Wiedmer: Vols’ new coach would do well to keep Chavis around
Sunday, November 23, 2008
NASHVILLE — For most of the past three weeks, there has been one dominant sports story in this state. When the University of Tennessee decided to part company with football coach Phillip Fulmer, everything else became secondary.
Everything. The Titans’ continued perfect season. The start of college basketball. Prep football playoffs. Some newspapers even played Fulmer’s firing above a historic presidential campaign, since the coach was canned the day before the election.
And it somehow remains as dynamic and divisive a story within the Big Orange Nation as the day it took place. As Fulmer said following the Vols’ 20-10 victory over Vanderbilt on Saturday, “It’s been like a three-week-long funeral in some ways.”
More than once his voice cracked as he spoke, and his eyes grew moist. He said he was going to write a book and there would be some “great stuff” in it. He talked about a woman he didn’t know bursting into tears and hugging him as he got off the bus at Vandy.
The visitors’ media room beneath Vanderbilt Stadium now quiet and growing quite uncomfortable, Fulmer added a zinger toward UT athletic director Mike Hamilton, who was not present.
“I don’t think I would encourage any athletic director to do it this way,” Fulmer said. “It’s been tough on a lot of people.”
Not that Fulmer’s bitter.
“Bitterness and resentment, a friend told me, is like taking poison and expecting somebody else to die,” he said, almost believably.
But Fulmer isn’t the only one on his staff suffering more than financial uncertainty as the clock ticks toward a final home game against Kentucky this Saturday night in Neyland Stadium, the contest appropriately labeled Phillip Fulmer Appreciation Day by Hamilton.
“Twenty-six years ... (long pause) ... and I’ve never, ever regretted a moment of it,” said defensive coordinator John Chavis, tears streaming down his face after someone asked him if he had thought much about the next seven days.
“I had opportunities to go other places. But I was working where I wanted to be, working for the man I wanted to work for.”
He paused again to take a few deep breaths and fight in vain to hold back a few more tears.
“This is at an end,” Chavis said. “I don’t want to think about it, but (the Kentucky game) could be the last time I walk into that stadium. I’m prepared for that. My family is prepared for that.”
But would he also be prepared to stay on if a hot-shot offensive coach such as Texas Tech’s Mike Leach was smart enough to keep Chavis? Could Chavis work for someone other than his close friend Fulmer? Does loyalty to an institution trump loyalty to a friend?
“I don’t see that, to be honest with you,” Chavis said. “(But) I’m not going to close any doors. Given the right opportunity, I think I’ve got eight, 10, 12 more years in me.”
Far more times than not over the years, Chavis’s charges have closed the doors on Big Orange foes’ victory chances, including Saturday’s win over the Commodores.
After watching his team held to 25 total yards in the opening half, Vandy coach Bobby Johnson said, “They forced us to do a lot of things that we didn’t want to do.”
They have done that so often this season that the UT defense ranked seventh nationally in total defense and 15th in scoring defense entering the weekend. More impressively, they’ve accumulated those rankings despite being on the field for 24 more plays than Florida’s defense, which ranks sixth.
Or as Fulmer said, “The defense has played well enough to win practically every game.”
The Vols have now won four of 11, and Fulmer finally took much of the blame for that Saturday.
“I let it get to the point where somebody thought he needed to make a decision,” he said.
Within the next few weeks, that decision will lead to a new head coach who will soon have to make a decision about a defensive coordinator.
Said Chavis of the past three weeks: “I’ve gone from very angry to very disappointed to being very, very open to some new opportunities.”
A Chavis defense combining with a Leach offense could force the rest of the SEC to do a lot of things it wouldn’t want to do for, oh, eight, 10, 12 more years.
