Why Tennessee Volunteered to Be Bad
After inheriting a program in shambles, Butch Jones asked the fans of a proud SEC blue-blood to do the unthinkable: be patient
ENLARGE
Wide receiver Josh Malone of the Tennessee Volunteers attempts to catch a pass against the Ohio Bobcats at Neyland Stadium on Saturday in Knoxville, Tenn. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
By
ANDREW BEATON
Sept. 22, 2016 11:45 a.m. ET
27 COMMENTS
Knoxville, Tenn.
The night Butch Jones agreed to become football coach of the University of Tennessee, he sat in a hotel room for several hours as the school’s athletic director, Dave Hart, detailed how a historically great, tradition-rich football program had fallen into a state of disrepair.
It wasn’t just that the football team stunk. Academic problems had grown so severe that Tennessee was “very close to being the first major college football program to face sanctions,” Hart said. The program’s financial reserves were running dry. And as the team cycled through coaches and losing seasons, the team’s proud fan base had become increasingly disenchanted.
Hart reeled off this list of problems, and Jones realized that there was only one solution: a top-to-bottom rebuild. He would approach the job of coaching one of college football’s most prestigious programs as if he were taking over an expansion team. “The great thing about building from ground zero,” Jones says, “is you can build it in your vision.”
In professional sports, it has become acceptable for the worst teams to bottom out. Their fans are willing to hold their noses for a shot at a top draft pick and a chance at a franchise cornerstone. In the college ranks, which offer no rewards for losing, there’s no incentive for tanking. Fans won’t patiently sit through years of lousy play for the vague promise of a brighter future.
But this is what Jones’s strategy entailed. By building around young recruits while the program underwent a complete overhaul, Tennessee asked its fans to tolerate years of mediocrity to get them to the point where they find themselves right now.
In his fourth year, Jones has the Volunteers at 3-0 and ranked No. 14 in the country. He has restored enthusiasm to Neyland Stadium and optimism that they can contend for the Southeastern Conference title.
But in the next four weeks, Tennessee faces a gauntlet of four games against ranked opponents, staring Saturday with No. 19 Florida, which has beaten the Volunteers 11 consecutive times, often in excruciating fashion. Then comes No. 12 Georgia and 10th-ranked Texas A&M, followed by the toughest game of all: a showdown against No. 1 Alabama.
Just how the team fares during this stretch may ultimately deliver a verdict on the success of Tennessee’s methodical rebuild: Was all the losing actually worth it?
“Nobody wants to be patient,” said Paul Finebaum, the SEC Network analyst, radio host and Tennessee alumnus. “He had a different approach. I think it’s coming together.”
Sometimes lost amid Tennessee’s struggles in the last decade is a history that few schools can match. The program claims six national championships, four of which came more than a half century ago under coach Robert Neyland, known to fans as “The General,” who built the most feared defense in the country, year after year.
The problem is that most of this history—except for the era in the mid-1990s when the team was led by Peyton Manning, who has shrine that takes up an entire room in the team’s practice facility—happened a lifetime ago. The longer the team struggled, the more it began to seem like an ancient myth.
“The individuals we’re recruiting today, they don’t realize,” Jones says. “They have not grown up with Tennessee football winning.”
The expectation to return Tennessee to those heights is both the program’s greatest asset and burden: At this level of college football, where success is considered a birthright, preaching patience is like trying to sell a Ferrari snob on a hybrid. Coaches are hired and expected to win championships immediately. In the SEC, every school wants their coach to be Nick Saban and their team to win like Alabama.
But from the outset, Jones cautioned that his plan would take time. Unlike other top programs that have been able to maintain a steady flow of top recruits despite struggling on the field, the Volunteers were talent barren when Jones took over—for two consecutive years, 2015 and 2016, the program had no players selected in the NFL Draft, snapping a streak of 51 consecutive years of having a player taken. Meanwhile, off the field, the team was on the verge of NCAA sanctions for academic problems.
Jones says he has worked to fix both: The team’s Academic Progress Rate has steadily gone up during his tenure and he has consistently landed elite recruiting classes. But those recruits are young, which Jones was quick to point out when the team went 5-7 in his first year, 2013, and 7-6 in 2014. His promise to fans was that once these recruits were older, Tennessee would once again be a team with the experience and talent to compete for national titles.
“It’s tough to ask this fan base to be patient, although they have been,” Hart said.
Exactly why everyone involved with Tennessee football—boosters, fans, and the school—has been so willing to accept this slow turnaround may be the most remarkable aspect of Jones’s tenure.
