Tennessee football: Vols accept losing with Butch Jones as Florida fires McElwain

While the Volunteers administration refuse to move on Tennessee football head coach Butch Jones, the Florida Gators have fired Jim McElwain.

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Since Butch Jones took over as head coach of the Tennessee football program, the Florida Gators have now fired two head coaches. Those coaches went a combined 4-1 against Jones while with Florida. One of them won the SEC East twice while there, and another had a 12-win season and a Top 10 finish.

But neither lasted more than four years. Yet somehow, Jones, who is supposed to be at a program that considers itself on the same level of Florida, is still in Knoxville with none of those accomplishments. And he’s overseeing a 3-5 team this year. Oh, and this is the real kicker…he lost to both coaches again.

Jim McElwain was still at Florida when he managed to stumble to defeat against Jones, and Will Muschamp, the previous coach, beat him with the South Carolina Gamecocks.

But while Florida is done with McElwain and Muschamp, John Currie is riding it out with Tennessee. This is the report Jimmy Hyams released on Twitter today.

Mike Griffith of SEC Country followed that up with a report that Vols’ officials are discussing Jones’s future. But this is the issue.

What the heck is there to discuss? Jones has done some good things, but by no measure has he earned another week as Tennessee football’s head coach. By every standard possible, in his fifth year, it’s obvious he should be fired. But the administration seems to be constantly dragging its feet.

If you are searching for any reason as to why the Vols’ rivals have dominated them this century, look no further than these reports. As other programs constantly look to get better, Tennessee football settles. And they keep settling.

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That, my friends, is why the program fell apart a few years ago. The administration continues to blunder its way through decisions, they make cheap, bad hires, and now they’re looking for reasons to avoid having to pay another buyout.

Meanwhile, Florida, who’s athletic budget is smaller than Tennessee’s, didn’t care. The Gators just dropped the hammer on another head coach. And on top of that, according this ESPN report, they’re also trying to force him to take less in his buyout due to his unsubstantiated death threat claims last week.

Simply put, one of these programs has guts. They’re not afraid to cut bait and admit a wrong decision. And they’ll fight like hell for what’s best for their program.

Meanwhile, Tennessee will settle for a 9-win coach at best on the cheap. But they’ll fire their best coach in basketball history because they refuse to fight the NCAA over minor infractions. The Vols constantly roll over at the expense of everybody involved with the program.

And they’re doing it again. It’s beyond ridiculous.

By the way, don’t give me the excuse that John Currie just doesn’t want to fire Butch Jones midseason. He had no reservations about Tennessee football firing Phillip Fulmer back in 2008  during the middle of the season.

Fulmer, by the way, was a Hall of Fame coach who was just a year removed from a 10-win season and an SEC East title, two things Butch Jones has never gotten. But Currie, an assistant in the department at the time, was instrumental in his firing in 2008 according to a report from Jimmy Hyams this summer.

So if that’s the case, why isn’t Jones worth firing now? In what stratosphere has Jones earned more of a right to stay on the job than Fulmer had in 2008? He’s had none.

And this is what’s wrong with the Tennessee football program. It’s what’s wrong with the entire athletic department. The last time the Vols overpaid for a football staff, they did it in 2009 under the leadership of a guy who never was the head coach of a college football team at the time in Lane Kiffin.

Right after that, they went cheap twice. Then they changed athletic directors and sabotaged their first cheap hire. After Dave Hart sabotaged Derek Dooley, he replaced him with another cheap hire in Butch Jones. And that’s why the Vols are where they are. But it seems like Currie, who was bold enough to push for firing a Hall of Fame coach in 2008, isn’t bold enough to push for firing Jones.

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Florida now has the leg up in the coaching search. They will likely find a superstar guy that could have been at Tennessee. He’ll be an offensive genius who utilizes all the speed in the Sunshine State. And Currie will go back to tweeting about soccer games and whatever else to ask for fan support. Because he’s part of a system that has made Tennessee football a loser program.