I agree with everything you have posted. Again, the sad state of our program is my point. We have gone from wins and losses to hoping we can score points and hang with the big boys. How did we let it get to this point? It really makes me sad and mad at the same time.
GBO!!
Tolerance got us here. Tolerance for sub-par performance from HC's and assistants. For example, Jones should have been fired after year 3. Nine wins is a "good" result but not for a roster and team that could have easily won 11 and the East. But he was "tolerated" because who fires a coach that wins 9 games? Well, the next two years taught us. He squandered one of UT's most talented rosters then was exposed in that last year.
It started after the NC really. Fulmer in a big way was more fortunate than good. Cut was a strong personality and great OC. He appears to have been the "oil" that made the engine work because when he left... it stopped working. When he returned, it started working... when he left again... it stopped working again.
Fulmer tolerated sub-par assistants and undisciplined players too much. Performance declined and wins eventually followed. The game evolved and Fulmer stubbornly refused to change with it. Recruiting slipped overall but particularly on both sides of the line of scrimmage. By the time Kiffin took over, both the DL and OL were patchwork. Fulmer was rightly fired.
Kiffin did his thing which probably would have set UT back even if a good replacement had been hired. He's pond scum and was disloyal to a school that gave him a big time shot after his Raiders embarrassment. The "blessing" was that his utter disrespect for UT's program and traditions were leading him to cheat in recruiting and try to make the Vols the UT Trojans East.
Dooley was hired with his pedigree. I still have sympathy for him in a way. He was a mediocre coach hired into a job that needed a superstar. He was broken within two years. Then he got stupid with Sunseri when there was actually a chance he could have saved himself with the O he had in that last year. Even a moderately "bad" D would have yielded 7 or 8 wins.
The Jones hire was probably the worst decision to this point (only to be worsted by the Pruitt hire). Even worse than promoting Sanders. Jones was more used car salesman than football coach. But he thought of himself as a genius who was going to revolutionize football in the SEC with his quick 285 lb OL's. He was saved from immediate failure by a convergence of some great instate homer recruits and legacy recruits. Those players helped him put together some very talented classes. He was never a good coach. He was never an honest guy or good manager/leader of the players. He underperformed the roster talent every year... and badly in Dobbs' last year. If he had been fired after year 3... then next coach would have been set up great. He wasn't. By the time he was fired the roster was as bad or worse than when he arrived.
Pruitt is a good teacher of the game. He's probably a pretty good DC. But what he did well to perform in those jobs didn't translate at all to being a HC. He was a disaster and doesn't have the ability to pull all the parts together. To make it worse, he shared Fulmer's "old school" philosophy of play and was determined to make it work in an era of CFB where high octane offenses are required. He completely mismanaged the QB position from the day he arrived. Both he and Jones sacrificed their jobs believing that what JG apparently does in practice would have to translate to games... and it never did. Ultimately, either the job was just way too big for Pruitt... or he was complicit in recruiting violations.
So... here we are. We have a roster with talent but also holes. We have a looming NCAA problem. We have a job too high risk for guys who see their star rising immediately. Essentially we are back where we were when Dooley was hired. He too was thought to be an up and comer that UT hired maybe 3 years before he really hit his peak.
Hopefully it works this time.