The program’s last title came in 1998 amid a strong run of years under coach Phillip Fulmer, who saw that success dwindle in the mid-2000s before the school pushed him out—many believe too quickly. That paved the way for a nightmarish four years that were so unbearable that, by the end, Tennessee fans were simply desperate for somebody to resuscitate the program, no matter how long it might take. “We made one colossally bad fire and two colossally bad hires,” said Jeff Hagood, a lawyer and Tennessee booster.
Kiffin’s tenure was followed by three sub-.500 years under Derek Dooley, who didn’t inspire as much opprobrium but perhaps the only thing worse: apathy. In his final season, 2012, attendance at Neyland Stadium dipped below 90,000 fans per game for the first time since 1979—before the stadium was expanded to hold that many.
Now those fans are starting to re-engage: Home attendance rose back above 100,000 per game last year at Neyland Stadium, one of the country’s largest. More than anything, they say, Jones’s personality resonates in a way they haven’t seen since the Fulmer era. “There are very few people who don’t like a fellow named Butch with a crew cut,” Duncan, the congressman, said.
But with the feeling that the worst is in the rearview mirror, there’s now a tinge of restlessness stirring with some fans for whom simply clambering out of the SEC’s cellar is no longer enough. It’s time to find out if their patience has been rewarded with an actual contender.
There were signs of a return to prominence last season, which included a win against a ranked Georgia team and close losses to Oklahoma and Alabama. Even that was ahead of schedule, Hart says, since Jones’s first true recruiting class was only in its sophomore season.
That set the stage for 2016’s high expectations, with a preseason ranking of No. 9 that nearly became an embarrassment when the Volunteers barely squeaked by Appalachian State in the season opener. That game demonstrated the fragile optimism in Knoxville—a victory, but hardly an indication that this team has finally rediscovered its dominant past.
An answer may come as soon as Saturday. A victory over the No. 19 Gators would bolster Tennessee’s hopes of winning the SEC East and reaching the conference title game. But it may also serve as a referendum on Jones’s broader plan—and an early indication of whether his unconventional approach to restoring a major college-football program is actually going to work.
“I don’t think it’s an understatement to say this is one of the biggest games of Tennessee football history,” Finebaum said.
Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
After inheriting a program in shambles, Butch Jones asked the fans of a proud SEC blue-blood to do the unthinkable: be patient
ENLARGE
Wide receiver Josh Malone of the Tennessee Volunteers attempts to catch a pass against the Ohio Bobcats at Neyland Stadium on Saturday in Knoxville, Tenn. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
By
ANDREW BEATON
Sept. 22, 2016 11:45 a.m. ET
27 COMMENTS
Knoxville, Tenn.
The night Butch Jones agreed to become football coach of the University of Tennessee, he sat in a hotel room for several hours as the school’s athletic director, Dave Hart, detailed how a historically great, tradition-rich football program had fallen into a state of disrepair.
It wasn’t just that the football team stunk. Academic problems had grown so severe that Tennessee was “very close to being the first major college football program to face sanctions,” Hart said. The program’s financial reserves were running dry. And as the team cycled through coaches and losing seasons, the team’s proud fan base had become increasingly disenchanted.
Hart reeled off this list of problems, and Jones realized that there was only one solution: a top-to-bottom rebuild. He would approach the job of coaching one of college football’s most prestigious programs as if he were taking over an expansion team. “The great thing about building from ground zero,” Jones says, “is you can build it in your vision.”
In professional sports, it has become acceptable for the worst teams to bottom out. Their fans are willing to hold their noses for a shot at a top draft pick and a chance at a franchise cornerstone. In the college ranks, which offer no rewards for losing, there’s no incentive for tanking. Fans won’t patiently sit through years of lousy play for the vague promise of a brighter future.
But this is what Jones’s strategy entailed. By building around young recruits while the program underwent a complete overhaul, Tennessee asked its fans to tolerate years of mediocrity to get them to the point where they find themselves right now.
In his fourth year, Jones has the Volunteers at 3-0 and ranked No. 14 in the country. He has restored enthusiasm to Neyland Stadium and optimism that they can contend for the Southeastern Conference title.
But in the next four weeks, Tennessee faces a gauntlet of four games against ranked opponents, staring Saturday with No. 19 Florida, which has beaten the Volunteers 11 consecutive times, often in excruciating fashion. Then comes No. 12 Georgia and 10th-ranked Texas A&M, followed by the toughest game of all: a showdown against No. 1 Alabama.
