Maryland Didn’t Hire John Currie. But Should Tennessee Have Really Fired Him?
It won’t be a surprise to many Tennessee fans that John Currie was not hired as Maryland’s athletic director. The Terrapins announced on Monday they’d hire interim A.D. Damon Evans full time.
While most in Tennessee won’t be surprised and will ask why Currie was a candidate, Evans was once the University of Georgia’s athletic director but lost his post when he was arrested for drunk driving with a woman who was not his wife in the car. He was holding the passenger’s panties at the time of the arrest.
That was eight years ago, and we do understand second chances. But Currie’s excuses about the internet being out on the plane are far more understandable Evans’ concerning his arrest.
The other person up for the Maryland job was Temple athletic director Patrick Kraft. But he was looked upon as being perhaps a bit too green to move up from the American to the Big Ten and his efforts to build a stadium for Temple football have not gone smoothly.
Still, neither Kraft not Currie are criminals.
It says here Currie is going to get another job as an athletic director. Snicker if you must, but that would be shortsighted and looking at the situation with “Fulmer good, Currie bad!” glasses while pointing to a fading national championship of a generation ago.
Currie hired a good basketball coach at Kansas State in Bruce Weber after the difficult departure of Frank Martin. He also had the Wildcats’ athletic budget in the black for six straight years.
At Tennessee he hired a tennis coach in Chris Woodruff and a baseball coach in Tony Vitello that improved their programs in their first seasons. He also restored “Lady Vols” to all Tennessee women’s athletic programs. And it takes a big man to stand up to Nike and political correctness.
Messy as the football coaching search was, it ultimately could have resulted in the hiring of Mike Leach.
That would have brought the most innovative and charismatic head coach in all of college football to Knoxville, instead of the mild mannered Pruitt with no head coaching experience. As recently as 2006 Pruitt was a high school coach.
What Tennessee fans want to believe with Fulmer in charge of the athletic department and not Currie is that it can be like 1998 again. But it’s not 1998. So many of the advantages the Vols enjoyed back then in regards to revenue and facilities have evened up.
Perhaps what we learned from the Tennessee football coaching search was not that Currie was an incompetent, since his record indicates he is not, but rather the Vols’ job isn’t as prestigious as it was.
It’s a lot easier to point fingers at Currie than to admit that.
It says here Currie will likely get another athletic director position soon. A search firm recommended him to Maryland. A search firm will recommend him to another college, however large or small, especially since Tennessee will have to pay some of his salary.
If and when he does, gauge his success against Fulmer’s. Perhaps Fulmer will be a good athletic director. His hiring was similar to how Southern California hires their athletic director, a former star athlete at the school who has achieved success off the playing field.
The problem is that Fulmer did dabble in athletic administration when resurrecting the football program at East Tennessee State, and it really hasn’t worked out that well. He hired a contemporary from his glory days of coaching, and that contemporary, Carl Torbush, went 11–22 in three years at the helm.
It’s also telling that when Fulmer took over the coaching search, the candidates went from being head coaches to coordinators. Telling. Head coaches aren’t going to leave their current job for another if they feel they will be relinquishing their portion of control.
Ultimately, the reason Tennessee’s athletic director has his job today is because he recruited Peyton Manning 24 years ago.
As college athletics evolves into an era where schools may make their own broadcasting deals, players are paid, and the conference structure as we know it may not exist, is that the criteria you want for your athletic director, or is it someone with an administrative background?
Marky Billson hosts Tri-Cities Sports NOW on 1420 NBC Sports Radio Tri-Cities from 12–2 p.m. ET weekdays. Listen or watch him live or archived here and here.
