By Jimmy Hyams
The firing of Dr. Beverly Davenport after less than 15 months as University of Tennessee Chancellor speaks once again to the volatility and dysfunction and instability of the school.
And that includes the athletic department.
Since 2008, UT has had three presidents, five chancellors, five football coaches, four athletic directors and four men’s basketball coaches.
That’s a total of 21.
I don’t know how that compares to other SEC schools, or other schools in the country, but I’d bet you Butch Jones’ buyout that no other school in the country has endured such turnover.
Twenty is a staggering amount. The average stay of those five positions at UT over the past decade has been four years.
No wonder UT has appeared to be in disarray from the administrative end to the athletic department for most of the past decade.
That’s not to say that UT hasn’t had some fine leaders in the tower and on the field or court, but that much change makes if mighty hard to excel over a long period of time.
And that much change has led to some incredible buyouts. Going back to 2005, Tennessee’s athletic department has paid over $26 million in buyouts to athletic directors and head football and men’s basketball coaches. Add assistants and strength and conditioning coaches to the equation, and the number is close to $30 million.
That doesn’t count buyouts for fired chancellors and presidents.
No wonder UT can’t complete renovations at Neyland Stadium.
You could argue UT hasn’t done a good job – overall — of hiring administrators or coaches or athletic directors in the past 15 years. And you can argue UT hasn’t been good stewards of donors’ donations. In fact, several six-figure boosters have told me they would no longer contribute to UT due to the excessive buyouts given on an almost annual basis.
Here’s a look at the buyouts since 2005:
Coach Buzz Peterson $1.4 million
Coach Phillip Fulmer $6 million
Coach Bruce Pearl $950,000
A.D. Mike Hamilton $1.3 million
Coach Derek Dooley $5 million
A.D. Dave Hart $700,000
Coach Butch Jones $8.2 million
A.D. John Currie $2.5 million
That totals $26.05 million.
If you add buyouts for assistants – former defensive coordinator Sal Sunseri was owed $1.6 million after he was fired – and strength and conditioning coaches, that’s at least another $3 million. That total is an estimate because the assistants and strength coaches’ contracts were mitigated by new employment. And I don’t know the difference in pay for all of them.
That brings the total to over $29 million since 2005.
Since 2008, UT has had 5 chancellors (Loren Crabtree, Jan Simek, Jimmy Cheek, Beverly Davenport, Wayne Davis); three presidents: John Peterson, Simek, Joe DiPietro; five football coaches (Fulmer, Lane Kiffin, Dooley, Jones, Jeremy Pruitt); four men’s basketball coaches (Pearl, Counzo Martin, Donnie Tyndall, Rick Barnes) and four athletic directors (Hamilton, Hart, Currie, Fulmer).
And with DePietro scheduled to depart in December, UT will add a fourth president to the equation.
If UT can cut that total from 21 to 10 in the next decade, it might find the leadership, stability and success it has lacked over the past 10 years.
And lose the tag of being a dysfunctional family.
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