Just how the team fares during this stretch may ultimately deliver a verdict on the success of Tennessee’s methodical rebuild: Was all the losing actually worth it?
“Nobody wants to be patient,” said Paul Finebaum, the SEC Network analyst, radio host and Tennessee alumnus. “He had a different approach. I think it’s coming together.”
Sometimes lost amid Tennessee’s struggles in the last decade is a history that few schools can match. The program claims six national championships, four of which came more than a half century ago under coach Robert Neyland, known to fans as “The General,” who built the most feared defense in the country, year after year.
The problem is that most of this history—except for the era in the mid-1990s when the team was led by Peyton Manning, who has shrine that takes up an entire room in the team’s practice facility—happened a lifetime ago. The longer the team struggled, the more it began to seem like an ancient myth.
“The individuals we’re recruiting today, they don’t realize,” Jones says. “They have not grown up with Tennessee football winning.”
The expectation to return Tennessee to those heights is both the program’s greatest asset and burden: At this level of college football, where success is considered a birthright, preaching patience is like trying to sell a Ferrari snob on a hybrid. Coaches are hired and expected to win championships immediately. In the SEC, every school wants their coach to be Nick Saban and their team to win like Alabama.
But from the outset, Jones cautioned that his plan would take time. Unlike other top programs that have been able to maintain a steady flow of top recruits despite struggling on the field, the Volunteers were talent barren when Jones took over—for two consecutive years, 2015 and 2016, the program had no players selected in the NFL Draft, snapping a streak of 51 consecutive years of having a player taken. Meanwhile, off the field, the team was on the verge of NCAA sanctions for academic problems.
Jones says he has worked to fix both: The team’s Academic Progress Rate has steadily gone up during his tenure and he has consistently landed elite recruiting classes. But those recruits are young, which Jones was quick to point out when the team went 5-7 in his first year, 2013, and 7-6 in 2014. His promise to fans was that once these recruits were older, Tennessee would once again be a team with the experience and talent to compete for national titles.
“It’s tough to ask this fan base to be patient, although they have been,” Hart said.
Exactly why everyone involved with Tennessee football—boosters, fans, and the school—has been so willing to accept this slow turnaround may be the most remarkable aspect of Jones’s tenure.
The program’s last title came in 1998 amid a strong run of years under coach Phillip Fulmer, who saw that success dwindle in the mid-2000s before the school pushed him out—many believe too quickly. That paved the way for a nightmarish four years that were so unbearable that, by the end, Tennessee fans were simply desperate for somebody to resuscitate the program, no matter how long it might take. “We made one colossally bad fire and two colossally bad hires,” said Jeff Hagood, a lawyer and Tennessee booster.
Kiffin’s tenure was followed by three sub-.500 years under Derek Dooley, who didn’t inspire as much opprobrium but perhaps the only thing worse: apathy. In his final season, 2012, attendance at Neyland Stadium dipped below 90,000 fans per game for the first time since 1979—before the stadium was expanded to hold that many.
Now those fans are starting to re-engage: Home attendance rose back above 100,000 per game last year at Neyland Stadium, one of the country’s largest. More than anything, they say, Jones’s personality resonates in a way they haven’t seen since the Fulmer era. “There are very few people who don’t like a fellow named Butch with a crew cut,” Duncan, the congressman, said.
But with the feeling that the worst is in the rearview mirror, there’s now a tinge of restlessness stirring with some fans for whom simply clambering out of the SEC’s cellar is no longer enough. It’s time to find out if their patience has been rewarded with an actual contender.
There were signs of a return to prominence last season, which included a win against a ranked Georgia team and close losses to Oklahoma and Alabama. Even that was ahead of schedule, Hart says, since Jones’s first true recruiting class was only in its sophomore season.
That set the stage for 2016’s high expectations, with a preseason ranking of No. 9 that nearly became an embarrassment when the Volunteers barely squeaked by Appalachian State in the season opener. That game demonstrated the fragile optimism in Knoxville—a victory, but hardly an indication that this team has finally rediscovered its dominant past.
An answer may come as soon as Saturday. A victory over the No. 19 Gators would bolster Tennessee’s hopes of winning the SEC East and reaching the conference title game. But it may also serve as a referendum on Jones’s broader plan—and an early indication of whether his unconventional approach to restoring a major college-football program is actually going to work.
“I don’t think it’s an understatement to say this is one of the biggest games of Tennessee football history,” Finebaum said.
Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
