Good news coming this afternoon

[Ironlung]

Tennessee Coach Phillip Fulmer is expected to announce later this afternoon that Randy Sanders will step down as the Vols' offensive coordinator, although Sanders will stay on staff for the remainder of the season as quarterbacks coach.

Fulmer will take over the play-calling duties and offensive coordinator responsibilities for the rest of the seson. Fulmer and Sanders have had ongoing discussions about this change for the last two days.

After Saturday's 16-15 loss to South Carolina, the Vols are ranked 108th nationally out of 117 Division I-A programs for scoring offense. The South Carolina loss marked the first time in the Phillip Fulmer era that the Vols have lost three straight games.

[Ironlung]

Even Better.



By John Mark Hancock
Oct. 31, 2005

At least two reliable sources within The University of
Tennessee Athletics Department have confirmed that
Head Football Coach Phillip Fulmer will make several
major changes in his staff at the end of this current
football season. Speaking on the condition of
anonymity, these staffers, one of whom is an Assistant
Athletics Director, said that at least three coaches
will be terminated or will submit their resignations
or retirements.

The two slated to be axed are Wide Receivers Coach Pat
Washington, who has been on The Hill since 1995, and
Offensive Line Coach Jimmy Ray Stephens, who has been
at UT since 2002. The sources stated that Fulmer has
become increasingly agitated and upset over the lack
of development of the wide receiving corps, which has
been touted as one of the most talented in Vol
history. He has also been unhappy with Stephens' job
performance. As a former Offensive Line coach himself,
Fulmer has been very displeased with the results
Stephens has achieved since he replaced Mike Barry.

Other major changes in the works will include the
re-hiring of David Cutcliffe as Quarterbacks Coach,
Associate Head Coach, and Co-Offensive Coordinator. He
will share that latter title with present OC Randy
Sanders, who will be moved to Washington's former
position as Wide Receivers coach, a position he
coached for the Vols in 1991 and 1992 under former
Head Coach Johnny Majors. Sanders has been at
Tennessee since 1989 and Cutcliffe's former tenure at
UT dates all the way back to a part-time position he
held in 1982, until he left to become the head coach
of the Ole Miss Rebels in 1998.

Cutcliffe would not agree to return if it meant that
would be at the expense of his longtime friend
Sanders. Thus, this deal has been struck, but
Cutcliffe will clearly be in charge of the offense
from this point forward in the Fulmer regime. He had
toyed with the idea of taking the Kentucky head
football job that will surely be open at the end of
the year, but his longtime friend Mitch Barnhart, the
UK AD, is on shaky ground in his job as well, and he
didn't want to be in a situation where his boss had an
uncertain future.

David and his family moved back to Knoxville this year
following his resignation as QB coach at Notre Dame
after he developed heart problems. His doctors have
given him the green light to return to coaching now.
He and his wife Karen are very happy in Knoxville and
may be building a new home for themselves, another
indicator that he will move from his temporary radio
work back to UT, and not pursue another head coaching
job, at least at this time.

Cutcliffe has been dropping hints all over the place
on Knoxville and Nashville radio that he is coming
back to the UT staff and rejoining his old friend,
Fulmer. He was a prominent participant in the retiring
of Peyton Manning's jersey Saturday night at Neyland
Stadium, which proved to be the highlight of the
night, as Steve Spurrier's South Carolina Gamecocks
won their first game in school history in Knoxville in
13 tries. In fact, Cutcliffe made a slip of the tongue
in pregame comments on the radio in which he talked
about "if I get back involved" in the UT offense.

In making those remarks, Cutcliffe talked about how
the Tennessee offense that he ran and refined, was an
ever-evolving attack. He pointed out that the same
offense broke and set all of the Ole Miss offensive
records when he was head coach there, and that he
expects that he could and would tweak things quite a
bit were he to rejoin the staff. He believes the UT
offense can still work if it is managed properly.

