Picture courtesy of LA Times. https://www.latimes.com/sports/more/la-sp-tennessee-greg-schiano-20171127-story.html
Look, we at Fox Sports Knoxville are not a petty group of people, by any means.
But, allow us this quick victory lap, on behalf of Tennessee fans:
Greg Schiano is out as Ohio State's defensive coordinator, per reports.
Tennessee nearly made Schiano its head coach 13 1/2 months ago.https://t.co/yzTPHYyk3Q— Blake Toppmeyer (@btoppmeyer) January 7, 2019
If you’re reading this, you probably already know the backstory as to why this is significant for Vol fans. But let’s recap, just for kicks:
The Schianamo
In November 2017, since-ousted Tennessee AD John Currie tried to replace fired Tennessee head coach Butch Jones with the now jobless Greg Schiano (there’s a trend in there, somewhere). The idea was met with near unanimous disdain around the entire Tennessee fanbase for an innumerable amount of reasons.
In response, Tennessee fans took it upon themselves to right this wrong by effectively rebelling around the entire state. Fans, students, local business owners, even politicians were coming out in opposition of the hire. Everyone that had some sort of emotional, historical, and/or monetary investment in the program was against it. It’s important to understand these people actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
And like the French commoners storming the Bastille, Tennessee fans revolted against the status quo, resulting in what is now affectionately known as “The Schianamo”. Schiano wasn’t hired, Currie was eventually fired, and the caretakers of Tennessee sports were finally able to make their voices heard.
It was clear to anyone with a brain that things needed to change for Tennessee football.
The Fallout
There were three types of people that didn’t agree with Tennessee fans.
- Contradictory Ohio State fans that believed Schiano was a great coach, but were completely cool with him leaving their program.
- Some members of the national media.
- People that were both one and two. Looking at you, Kirk Herbstreit.
The first group is almost understandable. Remember in elementary school at lunch when everyone would try to trade food at lunch? And how there was always that one kid that tried to convince everyone that his asparagus, tuna, and blue cheese sandwich he had was actually really delicious? That’s what most Ohio State fans seem like when the prospect of Schiano leaving their program comes up.
The second group is the one that gets the most attention. I won’t give any of these nerds the attention they so desperately seek by putting their tweets in this article, but they’re out there. To make it worse, some of them have a sizeable platform, somehow. Yahoo!, CBS, ESPN, and others are all to blame in some capacity for giving certain writers a platform that they don’t deserve.
There are two possible explanations for the folks in the second group. One possible explanation is they are just willingly offering up takes on a subject that they know nothing about. Ignorance has become so commonplace nowadays that it might not seem like a big deal these people were trying to tell Tennessee fans how they should feel about a head coaching hire. But like we established earlier: if you don’t have an emotional, historical, and/or monetary investment in the program, your negative opinion doesn’t carry much weight.
The second possible issue is you’re just a willing mouthpiece trying to get ahead in the profession by writing whatever people in power want you to write.
John Currie texted national reporter Dan Wolken to ask for PR help on the Greg Schiano hire, appeared to called Vols fans "wacko"
(📷 via @DavidWCobb) pic.twitter.com/hOhdP1LkjT
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) March 23, 2018
With people like that running around, honesty and integrity in journalism might actually be dead.
Fortunately, the caretakers are doing their due diligence on Twitter today and making sure all of these people are held accountable.
The Vindication
Spoiler alert: it turns out Vol fans were right.
Apparently, ranking near the bottom-half of the entire country in most defensive categories is enough to get fired as defensive coordinator at Ohio State. To be fair, it’s a reasonable standard at a place like that. It’s also further evidence that Schiano doesn’t have what it takes to succeed at a Power 5 program. Either as an assistant or a head coach.
One thing is for sure after all this: if you still have the audacity to say that Schiano was the guy for Tennessee’s football program after he just got fired from a coordinator job, then I can’t help you.
To make matters worse for Ohio State fans, Schiano’s replacement is a Michigan man. Greg Mattison will be taking over as defensive coordinator at Ohio State. Mattison, who will henceforth be known as “The Other Greg,” was demoted from defensive coordinator to defensive line coach at Michigan nearly four years ago. Apparently, he’ll be getting a second chance at Ohio State, soon.
To recap: Vol fans were right to rebel against the Schiano hire, national media members are having their receipts checked on Twitter, and Ohio State is getting Michigan’s sloppy seconds.
As Ice Cube once said, “I gotta say it was a good day.”
