A Great article, That most won't read

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A lot of my colleagues have decried what happened Sunday as an example of the second. They believe that delusional Tennessee fans unhappy they didn’t land Jon Gruden—who was never coming no matter how grand the message board fiction—got mad and ruined the deal for a perfectly O.K. football coach. That’s not necessarily the case. While some Tennessee fans bought the Grumors hook, line and sinker, the majority of the fan base understood that the Vols were going to hire a person currently coaching college football. They just didn’t want this particular person. Schiano is basically a more aggressive, defensive-minded Butch Jones. He would have been a poor fit in the fishbowl of Knoxville, where every word the coach utters is scrutinized and where coaches who worry about outside noise get swallowed by it. That he was attached—however tenuously—to the most toxic scandal in sports history gave the more politically minded of the angry Tennessee fans an easy place to hook their rage

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It’s also something Tennessee athletic director John Currie should have considered as he was zeroing in on Schiano. The vetting process is supposed to bring every potential land mine into view before a school gets too far down the road with a candidate. When a candidate is potentially controversial, a school will often leak that it is considering that candidate as a trial balloon. Had Currie floated such a balloon in the past few days, Tennessee’s fan base would have reacted in similar fashion. The difference is the sides wouldn’t already have a Memorandum of Understanding. The Vols could have moved on to another candidate without a full-on revolt that will wind up making the search even more difficult going forward.

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Some coaches who would have been interested in the Tennessee job probably crossed the Vols off their list after Sunday. That’s actually fine for Tennessee. As someone who has lived in Knoxville and covered the program, I’m convinced those coaches wouldn’t have the stomach to succeed as Tennessee’s coach. They would have failed anyway, so it’s probably better for everyone involved that Currie now will get to choose from a self-selecting sample of coaches willing to deal with a lot of passion and at least a little bit of nuttiness. After Sunday, I’d bet the fans who revolted will choose to embrace the person who does get the job if only to prove the fan base didn’t rise up out of a desire to destroy the program. The fans didn’t do what they did Sunday because they’re crazy. They did it because they love Tennessee. Maybe they love it a little too much, but that’s far better than the opposite problem. Currie would do well to remember that.

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