Influential UT Trustee John "Thunder" Thornton, who
was very instrumental in getting Athletics Director
Mike Hamilton hired and in whose home Fulmer met with
others, including his attorney, involving the NCAA
investigation of Alabama, has been said to be upset
with Stephens' coaching style for some time. He and
other big donors and boosters have pressured Fulmer to
make the changes.

It was a true embarrassment nationally that Tennessee
was only able to score barely half as many points at
home against South Carolina as Vanderbilt did on the
road in Columbia against the Gamecocks a week ago, and
scored less than Kentucky scored on them, also on the
road, two weeks ago. With all of the ample talent the
Vols have, things have really come to a head regarding
the absolute necessity of major coaching changes at
UT.

For those that try to argue that the Vols don't have
as much talent as anyone in America despite having
recruiting classes that have been consistently in the
Top 5 nationally, they need look no further than
Manning's own comments from last night, "The talent is
there. They have the players. They have guys that can
make a lot of plays." Steve Spurrier said prior to the
game that UT was overloaded with talent at all
positions. Urban Meyer said that Tennessee was the
most talented team he ever coached against. Yet both
these coaches found a way to beat the Big Orange with
less talent. UAB Coach Watson Brown, a superb judge of
offensive talent and a longtime Fulmer friend, said
that UT had more talent this year than the 1998
national championship team had. ESPN analyst Mark May
commented after the Carolina game about how badly
coached the offensive linemen are.

One other impetus for the change is that the sales of
the new club seating planned for Neyland Stadium,
which is to fund all of the $100 million worth of
improvements and renovations over the next several
years, has ground to a screeching halt with the poor
performance of this team. Hamilton had told Fulmer he
needed to make staff changes after the 2003 season,
but he was ignored since he was new on the job. This
time the funds to increase and extend Fulmer's $2
million-plus annual contract are being threatened.

Even most of Phillip's friends who both played and
coached with him, many of whom now do commentary on
the radio occasionally, realize he has been in a state
of denial regarding the status of his football team
and the root causes of the problems. These
constructive criticisms, including the facts that the
offensive linemen are too big and out of shape, that
the receivers are undisciplined and have an attitude
problem, and that the offense is stale and
unimaginative, are things that fans have been saying
for years.

Fulmer is finally taking these criticisms seriously.
He is a good man who was a tough competitor as a
player. He is a tireless recruiter. He has reluctantly
gotten over some of his stubbornness and realized he
needs some breaths of fresh air on his stale staff
that has run out of ideas. The family atmosphere he
wants can and will be preserved by these changes. He
has been letting down the players he has recruited by
not making the necessary changes that most of us have
known needed to be made for several seasons now if he
is to win championships again. Hopefully, he hasn't
waited too long, since many of these moves should have
been made years ago, and this may be too little too
late to save his program and his own job.

Phillip himself will take over much of the coaching of
the offensive line, getting more intimately involved
with the position he formerly played and coached. Greg
Adkins, who has been coaching tight ends and part of
the OL with Stephens, will have an expanded role in
this area as well. A new OL coach will not be hired to
replace Stephens. Instead, a full-time special teams
coach will be hired as the replacement, relieving
Steve Caldwell of those duties. This would be a good
time to replace Caldwell, who has one of the weakest
resumes on the staff, as well, but that probably is
not in the works. Washington has also been the primary
assistant to Caldwell in coaching special teams.
In addition, Larry Slade will be retiring as the
defensive backs coach due to health issues. Many have
questioned Slade's laidback approach to coaching.
Hopefully, Fulmer will be able to find someone to fire
up the team to replace him. Thus, there will be at
least two faces on the football staff on The Hill, in
addition to bringing back an old one, and Fulmer has a
chance to substantially upgrade his staff in all areas
if he makes the right hires.

These moves were decided upon before the South
Carolina loss and will take place no matter what the
outcome of the rest of the season's games. Fulmer
began quietly researching coaching talent nationally
in the wake of the loss to Alabama. There is plenty to
choose from. These would be the most extensive changes
in Fulmer's staff since he became head coach 13
seasons ago at Tennessee. Anyone who knows Fulmer well
knows that these are about the most radical changes
that he could be expected to make, given his
reluctance to make any changes at all in his staff.
The team's slide from being ranked #3 nationally to
out altogether of the Top 25 has been one of the worst
collapses in modern UT history, and has certainly been
a factor in bringing on the moves.

