Gate 21

I’m sure that Phillip Fulmer knew that things were not going to be easy when he found out that rising-Senior Britton Colquitt was arrested for DUI and fleeing the scene of an accident on Sunday. I doubt even Fulmer thought they would be this difficult.

I, along with many others, have come out publicly to decry the fact that Colquitt was not dismissed from the team. I stopped just short of saying that Fulmer should resign or be fired as a result of the off-field incidents which have plagued the Tennessee Volunteers football program over the last five weeks.

The Knoxville News Sentinel’s John Adams did not stop short.

Adams writes:

The University of Tennessee football program desperately needs new leadership. And I’m not suggesting that the next quarterback needs to be more vocal or the team captains need to be more demonstrative.

UT’s leadership problem is at the top.

Maybe you’re way ahead of me on this. Maybe you realized as much after Florida beat the Vols by 39 points last September, and a mediocre Alabama team beat them by 24 in October.

Memphis Commercial Appeal sports columnist Ron Higgins didn’t need to see the Alabama game. After the Florida game, he wrote that longtime UT football coach Phillip Fulmer should be fired.

Was his assessment premature? Maybe.

Was it wrong? No.

I reached the same conclusion Sunday night for a different reason. It’s not just about the won-loss record. It’s about the arrest record.

More significantly, it’s about how Fulmer has responded to the arrests of his players.

…

You can’t blame Fulmer for the crimes committed by his players and former players. But he is responsible for disciplining players while they’re on his team.

And he has failed miserably at that.

Two different people have e-mailed me in the last week and wrote that they will no longer donate money to the program because of the succession of embarrassing off-the-field incidents. Maybe they’re serious; maybe they were just venting.

But it’s just a matter of time before a major contributor decides he has had enough and refuses to throw good money after bad players.

When a football program is winning big, virtually everything is forgiven. This just in: UT isn’t winning big. It hasn’t won an SEC championship since 1998. It hasn’t been to a BCS bowl since 1999. It hasn’t finished in the top 10 since 2001.

Combine that with what’s happening off the field, and it’s apparent UT needs to make a change. Athletic director Mike Hamilton and Fulmer should work out a deal by which the coach resigns after the 2008 season.

Fulmer has had a good run. He has won a national championship and two conference titles. In 15 seasons, he has won fewer than eight games only once.

But when you weigh what he’s done against what’s going on now, the conclusion is obvious. UT football has a serious image problem, which will affect fundraising and recruiting. If you want to change that image, you need to change the coach.

Many UT fans get squeamish at the thought of hiring a new coach. They’ve seen other successful programs drop off significantly after changing coaches. They’re afraid they might get the wrong guy.

In fact, they already have the wrong guy.

In my last post on this subject, I expressed my extreme displeasure over the fact that Colquitt was not dismissed. Unlike Adams, I said that if there is any other incident in the near-term, then Fulm