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After the past 5 years of unsatisfied, fickle fans, 2 years of diminishing booster & alumni monetary support, and what could possibly go down in history as his worst season on record, yesterday Phillip Fulmer, head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, resigned.
And so.. in many ways.. it’s kinda a melancholy day in Big Orange Country.
True.. Phil has disappointed me this season, but I was never on the “replace the man right this minute or I’ll take my alumni money elsewhere” band wagon (this could be because I don’t have any alumni money.. but you get the point). I believed that there was justification in his statements that he had never had two losing seasons in a row and that he should be given the chance at another year. I even understood that he was working with a new offensive coordinator (who isn’t worth the free blog space to write about) and a set of young players.
However, it’s very hard to deny this:
Take from Here
The steady regression of winning percentages for the last 10 years is staggering when viewed analytically. I mean… I was a student at UT from 1998 – 2002 and then again from 2003 – 2006, and while I remember there not being a year like 1998 and I knew that 2005 had been a horrible year, I never put together the downward trend.
Side note: It’s really hard to be a non-fickle fan when your freshman year of college is the same year your football team wins the first ever BCS National Championship and your women’s basketball team wins another National Championship…. it’s just really really really REALLY hard not to become critical of your college’s sports team performances.
I understand that he likely still has some good coaching left in him and that he could probably still do some good things at UT, I don’t know if he has enough left in him to do GREAT things for the program. I almost believe that should he have chosen to stay, the program, at best, would have been mediocre. I hate to liken UT football to reality TV Teams (think: Project Runway or The Apprentice), but the outcome/similarities are undeniable: No matter how poorly a team or a specific team member executes a given task, quite often, it’s the team captain that has to bear the brunt of the responsibility for failure. Unfortunately, this is one of those times.
I am a little sad to see Phil go. I mean.. we pretty much liked him at our house. We even named our orange tabby cat after him. Phillp Fulmer IS the face of Tennessee football, and to see a legend unceremoniously tossed out the door made me question how much of the UT Athletic Department’s speech about it’s sports teams being a “Tennessee Family” was all fluff.
I’m only one of many who would have prefered to see the whole situation handled with more class. We all knew something was coming and while we figured he wasn’t stepping down by choice, it would have been nice to (A) see him go out on a higher note and (B) not see how emotionally distraught he was about the situation. During his press conference yesterday, Phil struggled to keep it together, and that hurt me. That alone showed me that this was a situation that he had not yet come to ‘terms’ with and after giving 30 years to Tennessee as a player and coach.. Phil deserved better. Phil had “Given His All” for Tennessee and Tennessee gave him the boot. The BIG ORANGE BOOT.
And while sadness and melancholy blanket the peaks and valleys of Rocky Top, one cannot deny that there is a new, dare I say electric feeling in the air. It is the all to familiar sense of excitement and change. A sense that, if chosen wisely and with respect to tradition, Tennessee could have it’s very own rogue, devil-may-care, out-of-the-box-there-was-never-a-box-to-begin-with, innovative football coach that can breath new life into the comatosed Tennessee fans, and push our team back into the Top 10 polls……Where They Belong !
I have nothing but respect for Phillip Fulmer and for what he’s done for the Tennessee football program. I wish him and his family the very best in any new adventure that they embark on.
Nevertheless, I look forward to the fall Saturday where I once again having a reason to stand for 4 quarters of football.
