Death of a Fan Base: Tennessee’s Fans, Not Coach, Are Ones On The Hot Seat
by Scott Felts
I haven’t sat down to write about the Vols since November first of last season. That makes me, part of the problem. Granted I have been to sixty seven straight home games. I have my vehicle covered bumper to bumper in Tennessee checkerboards and orange and white and I did once propose marriage in the north end zone of Neyland Stadium. But in my opinion I’ve felt my fandom slip in the past few seasons. Chances are, if you’ll be big enough to admit it, yours has too.
As Tennessee fans, we have experienced six years of absolute hell. More years than that to be honest, but every article has to have a starting point, and I choose the season that saw the Vols have a 5-6 record for the first time in 17 years as mine. The average attendance in 2005 was second in the country for Tennessee at 107,593.
Maybe this is where your fandom started to slip. Maybe it was your friend or brother who started to falter first. Maybe the guy down the street that always had the Tennessee flag up, stopped hanging it. In 2006 Tennessee’s attendance dropped to 105,789 and fell to third in the country.
Maybe it was after that. Maybe you hung on just a few more years until the really bad things started happening. After all, the Vols were in the SEC Championship Game in 2007, leading in the fourth quarter. If you waivered in 05, chances are you stepped it back up in 2007. Attendance at Neyland didn’t show that though. It dropped again, this time to 103,918 and forth in the country.
So, let us look to 2008, November 3rd to be exact. Phil Fulmer and Mike Hamilton sit at a table underneath Neyland Stadium and announce that Fulmer will not return as head coach in 2009. After a 152-52 record, 2 SEC Championships and a National Championship, Tennessee lost its favorite son. It also lost more fans. 101,448 was the average attendance in 2008.
Late 2008, December 1st to be exact, Tennessee announced the hiring of Lane Kiffin. Excitement was at an all-time high in 2009. Fans were pouring back into the fold for Tennessee right? They might have been scooping up visors once only worn by arch nemesis Steve Spurrier, but they weren’t coming to football games. The average attendance at Neyland dropped under 100,000 for the first time since that many seats were available, to 99,220 and fifth in the country.
Is this when you started slipping? Was it the two blocked kicks at Alabama on October 24th 2009? How about when the NCAA first started investigating the University for “Hostess Gate” on December 8th 2009?
Maybe football wasn’t even the final straw. On January 1st 2010, just hours after the football team lost to the Virginia Tech Hokies, four Tennessee basketball players were arrested on multiple drug and gun related charges.
Eleven days later, Lane Kiffin leaves Tennessee and takes most of his coaching staff with him. They try to take recruits that haven’t yet made it to class in Knoxville. Between players that left when Fulmer did, were ran off by Kiffin, and then left after Kiffin, the Vols football team has more holes in it than a John Chavis third down defense.
Three days after Kiffin leaves, Mike Hamilton hires Derek Dooley from Louisiana Tech after reportedly being turned down by several coaches at other schools. Dooley, a likeable southern gentleman with a coaching pedigree has only seventeen wins and twenty losses in his head coaching record when he joins the Tennessee family. Many fans jump ship at this point, while others stay on board, but plan their mutiny.
Early in the 2010 football season, basketball coach Bruce Pearl holds a press conference to announce he has lied to the NCAA. He is self-punished by the school, fined and even cries at his press conference, four days before committing another violation which ultimately seals his fate and leads to his eventual firing.
All during this time, the Tennessee baseball team, once able to make trips to the College World Series, can’t make it to the SEC Tournament and eventually loses its head coach because of the futility.
The 2010 Football Vols close out the season well and make it to a bowl game which they lose after the referees restart the game, giving North Carolina a chance to kick a field goal which sent the game into overtime. Average attendance did climb in 2010, all be it meagerly to 99,781, up 561 per game, but now 6th in the country and second in the SEC for the first time in many years.
So far this season the Vols have been over 100,000 fans only once and the 87,758 on a beautiful day October 1st is the lowest total fans to attend a game since the early 1990’s. The current per game average for this season is 94,770.
What do all these numbers mean? I know the country is in a financial crisis. I know there are people out of work, but I also know that doesn’t stop fans from going and seeing something that they are passionate about if they are still as passionate as they were ten years ago.
A lot has happened for Tennessee fans in the last six-plus years. There has been so much that the current players and coaching staff have had to and still have to overcome. But there is also something that hasn’t happened as much, and that is winning games. It’s not happening on the football field, the baseball diamond, and this season, it won’t happen as much on the hardwood.
There are new coaches in all three sports. There is a new Athletic Director. Hell, there is even a new school President. Now is not the time to put any of them on the “hot seat”. It took years to get Tennessee into this mess, and it is going to take years to climb back to the top.
This is where the line gets drawn. This is where you need to decide right now where you are as a fan. Each and every one of you reading this, and the thousands that won’t ever see it are the ones whose seats are hot. This is when you decide if you are ready to ride out the tough times and enjoy the fruits later on, or if you want to move on to a school or team that is winning games now, because let us be honest, there are a lot of “fans” that will only put that sweatshirt on after a win. There are a lot of “fans” that will only drive to Knoxville when the game seems winnable. There are a lot of “fans” that not only aren’t “Giving Their All”, but they are simply giving up.
The Volunteers got their name because Tennesseans were willing to go to war for somebody else. Tennesseans were willing to march halfway across the country and fight Mexico so that Texas could join the United States and people there could have what Tennesseans had.
Don’t worry about whether the coach deserves his salary, or the players deserve their playing time. Worry about whether you deserve to call yourself a Volunteer. Will you go to war figuratively for Tennessee? Will you, through the way you support your team show other team’s fans what we have here in Tennessee? Will you “Give Your All” for Tennessee or will you just give up?
That fire you see isn’t burning to send a message to your coach. That smoke that you smell rolling through the Smokey Mountains isn’t for your coach. That heat you feel isn’t on his seat, it’s on yours. Don’t get burned Vol Nation. Stand up, be proud and be most of all, be Volunteers!
