re: Who should Tennessee hire as their new coach?

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Why?

I've never understood that mentality. If a coach is not getting the job done (I'm not saying Fulmer isn't, but assuming UT concludes that he isn't) and shows no real promise of getting it done in the future, then it's time to get rid of him, even if you don't know who his replacement will be or how good he will be. If you are satisfied that your current coach is a known quantity with no real chance of success, then hiring someone new, even an unknown quantity, increases the chance of success.

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When you hire a new coach, you have to keep him around for a while, usually 3 to 5 seasons. For example, Nebraska gave Callahan 4 seasons. Notre Dame gave Davie 5 seasons. ND gave Willingham 3 seasons. LSU gave Hallman 4 seasons.

In other words, when you hire a new coach, its a decision you are going to be stuck with for at least 3 to 5 years. If you hire and fire coaches every season, then no coach is going to want to come to your program.

Being that you are stuck with new coaches for 3-5 years, some might think it would be silly to fire Fulmer without having any idea whatsoever of who you are going to get to replace him. For example, say Tenn puts a list together of coaches they feel would have a good chance of doing better at Tenn than Fulmer. Should Tenn fire Fulmer, and then call these coaches to see if they are interested, or should Tenn put the feelers out to see if any of these coaches are interested before they fire Fulmer? I'm sure some people would find the latter route to be the safe bet (because that way, if Tenn finds that none of the coaches on their list are interested in coming to Tenn, then they can keep Fulmer around until they do find a coach that they feel good about who would like to come to Tenn).

It's not like Fulmer is Curly Hallman. Fulmer was one of the most successful coaches in college football from 1993 to 2001. During that time, Tenn was a perennial Top 10 team. However, since then, Tenn has struggled just to stay in the Top 25 half the time.

But, because of his history, he's like a Paterno or a Bobby Bowden. Even though their programs aren't as good as they were in the past, they are still solid programs that get good recruiting classes that still sporatically put together some very good seasons (like Tenn winning the East last year). For some, that's tough to risk throwing away unless you are sure you've got a really good coach willing to come take over.

Ideally, of course, Phil would want to retire, and would help in the search for his replacement, and would wait to retire until they found one that wants to come to Tenn that they all feel good about.

But if Phil wants to go the Paterno or Bobby Bowden route, I'm not sure everybody in Vol Nation is going to be happy about that.