Curious how many of you would like to see Bruce Pearl as our next basketball coach. I’ll start by raising my hand. Pearl put Tennessee basketball back on the map which was no easy feat. I met him shortly after he was hired in 2005 at the Reebok ABCD camp in Hackensack, New Jersey. O.J. Mayo and Kevin Love were the big prospects there. Tubby Smith, Jim Boeheim and other big name coaches were there sitting in the stands at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Told my wife “look… It’s Bruce Pearl sitting up there by himself.“ We plopped down next to him and started a conversation. He couldn’t have been more engaging and passionate about Tennessee despite having just been hired. I told him how we camped out in line for Kentucky tickets during the early 80s with Dale Ellis, Michael Brooks and crew and how wild Stokely Athletic Center was in those days. He looked me dead in the eye and said “I’m going to do everything in my power to get it back to that.“ I could tell he absolutely meant it. You know what? He did. He actually did one better making poorly-designed, acoustically-challenged, non-intimidating TBA a home court advantage. He also knows how to coach deep into the NCAA tournament. Enough water has passed under the bridge. Bruce Pearl should succeed (the fairly-soon retiring) Rick Barnes. Same salary as Barnes is reasonable.. He’s a VFL. Can’t have much more skin here than he had. He had hot chicks on his boat on the Tennessee River and his wife divorced him and turned gangsta naming her hair salon “Alimony.“. Sounds like a very Tennessee thing.
