re: Attn Tennessee fans: what are your opinions now of the Big Pumpkin, aka, Philip Fulmer??

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That's true.

True Prof. I'm not a fan of Phat Phil but that's the fact of the matter. Fulmer was thrust into a fairly unwinnable situation and almost forced-to make the hire with some serious limitations in play at the time. He rolled the dice ... and lost. How it plays-out in the long run, how much damage was done, is yet to be seen but the sanctions are not good, although, they could have been much worse.

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I think Danny White and Donde Plowman have managed the penalty phase of things really well. We had been self-penalizing for the past 2 years so now it works out that we can manage 2 reductions a year over 5. And we get reduced officials and unofficials. That's not as light as a lot of people are acting but it's manageable.

Pruitt cheated his arse off and we were in too much disarray to put him check. In some ways, we needed the scandal because it forced us to finally fix what was broken instead of putting band aid after band aid on things and even Fulmer was just a band aid because our BOT was afraid of giving an AD real power. Every time we got close to picking an AD politics blew it up.

But then came Pruitt... I still don't understand why Pruitt bucked the one guy who would've fought for him but he did. The mess Pruitt made was so big it was no longer an option to put a band aid on it. We had to finally fix things.

Helluva way to get there though. I didn't know how Plowman would turn out (we've been burnt so many times with UT chancellors and presidents it's insane) but she and Danny White have done a great job of righting a ship that has been sinking for a very long time. If we have to pay the piper to do it then so be it. It's not like we're claiming innocence here.