Butch Jones reminds me of...

[vol-un-tear]

So you would turn down the Kentucky job to stay at Memphis? Or is it the choice of the New Jersey Nets over the UMass Minutemen that you find baffling?

The Derrick Rose ACT thing helped him take the KY job. He screwed Memphis. It is what it is.

 

[volKano]

The hero worship Pearl gets from this fanbase for one fluke Elite Eight run will never cease to baffle me.

He was making the dance yearly. Also, when was the previous elite eight that UT made it too? You can hate all you want but he wasn't that bad of a guy. He did break some rules like having recruits over for dinner and then lied to the NCAA. I would say most people on here have lied to a boss before. It's not like he was paying recruits or supplying his team with women and drugs.

 

[JohnnyBall]

Good lord

 

[wittenvols]

First nameI thought of was jimmy Johnson

 

[crusse10]

Not really. Kiffin was pretty clear from the beginning that our traditions didn't matter to him and his stay here was all business. Pearl pretended like this was his dream destination, which is why so many people here worship him.

I mean as a human being, coach, and recruiter, not just for the time spent with the Tennessee program.

Pearl and Kiffin were spark plugs for a program that wallowed in self-pity and mediocrity. Pearl and Kiffin knew that they needed to make headlines, but the headlines couldn't be made the same way. If Kiffin went to a basketball game and took his shirt off, it wouldn't have had the same affect as it did for Pearl.

They are both willing to ruffle any feathers necessary to make their teams better, and I respect the hell out of both of them because of it. I thought Kiffin was just what Tennessee needed then and I say the exact same thing for Pearl. If Pearl didn't lie about the infraction, he would still be our coach. If Carroll didn't take the Seahawks job, Kiffin would still be our coach, and our programs would have continued upswings because of them.

You may dislike one or both for what they did that found themselves in other professions, but for what they did from the day they walked on campus, you can't honestly tell me that they weren't media workers that brought the spotlight back to stale Tennessee programs. Tennessee was suddenly exciting. Tennessee was suddenly a program you had to look at. Tennessee was marquee.