The third time was not the charm.
Once again, Tennessee needed a coach and the chatter persisted as Butch Jones awaited the inevitable: Cashing buyout checks in the great unknown. (Or Tuscaloosa, anyway.)
Like every other Tennessee coaching search in the past decade, the Grumors started early and continued in spite of evidence they were little more than idle chatter.
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Regardless of how close Jon Gruden was or was not to becoming Tennessee’s head coach this time or any of the other times, every Vols fan had an opinion. And plenty crossed their fingers and hoped a Super Bowl winner who’d married a Knoxville native and Tennessee alum would sign up to return to the place he’d worked as a graduate assistant more than three decades earlier.
“It seemed pretty surreal whenever it came time to fire Butch and look for a new coach again and everybody started up the Grumors again,” said Beau Lawson, a 35-year-old soft drink lab technician from Cleveland, Tenn. “Like, nah, surely we’re not gonna do this again, are we?”
They did.
The Vols’ near month-long coaching search almost two years ago devolved into a debacle, costing then-athletic director John Currie his job before Phil Fulmer stepped into the boss’ chair and quickly hired his own target, then-Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt.
But throughout the search, for many Vols’ fans, Gruden was the white whale.
“It was just always odd,” said Mark Nagi, the author of “Decade of Dysfunction,” a book released in the summer of 2018 that chronicled the, well, decade of dysfunction within Tennessee’s athletic department. “We all know Twitter isn’t the real world. If you pay attention to Twitter, then 90 percent of Tennessee fans want Jon Gruden. If you read message boards, that number goes down significantly. … There’s a heck of a lot of Tennessee fans that have been fans for decades, and they make the donations and they never spend a minute on social media or message boards. But they’re invested in the program as much anyone else, they just don’t talk about it publicly.
“But if I had to put a number on it, I’d say it was in the 10 to 20 percent range that would have been like, ‘Hey, Gruden would be great. You know, I’d be I’d be totally down with it.’ ”
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Gruden hadn’t been a coach in a decade, finding a comfortable home in the Monday Night Football booth and earning a reported $6.5 million annually to do it, making him ESPN’s highest-paid employee. A month after Tennessee hired Pruitt, Gruden did what many said he would never do: He left the booth for the sidelines.
It took a 10-year, $100 million NFL contract to get him to do it, but he’s now in his second season as the Oakland Raiders’ head coach.
In that span, both Pruitt and Gruden have amassed six total wins for their respective teams, but a lot has happened in The Bay and on Rocky Top, with two rebooted rosters, a lot of losses and a pair of frustrated fan bases.
The Athletic caught up with a handful of Tennessee fans who were in that “10 to 20 percent” and wanted to see Gruden patrolling a college sideline for the first time since 1989 and at their favorite school for the first time since 1987.
The relationship in the 22 months since? It’s complicated.
When Lawson thinks about Tennessee football, he thinks about the Batman villain Bane, and his memorable monologue from “The Dark Knight Rises.”
You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”
Lawson was raised on baseball and didn’t really become a Tennessee football fan until Lane Kiffin’s arrival.
“I got my first taste of heartache when he left,” Lawson said.
He’s still waiting to see even his first division title. He’s already seen seven losing seasons and may make it eight this fall.
“I wanted the splash hire,” he said of the 2017 search.
Jon Gruden is 6-14 so far in his return to the Raiders. (Thomas J. Russo / USA Today)As much as anything, Tennessee hiring Gruden would have been exactly that.
Lawson had seen what he called the “bargain bin” hire of Derek Dooley. And he thought both the Jones and Pruitt hirings were “lackluster” initially.
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The entertainment value would be undeniable for every fan. The actual games? Certainly up for debate.
“It would be talked about, but it’d be like Jim Harbaugh. Would he really do anything?” said Kacy Kelly, a Tennessee fan from Charleston, S.C. “He could recruit. I think our offense would be better than our defense, but I just always thought it would be ridiculous, funny and entertaining.”
