Congrats, Tennessee — You're the biggest joke in sports

KNOXVILLE — Congratulations, Tennessee. You’ve set a new standard this week for college athletics dysfunction.

That’s saying something on the day the NCAA hit Ole Miss with another year of bowl ban and show-cause penalties for all coaches named in that investigation. But Ole Miss is a picture of harmony and prosperity compared with Tennessee. Tennessee is the biggest joke in sports.

The hopeless Cleveland Browns, owned by powerful Tennessee booster Jimmy Haslam, can take heart today that at least they aren’t the Tennessee Volunteers.

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The joke is unfairly on long-suffering Vols fans, even as some of them celebrated the latest bizarre twist: John Currie is out as athletic director, just eight months into the job, and Phillip Fulmer is in as athletic director. Currie is technically “suspended,” UT chancellor Beverly Davenport said in a Friday press conference that was fittingly surreal.

But that’s just contractual mumbo jumbo — he’s out and Fulmer is in, full time. All of the sudden. Fulmer, the guy who was fired as head coach in 2008. The guy who tried but could not get the AD job in the search that lured Currie from Kansas State. The guy who, according to the media person who is closer than anyone in our business to Washington State coach Mike Leach, undercut Currie’s attempt to hire Leach and save the day after this series of gaffes.

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Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Feldman wrote Leach’s 2013 autobiography and broke the story Thursday night of a deal with Tennessee nearly consummated. UT fans, after starting a social-media firestorm Sunday to deny the hire of Greg Schiano, after suffering the rejections this week of Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy and Purdue’s Jeff Brohm, after celebrating the embarrassing reality of N.C. State’s Dave Doeren turning down the job, were excited.

Leach is an offensive innovator who has done unprecedented things at Texas Tech and Washington State. He’s the kind of personality who can overcome the kind of incompetent and fractured leadership that has been revealed at Tennessee. He’s also the kind of late move that might have saved Currie’s job.

Instead, Currie was out as of Friday morning. Why? Davenport said she asked him to return to Knoxville on Thursday and … she never really finished the thought. She said she wouldn’t talk about coaches at other schools. The implication was insubordinate behavior.

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“It’s been a series of events,” she said. “There’s not one single event.”

There were no real answers Friday, just applause for Fulmer as he took his seat next to Davenport, several members of his family standing nearby in an emergency city council meeting passed off as a coronation.

On the three-hour drive up to Knoxville, I talked to athletic directors from four different conferences and the consensus was this: No one has ever seen anything quite like this, and this entire situation is symptomatic one of the biggest fears for ADs — boosters using the people in charge as pawns in a power game rather than trusting them to do their jobs.

Rejoice about Currie’s ouster if you must. The “Fire Currie” chants rang out at a Tennessee basketball game this week. He clearly botched this when he misread what the reaction would be to Schiano.

But getting rid of Currie is like taking care of the pesky hangnail on a foot infected with gangrene. I also talked to Feldman on Friday, and he believes Leach was ready to take this job, was still interested as of Friday morning and blames Fulmer for undermining it.

Why would Fulmer do that? Maybe he just doesn’t believe Leach was the right fit? Maybe he had moved from the outskirts of the search to the inside and perceived Currie as going rogue? Maybe the coronation was in jeopardy if Currie actually did something right?

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Currie was on Mike Hamilton’s staff when Fulmer was fired in 2008, and Fulmer wanted the AD job when Currie was hired. Five weeks after he was hired, Currie told me he had not yet spoken with Fulmer. Two months after that, UT hired Fulmer as “special adviser” to President Joe DiPietro. The elements for a Roman tragedy mixed with a bad reality show were in place.

Fulmer is a Vols legend, the 1998 national championship coach, and his firing certainly looks like a mistake nearly a decade later. But there are valid questions about him as the long-term athletic director, a job that rarely goes to the retired ball coach anymore.

He said the right things about returning to championship football and said he wants to be a “stabilizing and unifying force.”

Friday will be remembered as the end of a nightmare if he’s successful. The standard is Mike Leach — Vols fans will have real cause to celebrate when Fulmer brings in a coach at least as good as him.

Contact Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.