Jimmy Haslam’s involvement with the Tennessee football program is reason enough to believe that the Volunteers could botch their coaching situation.
Tennessee football fans are counting down the days before Butch Jones’s firing. The best situation for them is the Vols fire Jones. Then their prominent boosters pony up a ton of money to pay Jones’s buyout and allow John Currie to get a big name to Knoxville.
The most prominent name among the boosters is always Jimmy Haslam III, the CEO of Pilot Flying J truck stop chains and owner of the Cleveland Browns. It makes the most sense.
With his brother as governor of Tennessee and as an NFL owner, Haslam’s name would naturally be the most prominent. With Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway recently buying 38 percent stake in Haslam’s company, he should also have the money to break the bank for the Vols.
However, anybody who has followed Haslam knows his involvement can only hurt the Tennessee football program. We can point to his countless issues as a businessman alone. After all, he simply runs a company that’s the result of a joint venture that includes the company his father started, not him.
On top of that, in perfect timing, the AP recently dropped a report that the Pilot Flying J board was paying ex-staffers’ legal bills in a diesel fuel rebate scam that became public in 2013. So we can point to Haslam’s failures there, even if he’s not personally implicated in the charges. And remember the reports from the summer that year of the company being billions of dollars in debt? His business record alone is proof the Vols could botch their coaching moves.
But let’s mainly focus on his failure in the sports world. Haslam is the owner of the Cleveland Browns.
Let’s just stop right there. Anybody who owns the Browns should haven no involvement in sports whatsoever. As bad as that franchise was before he took over in 2012, it’s only gotten worse since then.
The team is 0-7 now in his fifth year as owner and shows no signs of getting better. It’s 1-22 since the start of 2016!
On top of that, Haslam was on board with the reckless decision to combine Johnny Manziel WITH Josh Gordon, which clearly helped to wreck the franchise.
So why is this all relevant? Well, Haslam has been a longtime booster for the Tennessee football program.
However, that hasn’t helped the Vols make the right coaching hire to this point. They overspent on Lane Kiffin and his staff in 2009. Then after a string of rejections in 2010, they settled for the Louisiana Tech coach with a losing record. We’re obviously talking about Derek Dooley.
And in 2013, Butch Jones was Tennessee’s third choice. They weren’t able to lure Jon Gruden then.
Now, Tennessee football is likely to be on the hunt for another coach very soon. And this time, Haslam’s involvement could be greater than ever.
Don’t forget Jimmy Hyams’s article on Gridiron Report earlier this year noting that Haslam, a member of the A.D. search committee, was reportedly the guy who pushed for John Currie.
So there’s no point pretending that Currie’s decisions aren’t directly related to what Haslam wants, if those reports are true and he wants to be involved. And that spells major trouble for Tennessee football. To this point, his sports decisions have been failures.
And already, it looks like he’s helping the Vols botch this hire. After all, what are they waiting for when it comes to firing Butch Jones? There is nothing he can do to save himself. But Currie is dragging his feet. Given the incompetent moves of the administration in the past, you have to wonder if Haslam is involved in this one. Time will tell, but it looks ugly right now.