And there may have been value in that alone, even if the results weren’t what fans hoped for. For Michigan, this has been a major part of the Harbaugh experience, even as the tradition of frustrating losses to Ohio State on the final weekend of the regular season has continued.
“You would have heard Tennessee more on the national scene, even if they were still in this level of mediocrity. The year that Lane Kiffin was here, Tennessee went 7-6. There aren’t a lot of 7-6 teams that got the kind of attention that that 2009 Tennessee team got,” Nagi said. “That was because you had a personality like Lane. If Jon Gruden had been here, I think that that would have put Tennessee more on a national stage and would have helped you with recruiting.”
Gruden has been a constant obsession within the state during the Vols’ long-standing tradition of coaching searches in the past decade. Opinions varied, but everyone had interest.
“It wasn’t really about Jon Gruden the coach. It was really about what Gruden represented. That was national recognition and power,” said Janna Abraham, a Tennessee alum living in Los Angeles who also produces licensed merchandise for fans. “I think fans desperately wanted to believe that Tennessee’s program was not only cemented in history, but that it still held a place of relevance in the modern era of football, too. So you know, the Grumors, we got all caught up in that, but I don’t really think fans were looking at ability as a coach, it was something much bigger than that. They were thinking about the statement it would make if somebody of his pedigree and stature took the job.
“And it would have wiped the slate clean of all the Kiffin and Dooley and Lyle (Butch Jones) errors that happened, and all that hurt of the last seven years would have been gone in an instant if Gruden took that job. The pride fans have in their heart, they were hoping it would be based on real events, and not just yesteryear. It was more about validation. Fans needed it. We were desperate for it. And we’re still looking for it.”
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Jim Winn, a real estate agent in Gaithersburg, Md., felt strongly enough about Gruden to email Tennessee officials with his suggestion.
“You needed a big shot in the arm. I was all for making a major splash and infusing some confidence in the institution and, of course, the fan base,” he said. “He’s been a winner and has a great NFL track record, and he’s well connected around the around the whole country. … If he would have been the head coach, you’re looking at I think a recruiting coup. He could have really been a dynamic person, a face who would obviously attract a lot of amazing talent that just want to come play for him because he was here. And I think the staff he’d bring with him would be would be an amazing staff.”
Winn was on board with the Pruitt hire and still is, despite the struggles.
“The biggest thing is I trust Fulmer,” Winn said. “He’s the perfect AD we need to have from a cultural standpoint. Leaders influence culture and I trust Fulmer. He loves UT. He loves this state. Love the organization and wants to make everything good again. So Pruitt being a hand-picked guy from Fulmer, I trust that.”
Davis Lovell, a junior supply chain management major at Tennessee, also wanted to see Gruden hired.
“That was someone I was super excited for. Now, did I think it was realistic? Probably not,” Lovell said. “But if John Currie wasn’t serious about Gruden or didn’t think he would come, he should have shot down those rumors immediately. His tenure here was obviously short for a reason.”
Both Pruitt and Gruden have spent the majority of their tenures turning over their roster. In Pruitt’s case, it’s been trolling the transfer market and junior colleges to supplement a top-15 recruiting class from 2019 that featured immediate contributors like linebacker Henry To’o To’o, offensive linemen Darnell Wright and Wanya Morris and running back Eric Gray.
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Gruden, meanwhile, drew criticism for trading stars like linebacker Khalil Mack to the Bears and receiver Amari Cooper to the Cowboys. The Raiders also traded for receiver Antonio Brown, who was released after one of the wildest offseasons for any player in history, then signed with Patriots and was released after reports of various allegations, including sexual assault, surfaced.
“It’s a mixed bag. Certainly some head-scratching trades. Trading away Khalil Mack, I mean, granted, they got a king’s ransom for him. But I thought they fleeced the Cowboys on the Amari Cooper trade,” Winn said. “Clearly, he wants to clean up, get his own people and his own picks. I like the idea of a full reboot, and that’s what they’ve done.”
