Empty Neyland is last thing Jones or Currie needs
KNOXVILLE — A few minutes before Tennessee football coach Butch Jones was to begin his weekly news conference Monday, an athletic department insider was asked if there was even one-tenth of one percent chance that the fifth-year coach could keep his job past the end of this season.
“I think it’s possible if he can finish 7-5,” he said, knowing that would mean the Volunteers would have to win their final four games against Southern Miss, Missouri, LSU and Vanderbilt, though only Mizzou among those will be played away from Neyland Stadium.
“I don’t think they can do that. I think they’ll lose to LSU. But if they’re 7-5, I think he might get one more year.”
Everybody whose blood runs Clorox Orange has an opinion about Jones these days, as well as many who are just interested in college football in general.
While many of those opinions make news, only one of those opinions ultimately matters, and that’s first-year UT athletic director John Currie’s.
Appearing on a Knoxville radio show Monday night, Currie addressed the situation for the first time in public, saying of the 3-5 overall record (0-5 in SEC play) heading into Saturday night’s homecoming game against Southern Miss: “I know folks are frustrated with the won-lost record. I am, too. Coach Jones is. We all are. I believe right now the most important thing to do is support our players. Those seniors have three more times running through that ‘T.’ And I know there will be a lot of great Tennessee fans there supporting them Saturday night.”
If this sounds like a guy who doesn’t want to fire his football coach, so be it. The Vols have finished 9-4 each of the past two seasons and won their three bowl games under Jones by an average of 23.3 points. Maybe he genuinely believes Jones deserves something of a mulligan, given that this is his second straight injury-riddled season and the Vols have had the outcome of four games — three of them losses — not decided until the final play of the game.
And as Currie also said of the Vols during Saturday’s loss to Kentucky: “They played so hard.”
Beyond that, it would take close to $14 million to buy out Jones and his staff. After all, Currie is first and foremost a money guy. He knows how to raise money. He also knows how to use it wisely. That’s not to say the big-money folks such as the Haslam family will have no say in this. At some point, their vast riches are sure to play a role in hiring a replacement, should that be Currie’s ultimate decision.
And to hear the “noise,” as Jones and his players like to call it, Monday Night Football analyst Jon Gruden — a grad assistant at UT under Johnny Majors in the 1980s — again is being discussed, despite reportedly having left the Vols at the altar before Jones was hired in December of 2012.
However unlikely that scenario might be, Gruden wouldn’t just win the news conference, he’d be a recruiting magnet, especially for quarterbacks and skill players. No, he hasn’t coached anywhere since being fired by the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the close of the 2008 season. But if you go to high school kids and ask them to list six or seven of the most recognizable names in football these days, there’s a good chance Gruden’s would be in there somewhere not far behind Tom Brady, Nick Saban, Peyton Manning, Bill Belichick, Cam Newton, Odell Beckham Jr. and Colin Kaepernick (for slightly different reasons).
Furthermore, if the Vols brass was willing to pay the money for Gruden and an elite staff that it reportedly wasn’t willing to spend in 2012, Gruden could be the front man, calling a few inspired plays, developing quarterbacks and schmoozing the fans while his underlings built their own resumes with big wins.
It’s not guaranteed to work, but it almost certainly — at least for a brief time — would uplift a fan base that’s grown so angry that a certain segment started the hashtag #EmptyNeyland on Twitter after Saturday night’s loss to Kentucky, urging fans to stay home this weekend and from all future games until Jones is gone.
Thankfully, at least for the UT players, another group of fans — though reportedly far fewer in number — started a rival hashtag #FillNeylandUp.
According to the Knoxville News Sentinel’s website, Vols fan Brad Parker wrote regarding the FillNeylandUp site: “Fire Butch. Fire Currie. But don’t #EmptyNeyland. The players don’t deserve to be punished for the (administration’s) actions.”
Parker’s right. But Currie must also consider how much longer he wishes to see such anger. He may not think Jones deserves to be fired, and at this point he’s probably right. But the fans’ wrath probably has reached a point of no return.
But it’s something else Currie said Monday night that should at least assure everyone from every point of view that he understands the emotion behind #EmptyNeyland.
“One of the reasons I came back here to the University of Tennessee is this is a national program with a national following and incredibly passionate and fervent fans,” he said. “(But) that knife cuts both ways, right? You’re excited when you win and you’re disappointed and angry when you lose.”
That, of course, is why “fan” is short for “fanatic,” in all its good and bad forms.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com