Fulmer talks football at B&G Club

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It’s an unfamiliar feeling for Phillip Fulmer.

For the first time in his adult life, the 7 o’clock hour of an October evening doesn’t find him concluding practice, reviewing film or preparing for an upcoming opponent.

Instead, the former Tennessee football coach is eating green beans and turkey in the darkened gymnasium — transformed into a banquet hall — at the Scott County Boys & Girls Club, where he is the keynote speaker for the Club’s annual hall of fame induction ceremony.

“I haven’t had a fall off since the 6th grade,” the 59-year-old coach says.

That was the fall before Fulmer began his playing career in middle school; a career that would ultimately lead the Winchester, Tenn., native to his home state’s flagship university on scholarship as an offensive lineman.

Fulmer dedicated a lifetime to Tennessee, including 17 years as head coach, a tenure that saw him amass a record of 152 wins against just 52 losses and win the 1998 national championship. But after his second losing season in four years and a decade without a BCS bowl appearance, Fulmer was forced out last fall.

So why is Fulmer in such a hurry to conclude his speaking engagement and hit the beaten trail back to Knoxville? You might say he’s taking advantage of being unemployed during the autumn months.

“I wish I could say I have a good reason (for the hurried exit),” Fulmer said. “The truth is, I’m going to go out in the morning bright and early and go goose hunting.”

That’s the new life for one of college football’s all-time winningest coaches. Instead of trying to dissect the Xs and Os of defensive schemes employed by Alabama and Florida, he’s attempting to decipher the spawning habits of rainbow trout and the migration patterns of waterfowl.

“I fished the Clinch (River, in Campbell and Anderson counties) just the other day,” he said.

But Fulmer isn’t ready to retire to his oft-mentioned piece of property by a Montana trout stream. Not just yet. His perusal of East Tennessee’s hunting and shooting sport opportunities is merely a reprieve; a sabbatical of sorts. The two-time SEC champion has made it clear: He wants to coach again.

Fulmer’s name has been mentioned in connection with anticipated vacancies at Memphis and Louisville. But wherever he winds up, he already has his eye on his right-hand man.

“When I get my next job, I’m going to hire Dr. Jerry Punch as my offensive coordinator,” he joked. Dr. Punch is a Scott Countian by default. Well, sorta. He married the daughter of Mary Fields, Scott County’s first lady of non-profits. In addition to his duties as an ESPN commentator, Punch coaches his son’s youth league team in Knoxville. He was among the several hundred in attendance at Monday’s event, along with former U.S. Sen. Howard Baker, state Rep. Les Winningham and former Scott High and Huntsville coach Jack Diggs, each of whom Fulmer spoke glowingly about.

With his future coaching gig as of yet uncertain, and the goose hunt still several hours away, Fulmer spoke of the importance of the Boys & Girls Club and delighted the crowd with war stories from some of the lighter moments of his tenure at Tennessee -- years when he made like a fiery Baptist minister with famed locker room rallies and the Vols were a perennial contender for the SEC championship.

His favorite team at Tennessee, Fulmer said, was the 1994 team; a team that finished the season 8-4 after starting 1-3.

“The 1998 team was obviously special,” he said. “And the 2001 team, when we would’ve gone back to the national championship if we had beaten LSU in the conference championship.

“But that 1994 team laid the foundation for the next 4-to-5 years, which turned out to be the winningest era in Tennessee football history,” he added.

In early October 1994, it looked doubtful that Fulmer would even be around for the next 4-to-5 years. Quarterback Jermaine Colquitt went down with a season-ending injury in the season opener at UCLA, a game Tennessee lost 26-24. There was a 30-0 loss when Florida came to town.

The Vols did recover long enough to upset Georgia, but then backup quarterback Todd Helton went down with an injury.

“You can imagine what the Knoxville talk shows were like,” Fulmer said. “There were a lot of people doubting us. A lot of people weren’t happy.

“I went to Coach (Doug) Dickey (then UT’s athletics director), and I said, ‘Coach, I don’t know if we can win any more games. You’re still gonna love me, aren’t you?’

“He said, ‘Phillip, we’re gonna love you, but we’re sure gonna miss you.’”

The most troubling game of his career, Fulmer said, was the 1993 game at Alabama. With an opportunity to end their long losing streak to their biggest rival, the Vols found themselves leading by 16 points with just four minutes remaining in the game. But David Palmer single-handedly led the Crimson Tide back. The game ended in a tie. For Tennessee, it might as well have been a loss.

“I was usually very good with the media, the coaches and the players before I had a chance to watch the film,” Fulmer said. But on that night, he said, he let his emotions get the better of him.

“And I had forgotten that I promised [wife] Vickie to stay in Birmingham with some friends of hers that night,” he added.

“The next morning, Vickie wanted to go out and eat breakfast. I said, ‘no. I’m not going to stay in this town for breakfast. We can get a sausage biscuit on the road.’

“I made the mistake of getting a Birmingham newspaper and reading about the game. That made me mad all over again,” he said. “I guess I snapped at Vickie a time or two. She finally stopped the car on the side of the interstate and said, ‘Phillip, everybody in the state of Tennessee hates you today. Except me. And you’re about to lose me.’”

Fulmer even gets a chuckle out of the beginning of the end: Tennessee’s loss to LSU in the 2007 SEC Championship Game.

“After the game, as we were leaving the stadium, I bumped into this lady dressed in orange from head to toe,” he said. “I said, ‘excuse me; no offense.’ She said, ‘Yeah, coach. Not much defense, either.’”

It isn’t that Fulmer has necessarily taken his firing at Tennessee in stride. There has been some bitterness. It was recently revealed that he has yet to accept an invitation by new coach Lane Kiffin to sit down and chat, for example. But Fulmer takes the old lemons-to-lemonade philosphy.

“It’s not what happens,” he said. “It’s what you do with what happens.
It’s what you do with your God-given opportunities. Pushing things under a rug isn’t going to work too well in the long run.”

Fulmer told Boys & Girls Club donors, hall inductees and their families that it is important for men and women to step up and be role models for today’s generation.

“Our young people need men to guide them, and women, too,” he said. “They need examples of how to make manly decisions; of how to respectfully treat a young lady. Who’s going to do it, if not us?

“This is what I refer to as the MTV generation,” he added. “Whatever feels good now, do it. Morals and leadership are eroding in our country. It’s important we stand up to that.”

To that end, the Boys & Girls Club can have a positive impact.

“Over my 17 years as a head coach and 13 years as an assistant coach before that, I easily had 300-to-400 young men who came through the Boys & Girls Club; who wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been there.

“The impact we had as a staff was important because we tried to make it a family atmosphere. That’s what you have here in Scott County.”