Rocky Top Keeps Talking About Gruden

One rumor that is getting some legs around east Tennessee is that UT head coach Phil Fulmer may very well get fired this year if he continues to field the kind of team that got their balls handed to them last week against the Gators. The Vols are 1-2 now, the defense looks miserable and Erik Ainge can't push a football further than 15 yards because of his broken finger. The reason I bring this up here and not sobbing it into a pillow is because one of the names being brought up as a possible replacement is Jon Gruden.

Dave Hooker brought it up on his radio show earlier this week, but the rumor goes as far back as last year when John Pennington "jokingly" mentioned it.

For example, about a month ago, a caller on a radio show asked me who Tennessee would go after if this happened to be Phillip Fulmer's last year on The Hill. Jokingly, I said Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden (ignoring the fact that he would take a three million dollar paycut to come to Tennessee).

I thought that was the end of the story until just a couple of days later, when I heard a caller on another show say, "I heard that Tennessee is interested in Jon Gruden." Just last week, another Vol fan approached me and said that Gruden's buying up half the property in Sevier County, his wife (a Sevier County native) wants to come home, and that Gruden doesn't care a lick about "money."

I'm pretty well-connected with the Vol fanbase and I can tell you that when Fulmer's dismissal is brought up, one of the first names mentioned as a replacement is Gruden's. And they actually seem excited when they say it. Again, none of this is any more than bullshit wishlisting by Tennessee fans, but at least now I helped to spread an unsubstantiated rumor about two coaches who haven't been fired yet. We all contribute in our own way.