Tennessee football: Vols should tie Phillip Fulmer’s future to Jeremy Pruitt’s
Rumors have named Volunteers athletic director Phillip Fulmer as Jeremy Pruitt’s replacement. His future should be tied to Tennessee football’s head coach.
He finally addressed it. After two weeks of talk that Phillip Fulmer would be open to Jeremy Pruitt being fired and then him potentially taking back over as Tennessee football head coach, Fulmer firmly backed Pruitt on Vol Calls Wednesday night and said the coaching chapter of his career is over, addressing it before even being asked.
Now, you can question how honest he is on that. After all, athletic directors always firmly back head coaches until they don’t. So Fulmer shouldn’t be seen as any different in that regard. But it’s good that he went out of his way to address the coaching rumor.
There is no way Tennessee football should bring Fulmer back as head coach because Pruitt didn’t work out. Fulmer was the one who orchestrated a coup to take the athletic director job after the disaster of a coaching search that John Currie led.
At the time Fulmer took over, Currie was in the process of trying to bring Mike Leach to Knoxville. Fulmer’s actions not only resulted in Currie being gone but it also was what got the Leach hire nixed in the first place and resulted in the Vols landing Pruitt. Fulmer would later say that he took over the position to specifically focus on rebuilding the football program.
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Because of that maneuvering, the former UT coach’s career with the university should be specifically tied to Pruitt”s. It’s one thing to be an athletic director and make a bad hire that you replace with a good one. That happens all the time, and one bad hire is not enough to part ways with somebody.
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It’s a different situation with Fulmer. He orchestrated the takeover of the athletic department, one that was welcomed by all fans. And he was the one, after taking it over, who had determined that Currie made a mistake ever even trying to hire Leach.
If we’re being honest, Currie’s real mistake wasn’t trying to hire Leach. It was having Greg Schiano, Jeff Brohm and Dave Doeren higher on his list than Leach. Had he started his search with Dan Mullen, which he did, and then gone to Mike Gundy before turning to Leach, all of this could have been avoided.
So Fulmer’s maneuvering does not let Currie off the hook. However, it doesn’t change the fact that his moves did result in Tennessee football not hiring a head coach who would have been a sure success in the SEC with the talent he could get.
As a result, it would be wrong in every way to allow Fulmer to take over as head coach again because his hand-picked hire didn’t work out. That would make him the benefit of his own failures, and the Vols already are under the wing of a guy who does that in Jimmy Haslam, a career business failure in every way who still manages to run the university from behind the scenes.
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People benefitting from failures is why Tennessee football fell so hard in the first place. If Pruitt ever has to go, Fulmer should be gone as well. Now, Pruitt probably deserves at least four years to get this right given what he inherited. And he still has a chance to work out. But in no way should Fulmer benefit if Pruitt doesn’t work out.