go [over there] because the boss is a pain in the ass douchebag.. I'll stay right where I am.. AND for less money, thanks." ..only difference is that Strong managed to stay for equal money.
And when he said: "Wouldn't you feel like maybe you were being used when Gundy talked to you from a lazy boy surrounded by Oklahoma State trophies?" Surrounded by trophies? Implication being that there are a bunch of them? As in, more than 1?
You can argue he lost all credibility a long time ago. Whether it was his piece where he was pretending to be Dooley's pants, or recently when he wrote - with a straight face - that James Franklin had turned down 5 million dollars to stay at Vandy for 3. Actually that James Franklin bit could be any time he mentions James Franklin in a sentence, since it's one time too many.
The part about the boosters coming and taking over is what I liked. Get this done..stop this fiasco!!!
As another poster said "Dooley effed this up by not going to a bowl and effing up the timing". It's going to happen.