The Raiders drafted a pair of Clemson players in the first two rounds last spring, defensive lineman Clelin Ferrell and cornerback Trayvon Mullen. They also drafted receiver Hunter Renfrow in the fifth round.
“He obviously wants that Dabo culture,” Kelly said. “I think any situation where you have to start and develop a culture, it just takes time. He’s trying to change the culture, just like we’re doing here. But people aren’t patient now. They’re so demanding. When people are making so much money, fans expect things to happen quicker.”
The Raiders’ 4-12 debut featured a 2-2 finish, with a win over the Steelers. This year, the Raiders are 2-2, and bounced back from two ugly losses by beating Indianapolis on the road. They traveled to London this week to face the Bears.
Tennessee, meanwhile, notched a pair of eyebrow-raising victories last season by beating Auburn on the road and defending home field against a top-15 Kentucky team, but the Vols have lost their past five games against FBS competition since the Kentucky upset, including a home loss to Georgia State as a 26-point favorite. They are now 25-point home underdogs heading into Saturday’s game against No. 3 Georgia.
“I’ve emotionally unplugged from Tennessee,” Lawson said. “And now I just sit back with my popcorn and watch the disaster unfold.”
Jeremy Pruitt is 6-10 so far at Tennessee. (Kim Klement / USA Today)No one The Athletic spoke to believed Gruden’s arrival was imminent, though most believed there was some conversation between the two parties, or at least representatives for them.
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“Honestly, I think he’s one of the worst things that happened to the Tennessee program,“ Abraham said. “I don’t care if this is on record or not. I truly believe he was talking about taking that job. I think some of the stories probably got a little more blown up than they should have been. But I do think he was in the mix. And I think he liked being the center of attention with the fan base and with the media. And ultimately he knew he was never going to take it. But he liked the gratification of that noise. And in the end, I think it hurt everybody because it just took off like a rocket ship. The fan base looks crazy and delusional. And then you’re gonna be set up for disappointment. So after he backed out, I just, I don’t give a damn what he does.”
Abraham said she hasn’t followed Gruden’s team or work at all in Oakland and didn’t watch a second of “Hard Knocks” on HBO this summer, but the existence and impact of those Grumors is still felt, even if Grumors never fully gave way to Gruden.
“Both (Currie and Dave Hart) were more than willing to let those ‘Grumors’ go,” Nagi said. “And because of that, it made a lot of Tennessee fans think that it was possible. Had Dave Hart or John Currie right at the beginning of all these coaching searches said, what everybody and what they knew and what Jon Gruden knew which was, ‘You know, Jon Gruden is part of our Tennessee family, we love Jon Gruden and he’s great for the Vols. But it’s just not going to happen.’ Had they done something like that at the beginning, then I think Jon Gruden would be held in much higher esteem among Tennessee fans. I think the Tennessee fans felt led on and they kind of felt like they were just being used as a stepping stone to either an NFL gig or getting a raise at ESPN. And I think that they finally had their fill of it.”
Abraham said even if Tennessee had an opening and Gruden expressed real interest, she wouldn’t want him to coach the Vols.
“Because he damaged the program,” she said.
Gruden’s initial struggles upon returning to the NFL, whether he turns it around or not, have also cooled the lust and regret for the partnership that wasn’t. The Vols’ white whale is in full view now, which wasn’t the case for the past decade. And the results haven’t been impressive yet.
The Vols’ 1-3 start has spawned plenty of criticism and questions about Pruitt’s future on Rocky Top. But if Tennessee does eventually make a change, it may be the first Grumor-free coaching search in Knoxville in a long time.
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“Of course, if all of a sudden, the Raiders went crazy and he wins another Super Bowl,” Nagi said, “maybe they feel a little bit different.”
(Top photo: Skip Williams / Getty Images)
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