One of the big reasons for luring Cutcliffe back into
the Big Orange family, in addition to injecting new
life into a lethargic offense which has ranked near
the bottom in all categories nationally in 2005, is to
jumpstart quarterback development again. It is no
secret that Fulmer covets high school junior Jimmy
Clausen as the next big thing at UT in the QB
department. He is the last in the line of Clausens,
following his brothers and fellow starting UT
Quarterbacks Casey and Rick, to come out of
California, and by all accounts, the most talented.

Phillip also sees the hiring of Cutcliffe as a way of
turning the offense over to a coordinator in whom he
has absolute confidence and trust, similar to the
deference he shows Associate Head Coach John Chavis as
far as the defense is concerned. He also knows that
the chances of recruiting Clausen and other top-notch
quarterbacks are enhanced by hiring back the coach who
tutored both Peyton and Eli Manning, now considered
two of the best QB's in the NFL.

Fulmer will move quickly on these changes as soon as
the Kentucky game is played in Lexington on November
26 to end the regular season. There will be no hurry
to hire a new special teams coach, however, as Fulmer
has used Judy Jackson, Associate Director of
Student-Athlete Welfare as an NCAA-designated
recruiter in the past when he has had a staff opening,
and it has paid dividends in recruiting in having her
go into recruits' homes. Expect him to do the same
thing in the upcoming recruiting wars, as Jackson is a
huge asset in that department. There will be no reason
to have a special teams coach in place until spring
practice begins.

NCAA rules limit the number of coaches overall on a
staff and also how many people can be designated to be
on the road recruiting. Fulmer will use these rules to
his ultimate advantage in every way by becoming
involved in his first love in coaching again, the
offensive line.

The disenchantment with Washington has been simmering
for a long time. Phillip has been given latitude in
giving staff raises and even though Washington has
been one of the longest serving members on his staff,
he has consistently been given the smallest raises of
any coach on the staff in the hope that it might
motivate him to do better. However, the receivers
simply have not performed well or been properly
developed under Washington's tutelage. Any casual
observer of the game can see that they are not taught
to run routes correctly. Many NFL scouts who come to
UT's practices have commented on this in the past.

Tennessee will attempt to return to smash-mouth
football in 2006, but with the passing game setting up
the run, as it did when Cutcliffe was previously on
the staff. A great opportunity to play for the
national championship was missed this year. UT had far
more talent than anyone in the SEC in what has proved
to be a down year in the league. The Vols should have
dominated their opponents. The corrections Fulmer is
finally making, many of which have been suggested
publicly long ago by this writer and others, should
pay big dividends in his final years at the helm. The
production of his offense has steadily declined since
his Vols won the national championship in 1998, and
the problems have been in the coaching arena, not with
the ample talent he recruits annually.

The sources for this story are reliable career
staffers at UT. One of them is someone I have known
all my life. There is much internal strife among the
coaching staff on The Hill now. The family atmosphere
that Phillip has tried to foster has been fractured.
Fulmer's public comments about the performance of some
of his units have indicated these changes were
forthcoming. The manner in which the changes will be
made and the substance of those changes may restore
order again in the Vol family.

Spring practice next year will be lively on The Hill.
With a big, physical, more mobile quarterback like
Jonathan Crompton in the mix, the offense will be much
more able to move the ball and have more options in
the attack. Cutcliffe should be able to tutor both
Crompton and Ainge, assuming he doesn't transfer
elsewhere, into very good QB's who can win in the SEC.
The second coming of Cutcliffe should help Ainge
decide to stay put, and will help Fulmer recruit
better talent at that key position over the next few
seasons.

