I posted some of this on another forum, but I want to weigh in with it here as well.
The baseball program here isn't going to be as successful as other teams in this league until the administration decides to devote resources to support the program at the same level other schools in this league are. There are plenty more factors than just a facility. If you want to focus on one thing, that's fine, but it's not the whole story.
The fact is, other schools in this league are spending twice as much (or more) on baseball than Tennessee is and our staff is being asked to be competitive with them anyway.
What areas are they outspending us? Travel, for one. Most teams in the league are using charter flights for trips longer than 3 hours. Ours busses virtually everywhere. They can't fly commercial out of Knoxville because of the size of the travel party. So where other teams are spending an hour on a flight, our team is on a bus for 6 hours. They're actually getting to fly to Missouri this weekend, but only because two sleeper busses couldn't be secured like the last time they went there.
Another area is that UT has decided not to spend the money it costs (about $5-6000 per game) to produce every baseball and softball game for an SEC Network+ stream, instead choosing to devote resources to do a better production for a smaller number of games. UT is one of the only schools choosing to do it this way. Most schools are streaming all of their baseball and softball games.
Our stadium and stadium situation hurt our fan support as much as anything on the field. UT makes it very difficult for a fan to come to a game. There is virtually no parking (although the new garage on the old Stokely site will help some), and once fans get to the gates, they find a stadium with terrible concessions and no atmosphere. You can blame marketing or whatever, but the biggest problem is that fans are used to coming to first-class facilities to watch UT games. They get that at Neyland, Thompson-Boling, Regal Soccer Stadium and Lee Softball Stadium, but they get the exact opposite at LNS. On the days we do draw a decent crowd, the amenities like restrooms and concessions are completely overwhelmed. Not solely because of mismanagement, but because the facilities lack the ability to serve that many people in a timely fashion.
There are a half-dozen other examples I can cite, but those are a couple of the big ones. None of these issues are the single reason UT baseball is not succeeding, but as part of the full picture, it's tough to compete.
The bottom line is this. If you want to blame Dave Serrano for the team underperforming, that's fine, that's your right. There are certainly numbers that support that position and I won't dispute that at all. But if you think that just hiring a new coach is going to change everything, then you're wrong. You're free to disagree with that, but it's the truth.
The best we can hope for out of the program with the current level of investment is middle of the pack. True, we're not currently achieving even that. But this is a deeper problem than just getting rid of a coach with a proven track record.
Rod Delmonico was an abrasive jerk, but he was an above-average coach that was able to be successful until other programs started investing in baseball like UT was doing in the 90s. As other programs rose, ours fell because we didn't match the new investments. We fell further behind and dumped Rod. Hired Todd Raleigh on the cheap and let the program fall even more while spending even less on it. They promised Serrano additional investments to get him to come here and he made less in his first few years here than he was making at Fullerton to help make those investments a reality. They never came and now we are where we are.
You can label all of this as "excuses" if you want, but they're the realities that Serrano is working with. They are the same realities that the next coach will deal with, whether that's next year or in five years.
