As a coach he is head and shoulder above everyone we had from firing Fulmer till Heupel. Some people would argue Kiffin was better than Fulmer by the time he was fired and I agree. The reason many have such hard feelings for Kiffin is he ignited the dumpster fire that led to all of the bad seasons that came after.
It wasn’t just him leaving, but when and how he did it. Dooley was not hired because people thought he was legitimately a world beater who would rebuild us, but because he was available and taking our calls. Kiffin owns a lot of responsibility for that.
Butch Jones may have had a bigger upside than Dooley, and we had a better opportunity to get it right during that hiring, but we still had slid to new depths under him by his final season. Eventually it became clear that Butch couldn’t improve players and call plays effectively and recruiting was the only thing he had done decently.
By the time we get to Pruitt I think you have to fault the administration more than Kiffin but it’s hard to forget that he started the chain of events.
Some people will argue that the Fulmer firing started it, but Fulmer was slipping big time at that point. Let’s not forget Kiffin had a 7 win season and was competitive in losses in his first year. Had he stayed he would’ve been doing better than Fulmer could have at that point each season, in my opinion. He didn’t stay though.
Many of those people say we deserved the years that followed because we fired the coach who won us a championship. I personally disagree, and remember how Fulmer came into the job and the resources he had at the time. He did great things, but he wasn’t rebuilding anything.