Phillip Fulmer for Athletic Director?

Tennessee doesn’t owe him anything. UT has given him plenty, plus made him a very rich man. Regardless, I can’t believe he will be the best possible candidate for the job. He loves UT and knows the program, but an AD needs a lot more than that.

Also, his relationship with Dooley shouldn’t matter too much. Results are what should matter. Dooley should be given a fair opportunity to win, and if he doesn’t then whoever the AD is shouldn’t be be afraid to fire him and move on. The incredible loyalty you mentioned might be more of a liability than an asset.

I changed my mind in the time it took me to write a post. I had to delete it and start over.

I initially voted “Yes,” but I won’t bore you with those rationales. In the course of my argument, I ran into a brick wall of logic. My dad is a small business owner and he likes to tell me that one of his principal rules of hiring is to, “Never hire someone that can’t be fired.”

It was difficult to fire Fulmer once, I’m not sure we could reasonably fire him again, even if he resided over similar or worse mishaps than what we’ve seen under Hamilton.

and a couple that haven’t.

1. The fan base is still divided on Fulmer. This is far from a unifying hire.

2. As Zach mentioned, if you do hire him, you can’t fire him.

3. He doesn’t really have administrative experience. I think we’ve moved beyond the days of the AD office being the retirement spot for old football coaches.

4. He has a track record of being too loyal and hanging on to bad employees too long. I want Dooley to get a fair shake as much as anyone, but this is not what we need.

The advantage is that Fulmer is a VFL and is still loved by a good portion of the fan base. But neither of those things qualify you for the AD position.

Fulmer’s comments about Hamilton in the past have always suggested to me that he’s “not in a good place” and not over what happened to him. I don’t want somebody bitter or vengeful running the show – the job is too important to be driven by emotions like that.

If they do actually hire him, I’ll spin it in 2.5 seconds and be thrilled he’s wearing orange again. Maybe they’ll put him on the advisory committee. But I get the feeling we’re going outside the Tennessee family with this hire.

Urban Meyer has property along the Tennessee River he cleans up every other year or so, so, er, wait…..

“He loves UT” isn’t enough, especially in this day and age. Mike Hamilton loves UT. I do too. That doesn’t mean any of us would make a good AD.

I would prefer that whoever we hire has experience as an athletic director. That may take us “outside the UT family” but this is not the type of job that we should have someone learning as they go. We did that with Hamilton and I thought he was in over his head from day one.

How I’ll vote. I’ve said on several occasions I think he not only deserves to be AD, I think he could be a very succesful one.

He’s familiar with the school, the people, and the fan based. You can’t say he doesn’t know why he was fired, I’m sure he learned that very powerful and public lesson first hand. So he knows intimately what we as fans want.

Having been involved with the school and the team for as long as he has some of what a AD does has got to have rubbed off on him. Ask anyone who has worked for any job for a number of years, you learn what your boss does. Sometimes they need you to fill in for them in fact. But those skills and responsibilities still get pass to you to an extent.

I think he’d bring a lot to the table in terms of known name, UT alumni, and lets face it, Kiffins exit did put lipstick on the pig so to speak regarding Fulmers own exit.

Does he have his faults? Absolutely. But who doesn’t? The other departments know him and worked well with him then, there is little reason to believe they would not work well with him now.

His dedication to the program alone is something no other candidate would have, hands down.

Just my opinion, feel free to eviscerate me as you see fit :D

I don’t think it’s as dramatic as John Pennington makes it out to be here. It’s been 19 years since Johnny Majors was on the UT sideline, and while what happened to him may have been unfortunate, Fulmer was so successful so quickly that everyone got over it. It became convenient for some to side with Majors again when things went south for Fulmer at the end, but I don’t think there’s any sort of “Team Fulmer vs. Team Majors” thing that’s still really going on. I’m 29, so maybe I’m too young to fully appreciate Majors, but I also know that plenty of the anti-Fulmer folks were younger than me and didn’t even know who Majors was.

Hiring Fulmer as AD would disappoint some, sure…but I don’t think it’s this dramatic.

It may not be quite as bad as Pennington makes it sound, but I don’t agree with your statement that “everyone got over it.” It may be due to your age as you say, but I know plenty of people who never forgave Fulmer for how it all went down.

I can assure you that he wouldn’t be the proverbial “bean counter” that everyone is always complaining about… and would most likely be more concerned with simply winning. As far as being unfireable… please see 2008.

I just think everyone is really overthinking this one… I think he’d do a perfectly fine job, but we certainly do better. But with this administration, we could do a WHOLE LOT WORSE.

The guy brought on Dave Clawson…I’m just sayin’…

he didn’t have to hire anyone. What’s the term…“Coach up”? The ability to get a player ready to contribute.
We saw what his staffs did with freshmen when compared to the other elite schools. He would now have to put together staffs that desperately need to bring a few things back to ELITE STATUS. Do you really think he can do that?
Other teams seldom stole the coaches he didn’t steal.

“We’ll see what the feelings are of the people there at the university … I’m not politicking for the job, and I don’t need a job. But if I can help my university, I’m interested in doing that any way I can. … I’m at a good place now in my life, and I’m not bitter about anything that’s happened in the past. It’s about what we do from here, and this is an important time for our university. We all want to be proud of our school again.”

“Some of the things we’ve been through are not what we’ve been about historically, some of the compliance issues we’ve had. I want us to get back to winning championships and to get our respect back from a national standpoint … and stay out of the NCAA news.”

and abstaining. I really can see both sides of this argument.

But if Fulmer was fired because he lost control of football, why would they give him the keys to the whole thing?