Tennessee Vols 13 most unlucky breaks between firing, bringing back Phillip Fulmer

9. NCAA conducts a 22-month investigation into Tennessee Vols athletics.

Bruce Pearl’s firing resulted in a three-year show-cause penalty, and it also became part of an NCAA investigation into the Tennessee Vols athletic department. After all, combined with Pearl’s violation, Lane Kiffin committed numerous secondary violations in his one year on Rocky Top.

As a result, this all exploded into a 22-month long investigation that became national news. And to be honest, it was the worst thing that could have happened to the sports program at the time.

This played a huge role in Derek Dooley’s recruiting efforts for the 2011 and 2012 classes. He lost out on a lot of guys in 2011 because of all the distractions. And he was not able to make the headway needed in the summer of 2011 for the 2012 class.

The same thing hurt Cuonzo Martin, who lost out on numerous recruits for Tennessee basketball because of the Bruce Pearl distractions. Simply put, this set everybody back much longer than it should have, and it’s what forced Mike Hamilton out as UT athletic director.

The investigation concluded in August of 2011, but the damage was done. Despite all these secondary violations and nothing to warrant probation, Tennessee Vols athletics was set back a few years. And that alone was a sign of major bad luck because it’s something that never happened while Fulmer was in Knoxville. So while it’s hard to time exactly when this was the worst part of the bad luck, I’m placing it in the summer of 2011, after Pearl was fired and as Dooley was trying to recruit.