Even by Tennessee standards, this is amazing. The Volunteers had reached an agreement with Greg Schiano to be their football coach. After a firestorm of online-fanned protests, they’ve reneged on the agreement.
The protests involved a sketchy link between Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State defensive coordinator convicted of rape and child molestation in 2012, and Schiano, who worked at Penn State from 1990 through 1996. It has been reported -- though never proved -- that a fellow assistant told Mike McQuery, the whistle-blower whose alert went unheeded, that a third assistant had told him that, years before, he’d seen Sandusky “doing something” in the shower with a boy. It’s believed that Assistant No. 3 was Schiano.
Schiano has denied the allegation. He has been charged with nothing. He's currently the defensive coordinator at Ohio State, a university in Penn State's conference. As an unnamed athletic director told Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports, "Within the industry, there was an understanding that (Schiano) had been cleared."
And yet: The protests grew so impassioned over the course of Sunday afternoon that the Vols have told Schiano’s agent they couldn’t hire him -- this after they’d all but hired him. (Both sides had signed a letter of understanding.)
On the Knoxville campus, a rock was painted with this message: “Schiano covered up child rape at Penn State.” One protester told the Knoxville News-Sentinel: “Perception is nine-tenths reality. It doesn't matter what the truth is, it's what people think is the truth.”
Unclear is how much of this umbrage has to do with Schiano not being Jon Gruden, the Big Name long linked -- tenuously if not flat-out wishfully -- to the Tennessee job. Gruden won a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay. Schiano had a 68-67 record at Rutgers, which is a tough place to win, and got fired after two years at Tampa Bay.
Tennessee is seeking its fourth coach since Philip Fulmer was shoved aside in 2008. Lane Kiffin stayed a year. Derek Dooley lasted three. Butch Jones got five. Tennessee just finished SEC play 0-8; it has lost to Vanderbilt four of the past six seasons. On Sunday it saw Dan Mullen of Mississippi State pick Gainesville, Fla., over Knoxville, Tenn. Now this.
As the AD told Thamel: “With the way the fan base has responded, who will be willing to take that job?”
If the protests were truly the function of righteous indignation, that’d be one thing. But the suspicion will forever linger that this outcry was fueled by Tennessee not hiring a big enough name. Which means the list of names eager to coach the Vols just got shorter.
About the Author
