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Nov

3

Where does UT go now?

By Matt Wilson | Filed Under Miscellaneous 

It’s over for Phillip Fulmer as UT’s head coach. It wasn’t hard to see coming. It also wasn’t surprising to see that Fulmer agreed to step down (to the tune of around $6 million) so there wouldn’t be a civil war in the program like there was when Johnny Majors was fired.

Nashville author Clay Travis — a lifelong Vols fan — is spending this season with the UT program and is writing a behind the scenes book about the season. He has a blog post about the hours after the South Carolina game and how things went in the UT locker room. Apparently Fulmer knew this was coming.

I wrote last week about the possible candidates to replace Fulmer. I said then that this situation is similar to 1964, when Doug Dickey was hired. He was the first person outside the General Robert Neyland “coaching tree” named as UT head coach since Neyland himself was hired in 1926. But on a radio show today I heard the valid point that Dickey was hired by UT athletic director Bob Woodruff, who had coached Dickey at Florida. So even then, there was an in-house connection.

That means UT is in unknown territory. You know one thing: UT athletic director  Mike Hamilton  didn’t make this move without having a good idea of who he wanted to bring in.

In the days ahead, we’ll find out, based on who’s interested in the job, the direction the Vol program is headed.

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