Tennessee Football: Was Firing Phillip Fulmer Worth Rocky Top Reeling?

No one person has ever split a fanbase as much as Phillip Fulmer. Throughout Fulmer’s final years at Tennessee there was no middle ground on the head coach who played for the Vols, later became an assistant, and then became the most successful Tennessee head coach since some guy named Neyland.

Fulmer’s detractors just shouted louder than his supporters. I was one of the detractors. I felt the program had become mediocre. Fulmer was not competing with the Meyers’s and Saban’s of the SEC. It took him a while to learn how to beat Richt, too.

General perception was that Fulmer had lost his fire. The drive that led Fulmer to a 152-52 career record as head coach seemed to be slowly fading. As a result, the “it’s time for a change” group got their wish. Fulmer was canned after 16 years as Tennessee’s head coach. 

Since that fateful November day, the one that saw coach Fulmer crying at the press conference announcing his termination, Tennessee’s football program has gone through the roughest 688 days in its history. 

Tennessee hired the wrong replacement who promptly landed the Vols in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons. There were compliance issues, inexcusably arrogant behavior, and mass player defections under that coach. 

Lane Kiffin did bring in some talented players, but the negatives far outweighed the positives when, barely a year after his hiring, he left the Tennessee program with its pants down, by leaving Knoxville for his “dream job” at USC.   

The program went through all of that for a lousy seven wins and a few talented recruits in 2009. When Kiffin left the Vols in a lurch, Tennessee had to settle for a coach coming off a 4-8 season at Louisiana Tech. Derek Dooley’s 17-20 overall record did not exactly invoke confidence among the fanbase either.

All Dooley had to do was save what was a potential top three recruiting class from being completely dismantled and hope to retain some of the high profile recruits that were already on the roster. 

The new coach did a remarkable job of keeping some of those talented recruits and Tennessee still ended up with the No. 9 class in the country, according to Rivals.com. But the losses the team would experience, including Freshman All-SEC offensive lineman, Aaron Douglas and former No. 1 overall recruit Bryce Brown, would play a big part in killing his first Tennessee team’s depth. The lack of which has directly contributed to the Vols being outscored 79-30 at Neyland Stadium the last two weeks. 

One of the knocks against Fulmer was that his once elite recruiting abilities had tapered off. The team could no longer compete with the likes of Florida and Alabama on a yearly basis because of it, according to some in the media. 

Yet, just one year previous to his firing, Fulmer had the Vols in the SEC championship game where they lost by a single touchdown to the eventual national champion, LSU Tigers. Sure, that team had some luck, but it won the SEC east, in large part, because that Vols team trounced Georgia 35-14 earlier that season. 

Even though Fulmer’s critics like to point out the steady decline that the program had experienced since the 2001 SEC Championship Game loss, also to LSU, the Vols won nine or more games four times from ’02 until his firing in ’08. 

To answer those who felt like Fulmer had lost his recruiting touch, Tennessee had the No. 6 ranked recruiting class in the nation, according to rivals.com, when Fulmer was fired.

Future top five NFL draft pick and now the highest paid safety in the history of the league, Eric Berry, was just finishing up his sophomore season.

The player responsible for much of that ’08 team’s lack of success, quarterback Jonathan Crompton, was a former five-star recruit that also had offers from Miami, Michigan, LSU, and Georgia.

Crompton’s lack of success resulted largely from a difficult to learn offensive system that new offensive coordinator, Dave Clawson brought with him from Richmond.   

Clawson was David Cutcliffe’s replacement. Cutcliffe, whose two separate stints as Tennessee offensive coordinator were some of the most successful seasons in Fulmer’s tenure, left to coach Duke following the Vols SEC Championship game appearance after the ’07 season. 

The “Clawfense” as it became known was incredibly “cerebral” in the words of its architect. It was tough to grasp, but the promise that it could be potentially lethal to opposing defenses, once learned, made it an interesting change for the Vols. 

Fulmer wanted a change, Clawson offered change. Unfortunately for Fulmer, that change ultimately led to his firing less than nine months later. 

Yes, nine months was all athletic director Mike Hamilton needed to see. A coach who had given his life to Tennessee football was not worthy of another season after suffering losses in six of the team’s first nine games. 

It wasn’t worth keeping the coach for another year to see if the players would finally grasp an admittedly difficult offensive scheme. 

688 tumultuous days, eight losses in 16 games, two coaches, several player defections, numerous recruiting violations, and one official NCAA investigation later, was it worth it?