Phil Fulmer...do you think Tennessee misses him?

if i were an AD, i'd call him once a week trying to get him to return to coaching at my university

no

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Tennessee reminds me of the Arkansas basketball program. Once, a great dominating team to know hoping to be average

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They will be better in the next couple of years. Kiffin did a ton of damage, but I think Dooley can get them near the top of the east again.

I like Dooley, but I don't think he is a 9-10 win per year coach in a major conference.

I'm not saying elite - like a top 5 program, but they can be a top 12-20ish team.

I would if I was a Tenn. fan, there is really nothing in Dooley's resume/experience that makes me think he is in an upgrade. Add to that, the instability caused my the carousel tenure of Kiffin.

There are a lot of factors, outside of coaching, that have put Tenn. at a disadvantage in maintaining national power status. Of course, Fulmer has to bear some responsibility for the decline, too. That said, Phil was an SEC coaching stalwart who had a national title under his belt. Dooley is a coaching legacy who has had moderate head coaching success. I bet Fulmer looks at Dooley and wonders why someone who he should be considering for his staff - is holding the position he was fired from. Everybody seems to like Dooley, personally, but those are the hard facts.

Fulmer's last 4 years at UT:

5-6 (4th in East)
9-4 (2nd in East)
10-4 (1st in East)
5-7 (5th in East)

with 1 bowl win and didn't finish higher than 12th in the polls. After winning the title in 98 he only finished ranked in the top 10 once (2001 when they choked in the SECCG)

TN grad and lifelong fan's perspective:

The Fulmer of the 90s is definitely missed. The Fulmer of the 00's is not. It just seemed that he got tired and/or too relaxed. He quit recruiting where as the likes of Florida, Bama, LSU, UGA, and even USCe did not. He was extremely loyal to his assistants, which proved to be part of his downfall. We had become extremely predictable, which is not an issue when you have the talent; but when you couple that with the complacent attitude and lack of high caliber recruits coming in, the results fall(which is what has happened).

Kiffin tried a quick fix by taking risks with talented players that had character issues and were off the field liabilities. Obviously that didn't play out. If he were still at UT, I feel certain that we would a. be on probation, and b. we would lead the country in player turnover due to kids getting kicked out/arrested/dismissed.

Dooley is taking the steps to getting us on track. I really like him as a coach, but I don't think he's the answer. That being said, he hasn't exactly been dealt a full deck of cards(results from Fulmer and Kiffin). We don't have any depth and the talent once our 1's need a break is about 3-4 steps down. He knows we don't have the talent in state to equal the rest of the SEC, and has said that GA is a big focus to try to pick from. To me he's Tennessee's version of Mike Shula; recruiting fairly well, just not the results on the field that we're used to. In a perfect world, Saban pt. 2 would come along and we could scoop him up; if we're lucky enough for that to happen I wish we could keep Dooley for the sole purpose of doing the press conferences and stuff with the media. The man is hilarious when it comes to that side of being a coach.

For the fact that he is/was TN football, I would have liked to continue to see Fulmer as the HC(basically a figurehead(Paterno, Bowden), but go a different route with the coordinators and assistants. He just wouldn't make changes, or let the coordinators do their thing(on offense); and when he did in the end, they were horrible ones(looking at you Dave Clawson and your Clawfense).

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Fulmer won 8-9 games per year like clockwork, yet it wasn't good enough, so they canned his fat arse and look where they are now. I would be willing to bet they would go back to those days in a heart beat

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His avg wins may have been 8-9, but individual seasons are not all at the avg. His first full season was 93, from there to 2004 his worst season was 8 wins. From 05-09 he had 2 losing seasons with only 5 wins. They had BCS bowls for 3 strait years 97-99, where 1 SEC CG away from playing in the BCS CG in 2001, but didn't get really close to a BCS bowl after that.

Its nice and easy to blame the new coaches and somewhat natural to look back at what Phil did and say they'd love that again. Trouble is, there is no guarentee they'd be where they were in the 90's. In fact, as the 2000's show, they were declining with Fulmer. When they were an elite team in the late 90's, they were recruiting well in places like La, Ga and SC, but LSU, UGA and USCe hired better coaches and recruits started staying home and Tenn started losing more.

:notsureifserious: