Tennessee Vols completely botched the timing of firing John Currie

The Tennessee Vols may have been right to fire John Currie. But based on reports, the Volunteers completely screwed up the timing of the move.

Like everything else that happened this week, the Tennessee Vols managed to screw up the firing of John Currie. If something can be done wrong by this administration, it will clearly happen.

If Currie is looking for a football coach, it’s generally a bad one. If he finds a good one, the administration manages to mess it up. That appears to have been the case here.

A deal clearly seemed in place for Mike Leach to become the Tennessee Vols football coach late Thursday night. Just look at the reports.

However, Friday morning came, and nothing was official. Then came the news that the administration had fired Currie.

This is just like what happened earlier in the week, when reports from Clay Travis and on Gridiron Now suggested Currie zeroed in on Jeff Brohm, who would have been a great coach, but Chancellor Davenport did not allow him to make the deal he was trying to make. And that messed up the Brohm move.

Look, I’m not saying it was a bad move to fire John Currie. He’s been massively incompetent in handling this whole thing.

But the move to fire him should have come immediately after the Greg Schiano fiasco. Or it should have been in a few months after the coaching search finished.

I say it should have been on Monday. And the Vols should have cut ties with Jimmy Haslam III the same day. Currie and Haslam were clearly trying to backdoor Schiano in on Sunday without the fans having time to nix the hire. They luckily did it anyway.

Then, on top of all this, Haslam’s company is on trial for a fuel rebate scam. And he was implicated in it this week. Should we also point out that his Cleveland Browns are still winless?

All of this was reason to cut ties with Currie and Haslam.

But Currie almost redeemed himself by bringing in Brohm. Then he almost brought in Leach. Those are two home run hires. Both times, though, the administration above him messed up the situation.

Now, Currie been fired just as he was about to stumble into a great hire. So, once again, Tennessee football goes back to the drawing board. They may bring a great coach in eventually. But this has been a disaster.