I challenge your points. First, you think fans at every major college have been thrilled with all their coaching hires over the year? Please. Fans don't like a lot of hires--haven't liked a lot of hires. But in no instance that I know of, as there ever been the bizarre fan revolt as we had. (And of course it was made worse when clowns in the legislature joined in without knowing anything.) Second, and it's a corollary of my first point, athletic directors never poll fans on their favorites for the next head-coaching job. And why don't they? Because, if they did, there'd be the chaos, confusion and embarrassment that engulfed our hire--and, make no mistake, it became a major embarrassment. If our AD, when he was ready to hire Dooley, had conducted a straw poll of UT fans to gauge their reaction to the pick, I doubt very much that he'd have gotten majority approval. No matter. Athletic directors make hires, and fans react in different ways, as they always do--some happy or OK with the pick, some meh, some displeased---but the pick is accepted, the hire made--and then the fans see how the coach fares over time. That's the way it's always been and surely always will be. People can suggest and speculate that Schiano would have been a terrible coach, but that is just rationalizing the reaction, nothing more. Every hire, every coach, has the potential to be a be a great winner, a woeful loser or something in between. Fulmer thought Pruitt would be brilliant and he turned out just the opposite AND got the program in trouble.
