in our humble big orange opinion

Well, that was a bummer. We're not talking just about the Michigan game - the whole season was a bummer. We don't know how you can beat two top five ranked teams and then the next week lose to two unranked teams, but that was our UT men's basketball this year: Jekyll and Hyde.

Unlike the rest of Vol Nation, we're willing to give Bruce Pearl one more chance. Before he came to TN we would jump up and down if we even made the NCAA tournament -- now we expect it. He's had better results than past UT men's basketball coaches. While he did mess up big time violating NCAA rules, he has and will pay the price (and so will the school in loss of scholarships, most likely).

Mike Hamilton is the bigger problem with the University. He needs to go. His tenure as Athletic Director has been a disaster with the exception of hiring Pearl (which doesn't look as good as it once did). The Kiffin disaster, various other issues, no oversight of his coaches with NCAA compliance, and just the general used-car-salesman approach he has to press conferences really makes us want him gone. More so than we want Pearl gone at this point.

The jury is still out on the Dooley hire. They did get better as the year went on, and he has a good recruiting class -- but it's too soon for a final say. We're a little bit leary of giving the Dooley hire credit to Hamilton as there were very little choices of coaches who wanted to come clean up after Kiffin.

The perfect person to replace Hamilton would be former coach Phil Fulmer. While we were ready for him to move away from coaching our football team, we think he'd be great in the role of Athletic Director. He loves the university, would be able to connect with alumni support, is well-respected by other ADs, good with the media, and would try to hire coaches whose actions won't embarrass the Vol Nation.