How will Tennessee celebrate anniversary of John Currie hiring?
John Adams
Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of Tennesseehiring John Currie as its athletic director, so you’re probably wondering how the Vols plan to celebrate the occasion.
Before going any further, I should mention that Phillip Fulmer is now UT’s athletic director. But that shouldn’t prevent anyone from planning a one-year anniversary party for Currie.
An athletic department is nothing like a marriage. Although being married to two people is generally frowned on by our judicial system, there’s no rule against having two athletic directors at the time.
And it’s worth noting that UT’s athletic department is doing just as well with two athletic directors as it did with one.
More:A month later, UT says suspended athletic director John Currie still making $17K a week
Chancellor Beverly Davenport deserves much of the credit for how well the two-AD system has worked the past two months. Much of its success is based on how she had outlined the duties.
Fulmer goes to the office, attends Tennessee sporting events, serves as the face of the football program when the new coach isn’t available and collects a check regularly from UT. Currie doesn’t go to the office, isn’t required to attend Tennessee sporting events, stays away from the football program and collects a check regularly from UT.
See. No overlapping duties.
For greater clarity, please note that Fulmer is an acting athletic director, and Currie is a suspended athletic director. You might wonder, “What’s the difference in a suspended AD and a fired AD?”
One answer: A suspended athletic director (SAD) can’t draw unemployment pay.
Another answer: You don’t have anniversary parties for fired athletic directors.
Party poopers might consider it out of place to celebrate the anniversary of an employee who has been suspended. But that’s because they live in terror of someone having a good time.
More:John Currie: A timeline of the former Tennessee athletic director's tenure
Since I'm not interested in their agendas, I have a few celebratory topics for Currie's first-year anniversary.
In his introductory press conference, he raised the bar for an athletic department whose rallying cry might as well have been: “Mediocre or bust.”
Currie said Tennessee "can and should be the very best athletics program in the country." And he said that with a straight face.
Currie also didn’t need much time to figure out that Tennessee couldn’t be the best athletic program in the country if it had Dave Serrano as its baseball coach. So, in keeping with his quest for sports excellence, Currie encouraged him to move on.
But Currie proved he could be methodical in firing coaches when necessary.
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He didn’t merely check the 2016 results and conclude that football coach Butch Jones should be fired for having lost to Vanderbilt. He let the evidence build up over the course of the 2017 season before determining that Jones had more in common with Serrano than Nick Saban. So he fired him, too.
Of course, you can’t just fire your way to becoming the best program in the country. More is required.
More is what Currie delivered when he reinstated “Lady Vols” as the team name for all UT women’s sports teams.
That’s yet another reason to celebrate Currie’s one-year anniversary. Just make sure your party venue is off campus.
John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com. Follow him at: Twitter.com/johnadamskns.
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