Tennessee football: Five potential concerns over Vols hiring DL coach Jimmy Brumbaugh

3. Connections to Maryland and DJ Durkin

We all know what happened to the Maryland Terrapins in the offseason after 2017 and before 2018, the two years Jimmy Brumbaugh spent there. Offensive lineman Jordan McNair collapsed on the field and tragically died, and that opened up a revelation of gross mismanagement by the conditioning staff that resulted in Durkin getting suspended and then fired.

Brumbaugh was part of that, and he stayed with Matt Canada as Canada tried to hold everything together while serving as an interim coach in 2018. Now, Brumbaugh was not coaching offensive linemen, and he certainly wasn’t part of the trainers staff. So he literally has nothing to do with what happened to McNair.That doesn’t mean that he is absolved of the culture that was built.

Based on this ESPN report that came out just before the 2018 season began, the entire culture was toxic at that time. Beyond that, Brumbaugh does have history as a strength coach. He served in that role at East Mississippi Community College, or Last Chance U, in 2012, and he did it as an assistant strength coach with the LSU Tigers in 2006 and 2007.

Because of that, you might question why he didn’t know better about the ineffectiveness of that toxic culture. Look, Brumbaugh was an assistant. And we have to be fair to him and say he had relatively little power. But this is a major question, and Tennessee football has to hope that nothing more comes out of this. If anything, this could hurt recruiting.