All for Tennessee
Fansided

Tennessee Vols A.D. John Currie has his first major test: Replacing Dave Serrano

By Caleb Calhoun

Sep 12, 2015; Knoxville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers mascot carries the flag through the fans during Vol Walk prior to the game against the Oklahoma Sooners at Neyland Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 12, 2015; Knoxville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers mascot carries the flag through the fans during Vol Walk prior to the game against the Oklahoma Sooners at Neyland Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports /
facebooktwitterreddit

Tennessee Vols baseball coach Dave Serrano will resign at the end of the year. That gives Volunteers Athletic Director John Currie his first major test.

Well that didn’t take long. Less than three months into his tenure as Tennessee Vols athletic director, John Currie has a decision to make for one of the major sports.

He had already fired men’s tennis coach Sam Winterbotham, but baseball is a much bigger deal than tennis. And baseball coach Dave Serrano is set to step down at the end of the season.

So now, Currie gets to face his first big decision.

Sure, baseball isn’t football, basketball, or even women’s basketball. But it still does draw fan interest, especially when the team is good.

And there has been a lack of success ever since Mike Hamilton fired Rod Delmonico at the end of the 2007 season.

By the way, if you don’t think the baseball hire is important, replacing Delmonico with Todd Raleigh is one of the Top 5 dumbest decisions Hamilton made while Tennessee Vols athletic director. And he made a lot of dumb decisions.

So Currie has a real test here.

Serrano wasn’t a bad hire when Joan Cronan brought him in. After all, he had the resume with major success at two smaller schools out west.

But he was never able to compete in the SEC.

Now it’s on Currie to get the right hire this time. Currie’s track record in hiring coaches is a mixed bag to be nice, so there’s no reason to put a lot of faith in him here.

But even if you don’t care about baseball, his decision will at least provide a glimpse into how he’ll go about hiring coaches and what he takes into account.

And that will probably be what we can expect when he makes other hires in major sports within the Tennessee Vols athletic program.

So pay attention to his first real test.

Home/Vols Baseball