In the past six years, Tennessee has won three SEC regular-season championships.
Considering UT fields 19 sports, that’s three titles in 114 chances.
During that time, Tennessee has fallen off the map in terms of competing for the SEC all-sports trophy, once a desirable and achievable goal on Rocky Top.
No longer.
Softball has carried the banner for Tennessee sports since the Ralph and Karen Weekly were hired as co-head coaches in 2002. The program has been to seven Women’s College World Series in the past dozen years.
Women’s basketball hasn’t reached the Final Four since 2008.
Football hasn’t won the East Division since 2007.
Baseball hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since 2005 and fired its coach this month.
Men’s tennis just went 3-21 in SEC play over the past two years and fired its coach this month.
Women’s tennis hasn’t been relevant in the SEC in many years. Neither has men’s golf or women’s volleyball or women’s soccer.
You just don’t find many sports competing at a high national level like Florida, which currently has five spring sports rank among the nation’s top five and another in the top 10.
As John Currie succeeds Dave Hart as UT’s athletic director, he’d like to make all sports relevant again in the SEC, much like it was during parts of the 1990s and 2000s when Currie was an assistant AD at Tennessee.
“I’m committed to every student-athlete having the opportunity to have a great student-athlete experience, a world-class student-athlete experience,’’ Currie said.
“I have yet to do an exit interview with a student-athlete who didn’t want to win. The one thing they want to do is win more. So winning is very important for the student-athlete experience.
“Putting the student-athlete in position to win is a part of that. Now they’ve got to earn it. They’ve got to get it done.
“But we’re committed to being champions in any sport we play at the University of Tennessee.’’
Currie said many schools have a “proliferation of media revenues,’’ and each SEC school has the same amount of assistant coaches and scholarships. He pointed out that some under sourced schools now have resources, which helps level the playing field.
“You see a great demarcation of ability to compete at the highest level,’’ Currie said. “You see talent spread out.’’
And you see improved facilities. Currie said when he left Kansas State several months ago, the Wildcats had better football facilities than Texas. Texas!
“That’s unimaginable,’’ Currie said.
“Tennessee historically has had among the best facilities in the country and we still have among the best facilities in the country, even though we have some tweaking and pushing forward we need to do to get back ahead.
“Everybody’s got good facilities now. Everybody’s got a sports psychologist. And everybody’s putting out cost-of-attendance money. Everybody’s got a fuel station.
“At the end of the day, it’s going to be about people again. It goes back to what it was about at the very beginning – people. Who coaches your players and student-athletes? And whether or not you can build a culture of toughness and resiliency and leadership.
“The great coaches who are able to cultivate that in their group and their teams, they’re the ones that will be champions at the end.’’
Currie has already made two changes, firing men’s tennis coach Sam Winterbotham and baseball coach Dave Serrano.
More changes could be forthcoming in the next few months.
The key for Currie will be his ability to find the right coach to build that culture of toughness and resiliency and leadership.
Because in too many UT sports for too long, that has been missing.
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