When whispers of impropriety were first directed toward Tennessee over the past year or so, it initially looked as if a series of impermissible calls could garner Pearl the reputation of Kelvin Sampson Lite. A spot of bother? Sure. But probably not enough to buy a ticket to the ballpark of fireable offenses.
After all, if there was ever an obvious target of the NCAA’s microscope in the SEC East from the outset, it was John (“The Teflon Don”) Calipari. If Cal spent as much time teaching his players how to shoot free throws as he did corralling inexplicably-cobbled-with-blue-chips recruiting classes, he would probably have just vacated a national title before arriving in Lexington.
But at least Cal knows the 11th Commandment: “Don’t get caught.” Since last summer, Pearl has accomplished the unthinkable by cementing his legacy as a bigger cheat than even Vol fans could have retroactively dreamed Lane Kiffin to be.
Credit Craft’s family for at least having the common sense to back away from the train wreck while they still could. When Pearl cried like a bitch on national TV for his foibles (or rather, for getting caught), Big Orange Nation would have liked to believe the man had to have been humbled at rock bottom.
Not so. The straw that will likely break his program’s back was his improper contact with a recruit just a few days later. While technically a small infraction, it incontrovertibly showed he had zero remorse for his ways. That he would do what it took to win at all costs, to recruit at all costs just like always.
Under new NCAA prez Mark Emmert, college athletics, like Wall Street, faces a virtually unprecedented culture of corruption in the modern era. But from lowly bloggers to ESPN’s thorough Dana O’Neil, there can surely be no precedent found for a school terminating a coach’s contract but not his employment, but that is where Tennessee stands with lame-duck AD Mike Hamilton and his “Artful Dodger” of hoops.
By August, Pearl will likely have fallen on his sword or the NCAA, with Emmert playing the Robespierre role in the Terror of the collegiate rule-breaking elite, not only issuing Pearl at least a two-year show-cause penalty but also likely punishing the Vols program further for every day, week, month that Hamilton doesn’t drag Pearl out to the guillotine himself.
As for the wantonly delusional faction on Rocky Top that wishes to see Pearl remain chief of their bastion of anarchy under a shroud of competitively apologetic relativism, a popular hypothesis is that UT’s newest assistant, Houston Fancher, could stick around as interim coach for a year or two while Pearl and his other assistants sustain their inevitable NCAA suspension for their respectively complicit roles in the scandal. (Ironically, Fancher was the ill-fated successor at Appalachian State to Pearl’s predecessor at UT, Buzz Peterson, when Peterson left Boone, N.C., to take over as head coach at Tulsa a year prior to his move to Knoxville.)
Otherwise, if a regime change is indeed in the cards, conventional wisdom via popular local punditry is that the university (likely without Hamilton calling the shots) will seek a Pearl clone as best it can, complete with a dynamic recruiting flair, an up-tempo system, a defiant swagger and youthful vigor above all other criteria. But it would be a mistake.
The perfect candidate at this point in time is a UT alum who has been coaching in the state for three decades, tallying over 600 wins in that time frame. He would return respectability to Rocky Top both on and off the court, churning maximum production out of an inevitably rebuilding roster while jettisoning Pearl’s bad eggs. His track record suggests he would certainly perform a 180 on graduation rates at a program which has long been a laughingstock where student-athlete character and integrity are concerned.
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