I got my doctorate at Rutgers while Schiano was there. UT dodged a bullet. He shouldn't have been under consideration at all because of his Penn State/Sandusky ties, but, while embarrassing, they made the right move to pull back after the outcry. My first two years at Rutgers I taught Geography 101 in the second semester as part of my fellowship. This is a gen-ed course at big schools and, it being Rutgers, I was told "C average for the class, please. Grade inflation is for Princeton." I had several football players (including NAME REDACTED) in the course and I immediately started getting pressure from "academic advisers" about their grades for eligibility reasons. It was happening all over campus and the faculty started getting pissed. This is a school that played the first football game (Rutgers vs Princeton, I think) in 1869 and promptly went on an historic 137 year tradition of being the worst team in the country. Schiano was basically trying to flip nerdy Rutgers into an SEC style football school. He took them to 5 bowl games and was regularly winning 8 games a year at the end. I was promoted and moved on to teach at the Bloustein School for Public Policy. You don't see many football players in planning and public policy courses, but it was eye-opening and, in the end, a preparation for coming back to teach at UT where the "academic adviser" pressure is unreal and just barely legal under NCAA rules.

I'm afraid Bill Haslam will be the next UT President. I can't think of a quicker way to destroy what is left of UT. I don't see how it can be stopped.