I'm not going to speculate one way or another on that, but if he had moved away from Bergeron for Simcox after year 2, they're in a regional in year three and likely do big things in year four when they had Stewart, AJ, etc. That was the year that they had all the weather stuff and didn't really get outside on the dirt until the third week of the season.
But the most valuable thing Serrano did to elevate the program on his way out was give Currie a long list of things that other schools in the SEC had or were doing that Tennessee was not. Most of them were travel, recruiting and other behind-the-scenes things that most people wouldn't see.
I know the context of one of those conversations was "You can fire me for my record, I can't argue with you on that, but if you don't support the next guy with X,Y, and Z, he's going to fail too." And he was right. The financial resources that Dave Hart allocated to baseball were embarrassing. He tried to neuter the softball program the same way, but was shut down by Title IX watchdogs. People can roll their eyes if they want, but I'm still mildly impressed that Serrano accomplished even what he did with the BS he had to put up with from Hart.
Currie deserves every bit of the ridicule he gets from fans for the football hire debacle (and he probably deserved to be fired over it), but he made huge strides with the rest of the department in his short time. He set up Fulmer for success by taking a completely fresh look at the resources and budgets for all the "other" sports beyond football and basketball.
