Strange: UT’s tough times have competition

By and by, hard times come a knockin’ at the door. So the song goes.

This is true in life, for us average folks: for you, Joe the Fan, and for me, Joe the Sportswriter. It’s true for Donald Trump or Madonna.

It inevitably applies to college football programs as well.

No school is immune. The only variable is the degree of difficulty. Sometimes it’s a blown engine that can be overhauled. Sometimes it’s a head-on collision with a dump truck.

Listen to any coach long enough and you’ll hear him say it’s not the adversity that counts. It’s how you deal with it.

Tennessee is up to its shoulder pads in hard times. As Halloween 2008 approaches, trick is a 25-to-1 favorite over treat.

From 1989 until somewhere in the 2000s, the Vols had it good. No, make that great. But it was bound to happen. It happens everywhere.

Depending on your loyalty to coach Phillip Fulmer, you can debate when the decline became alarming: 2002? 2005? A 29-9 loss to Alabama on Saturday night?

The current state of the program wouldn’t have seemed possible in the late ’90s.

But look around at the landscape.

When Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer were rolling up wins and trophies at Oklahoma all those years, Sooner fans couldn’t have envisioned the program sinking to 23-33 from 1994-98.

When Tom Osborne stepped down at Nebraska in 1997, the Cornhuskers seemed invincible. They haven’t been, though, not for a decade.

Southern Cal was a national powerhouse for years. But for most of the 1980s and ’90s, the Trojans were mediocre. It took hiring Pete Carroll in 2001 to restore the glory.

Notre Dame’s luster faded unthinkably as Gerry Faust, Bob Davie and Ty Willingham all failed to win 60 percent of their games. The jury is out on Charlie Weis.

Texas, with its unmatched resources, sank into a confounding slump from 1986-97. Penn State had four losing seasons in five years between 2000-2004.

Sizzling Florida State cooled off to 22-17 from 2005-07. Mighty Miami is 16-16 in its past 32 games.

Ohio State has kept the wheels on better than most. But when John Cooper went 14-10 in 1999-2000 — after going 43-7 the previous four seasons — he was gone. (A 2-10-1 record against Michigan was a mitigating circumstance.)

As for Michigan, the Wolverines have come closest to being bullet-proof. Currently 2-6, they’re likely bound for their first losing season since 1967.

Standards are higher nowhere than the SEC. Going 23-15 got Ron Zook fired after three years at Florida. His successor, Urban Meyer, is 37-9.

When Vince Dooley stepped down at Georgia in 1988, the Bulldogs waned for more than a decade before hiring Mark Richt.

LSU struggled for the better part of two decades before Nick Saban restored order. Now he’s famously doing the same at Alabama, which had been in a funk since Gene Stallings retired in 1996.

Put in perspective, Tennessee’s fall hasn’t been as hard or as prolonged as a lot of other marquee programs.

At least not yet. How UT handles its adversity will determine whether the Vols are in a mere slump, a recession or headed for a full-blown depression.

Virtually all of the proud programs mentioned above addressed their hard times in like manner. They changed coaches.

Often, they didn’t get it right the first time and changed again. For every Meyer or Carroll there’s been a Ray Goff or a Curly Hallman.

Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden are two notable exceptions who had the clout to survive a downturn. Both are icons, apparently with coach-for-life status.

In 16 years, mostly very good years, Fulmer hasn’t attained that kind of immortality.

Mike Strange may be reached at 865-342-6276 or strangem@knoxnews.com.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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