Fulmer is also faced with the prospect that some of
his staff might choose to leave on their own for
greener pastures. Of course, the coaches who have been
in highest demand by the NFL and other schools have
been Chavis, Dan Brooks, and Trooper Taylor. Some have
even suggested that Sanders will look elsewhere,
especially with these changes. However, look for him
to continue, as he and Cutcliffe are very close
friends and Cutcliffe was and is his mentor. It is
doubtful that any of the other staff will leave,
either, as most see these moves as very positive for a
bright future for themselves at Tennessee.

Phillip Fulmer has always been a micromanager of his
program. With these changes, he will transition into
more of a CEO role in a major corporation. Make no
mistake about it, UT football is a big business. The
best coaches like Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Bobby
Bowden, etc., have hired coordinators that have a wide
degree of latitude to run their units and have taken
credit for their successes. They were and are great
ambassadors for their institutions, as is Fulmer.

Things have the possibility to get better in a hurry
with these positive changes in his program. They can't
get much worse than they did Saturday night on
national TV. The talent is already there and with some
fired-up, rejuvenated, focused, and motivated coaches
with something to prove, the results will be good ones
for the Vols. Many will still not be satisfied with
these reformations of the staff, but it is the biggest
shakeup in well over a decade and will most likely be
the biggest of Fulmer's tenure.

Three straight embarrassing losses, two of them in
front of over 100,000 home fans and national
television audiences each time out, have left
Tennessee at 3-4 and out of the Top 25. Another loss
appears to be looming at Notre Dame in South Bend this
Saturday, as new head coach Charlie Weis has had two
weeks to prepare for the Vols. Not since the Johnny
Majors years has there been such a complete collapse.
Even in those days, there was a dearth of talent on
the squad compared to what there is now. Fulmer
appears to have run out of excuses this time, and
there is no way around making some tough choices to
right the ship.

Tennessee finds itself mired all alone in fifth place
in the SEC East standings, behind cross-state rival
Vanderbilt and barely ahead of cellar-dweller
Kentucky. They are perhaps the worst offensive team in
the conference and are certainly one of the worst and
poorly coached teams on offense in the nation. They
are in danger of not being able to qualify for a bowl
game at all for the first time 17 seasons and for only
the second time in 25 years.

It will be Homecoming two weeks hence on The Hill when
Memphis comes to town. Will historic Neyland Stadium
be one-quarter empty? Tickets were going for $5 per
pair at kickoff this past Saturday night outside the
gates. There were fans with bags over their heads at
the end of the Carolina game, which was a signature
win for Spurrier and for their program in general.
This is truly the low ebb of the Fulmer era. Time will
tell whether things will ever reach the lofty heights
again of 1998 that seem so long ago now.

(John Mark Hancock is a freelance journalist and
columnist who writes weekly opinion commentary for
this website that is syndicated and distributed to
other media. If you are interested in his copyrighted
sports articles and human interest stories, please
contact him directly by e-mail at [email protected]).

[Biggin]

I think Ole Phil needs to be axed too.

[imported_MoonlightGraham]

your joking right?

why? he has won a national title, besides this year when was the last time UT wasnt in the top 25?

[Biggin]

Fulmer should have 3-4 NC's.

Give Mark Richt or Charlie Weiss or Bob Stoops that talent year in and year out, they would never lose a game.

[Herbie_Husker]

Maybe Weiss could do that good with that talent but Richt and Stoops aren't the best coaches in my opinion.

[greencrest1272]

I agree, Fulmer is as much at fault, if not more than anyone involved. He has allowed this to go to far for to long. That isnt what you want in a football coach. Sometimes you have to tell your buddies to hit the road especially if its for the betterment of the team, even if it hurts. Shows he lacks what it takes to be dedicated to the team instead of the individual. I hate to see a defense of that calibur just go to waste, even if it is UT.

[imported_OleTob]

I said it before the year started you can't win with a 2 QB system...Either pick one or the other and stick with them...Let the offense get used to one or the other.

[PVVikeFan]

Didn't Majors get the ax for the same kind of record? This year's problems have been blamed on not making a QB decision ans standing by it. That is something the head coach has to take resonsibility for.

[gcdevil22]

2002