Vol, UF fans off base on reactions
Tennessee meltdown especially embarrassing
Sunday inadvertently became one of the more hopeless and revealing days in the recent history of college athletics. It was the perfect combination of fan hubris, local media ignorance, mob mentality and unrealistic expectations, a brew that has been simmering for years in the world of coaching searches but finally boiled over on social media as two high-profile Southeastern Con- ference programs honed in on new hires.
When word began to leak that Florida’s search had targeted Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen and that Tennessee was trying to work out a deal with Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano, the backlash was swift and severe. In Tennessee’s case, the backlash ended up scuttling the deal. Tennessee had to back off.
Although Florida’s fan base merely was disappointed at the idea of a coach with a career 33-39 record in the SEC, Tennessee’s was apoplectic in a manner that was unprecedented, undeserved and arguably frightening.
We will get to Mullen and Florida in a moment.
First, let’s examine the meltdown at Tennessee, a fan base that has been fed a fantasy for months (and even years) by some local media members that Monday
Night Football analyst Jon Gruden had an interest in coaching their program. There was nothing in the realm of reality to support that idea, putting athletics director John Currie in a terrible spot of hiring a coach who wouldn’t be Gruden and thus disappointing Vol Nation.
Moreover, Vols fans had almost no sense of the attractiveness of their job or the competitive marketplace for head coaching hires. Tennessee is a good job and can be a very good program, but it’s not the kind of place where successful sitting head coaches in comfortable situ-
ations uproot their lives.
Thus, Currie — an AD who values stability and experience, who doesn’t get starry-eyed about the next great thing — had limited choices. When it was impossible to get around the $9 million buyout for Iowa State’s Matt Campbell and when Mullen became a real candidate at Florida, his options were further reduced.
Schiano, 51, worked a miracle at Rutgers. He made a dead-end program relevant, got to six bowl games in his last seven seasons and made the program attractive enough that it was acceptable to join the Big Ten. Over the years, he had been pursued by several big-time jobs but stayed at Rutgers until the end of 2011, when he took the plunge to go to the NFL.
If you remove Schiano’s two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he was clearly out of his element (like many college coaches are), he would be viewed as a home-run hire at practically any big job.
Schiano is a grown-up, a serious ball coach who runs a disciplined program on and off the field. He was a relentless recruiter at Rutgers, tapping into Florida and Ohio and putting players in the NFL. He is endorsed by Urban Meyer and Bill Belichick as one of the game’s finest defensive minds. He would be by far Tennessee’s most accomplished head coaching hire since it lured Johnny Majors from Pittsburgh in 1977.
While Tennessee officials were trying to get a deal done with Schiano on Sunday, students in Knoxville were mobilizing to protest, congressional candidates and other politicians were issuing antiSchiano statements and radio provocateur/Tennessee fan Clay Travis, who has written extensively about the dangers of succumbing to online mobs, had organized one himself and posted Currie’s cellphone number on Twitter.
The purported reason behind Tennessee fans’ anger has to do with his time as a 25-year-old assistant just starting his career at Penn State. Schiano’s alleged involvement in the Jerry Sandusky scandal is laughably thin. In a 2015 deposition of former Penn State assistant Mike McQueary, he said that he had “briefly” spoken with former Penn State assistant Tom Bradley about rape allegations involving Sandusky.
McQueary went on to say that Bradley had told him another assistant — purported to be Schiano, who had left Penn State nine years before McQueary started there — had once claimed to see Sandusky doing something inappropriate, a claim Schiano and Bradley denied.
So, in other words, a non-specific claim based on third-hand hearsay that was never followed up on or investigated by prospectors in the case is literally Schiano’s only connection to the Sandusky case — and it allegedly happened when he was a low-level staffer just starting out in the business.
But by the time #VolTwitter got hold of it, the facts didn’t matter. The narrative had turned into something about Schiano enabling Sandusky’s crimes, which — let’s be honest here — comes across as less than genuine concern over his character and more about finding a reason to bash a hire they didn’t like.
What Tennessee fans don’t understand is their behavior Sunday hurt the program. If Schiano and Tennessee indeed finalize an agreement, it’s a mar- riage that starts out on terrible footing. If they go their separate ways, Tennessee’s fan base will forever carry the stain inside the profession of being crybabies for whom nothing is good enough.
By contrast, what happened at Florida on Sunday seems tame. But even the mere notion that a Gators fan would be disappointed with Mullen underscores how difficult it is for schools to make high-profile hires in this day and age.
Florida went after Chip Kelly and Central Florida’s Scott Frost, neither of whom were comfortable in the spotlight and pressure of the SEC. So the obvious next choice was Mullen, who worked with athletics director Scott Stricklin at Mississippi State and brought one of the league’s true underdog programs to relevance, reaching No. 1 for several weeks in 2014.
There isn’t necessarily much flash to the Mullen hire, but there’s substance in how he developed quarterbacks Dak Prescott and Nick Fitzgerald from underrated recruits into stars and how well he evaluated talent across the board. Mullen didn’t have SEC West titles or wins over Alabama to hang his hat on — in fact, his record against top-25 teams was poor overall — but there was nothing flukish about his record at Mississippi State. That program was his from top to bottom, and now he will have the chance to do the same with much shinier tools in his toolbox.
But the idea that experienced winners such as Mullen or Schiano would be considered bad hires in a league that has given jobs to plenty of people who weren’t ready or equipped for the SEC only proves why athletics directors shudder at the idea of a coaching search. Even when you deliver the fans a high-powered Thoroughbred, they want a unicorn.