Vols notebook: Pruitt formally declared the worst UT football coach in history; Fulmer emails exposed
As the starting left guard on Tennessee’s 1971 10-win football team, Phillip Fulmer went on to lead the Volunteers to 152 wins, two Southeastern Conference titles, and the national championship in 1998.
Though he is one of the most well-known and respected figures in the program’s long history, not many will remember his last few months as Tennessee’s athletic director in a positive light.
Fulmer, who brought in Jeremy Pruitt in December 2017 following a contentious search that started with John Currie as AD, was not connected to any of the infractions that the NCAA made public on Friday. The university’s 18 Level I violations over the three-year Pruitt tenure, which included more than 200 infractions, saved it from a postseason ban, but they still had to pay more than $8 million.
Heupel used the phrase five times during his press conference as he gave his immediate reactions to the Tennessee press in a small, cramped media room.
The third-year Tennessee coach continued to come back to the phrase when talking about the Vols’ performance and the response that Tennessee had when the game started to get away from them.
“Give credit to Missouri. They played well,” Heupel said on Saturday evening. “Man, really disappointed in the performance of our football team. Didn’t like the way we finished the ball game. We didn’t play smart enough, good enough early in the football game to win this one. And, you know, line of scrimmage, there was a stark difference. Said it early in the week that it would be a pivotal part of the football game. They were able to run the football. We weren’t.”
Tennessee’s offense struggled mightily against the Missouri defense as Tennessee was looking for responses throughout nearly the entire game. The Vols’ strong run game was completely wiped out
by the Missouri defense as Jaylen Wright, Joe Milton, Jabari Small, and Dylan Sampson only combined for 83 yards on the ground. As Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz alluded to after the game, Missouri’s defense kicked the butt of Tennessee’s offense.
“Offensively we didn’t have the efficiency that you need to go and score points,” Heupel continued on to say. “So, disappointing.”
Tennessee averaged 33 points per game in their last four including a 59-point explosion last weekend in Knoxville. But, when push came to shove, Tennessee’s inability to execute and self-inflicted wounds led to a “disappointing” showing on Saturday afternoon.
