...sorry for the length. This is part of an article that may answer some questions you have. It's from TOS.
The Thornton Center, as most know, is the building that houses all the academic support systems for the athletic department. It was built in the mid-90's and was completely financed by athletic department funds, every penny of it.
That was a tremendous boon for Tennessee athletes when it was built, just state-of-the-art. It was a showpiece and one of the best of its kind in the country.
Now, the changes that came about were a result of mistakes that were made with oversight and the athletic department itself was certainly culpable in some of that. Because of some irregularities that occurred the decision was made to take the oversight of the Thornton Center completely away from the athletic department and turn it over to the academic side of the university.
A lady named Ruth Darling oversaw that transition, and what happened after that was that the athletic department lost all control over, and input into the Thornton Center from that point forward.
As I'm well meaning as I'm sure the academic authorities were, it had a debilitating effect on the athletic department. The academic department, which again I'm sure had good intentions, just didn't have the same motivation to make sure those athletes were there studying and getting better in the classroom.
I can't stress how huge of a problem it was in helping the young men and women that the whole system was put in place for originally.
One of the results of this shift was that no one from the athletic side could have any involvement with the academic side. What I mean by that is that a coach couldn't even pick up the phone and call a tutor, or a professor, and find out what was happening with a player.
I've heard all these concerns expressed about how you don't want a coach calling and putting pressure on a professor. There are a couple of key things on that, but the first one is, I was a college assistant for over 20 years, I don't know of any assistant coach who would want to put himself in a position where he was trying to put pressure on a tenured--that's a key word--faculty member.
Generally, as a coach, all you want to know is if the player you're worried about is going to class. I want to know if he needs some help, if he's doing what he's supposed to do with a tutor. As a coach, you're not interested--or no one I ever knew was--in putting pressure on a professor, you're interested maybe in putting pressure on the player though if he needs it, and the current set up makes it difficult to do that.
The other thing is, if you're a tenured professor at the University of Tennessee why in the world would you worry about any coach in athletics putting pressure on you. They can't fire you.
From that point up until today the athletic department has had zero input into anything to do with the Thornton Center, and in my opinion it's greatly affected how you're able to monitor your players and keep up with what's happening with them in the classroom.
In my time there as a coach I had the ability to find out from Carmen Tegano, at that time, and tutors how a player was doing. It's not something you do to 'put pressure' on a professor, that's ridiculous in my opinion, it's something you want to do so you can get a kid more help if he needs it.
Make no mistake, the athletic department made some mistakes of its own to put themselves in a position where they lost the authority to oversee the Thornton Center. However, I think the response was heavy-handed and irresponsible and we're still paying the price for it in our athletic programs. You don't throw the baby out with the bath-water as the old saying goes, and I think that's what we did in this case.
That whole situation there isn't something that gets a lot of attention, but it's been very, very damaging.
