I can’t stop thinking about the Tennessee-Schiano stuff. It has been absolutely fascinating in so many ways. Whether seeing the stuff play out like an alternate dimension Pitt-Stallings hire. To the media aspect. To use of a highly questionable narrative to torpedo the hire. So much stuff is there.

When the news of the hire first started leaking, and you could see Tennessee fans on twitter going WTF? And a lot of other people trying to make the case for or against it on a purely coaching level. Well, it had that disturbing feel of when Pitt hired Kevin Stallings.

You can make a reasonable, rational case for or against the hire. But that is all irrelevant if the fans absolutely hate it. Fans were ranting about his record at Rutgers. They railed about his failures at Tampa Bay and how he ran things there — throwing players under the bus, bush league/dangerous stuff like trying to rush a victory formation, Josh Freeman, MRSA.

For Tennessee, it didn’t look good if the fans weren’t even going to give him a chance. But they appeared stuck. Just like Pitt fans had been. Hate the hire, but there’s not a lot to be done if the deal is made and the AD has sold it to the administration and enough key boosters.

Then the Penn State link was found. Specifically Schiano was mentioned in testimony by Mike McQueary in a deposition that was unsealed after the civil litigation by McQueary.

During the deposition, McQueary said he once discussed Sandusky with another Penn State assistant, Tom Bradley, who most recently was an assistant coach at UCLA. He said Bradley was not surprised by what McQueary told him because Bradley had heard similar.

From the deposition:

Q: “Did [Bradley] tell you that he had had information concerning Gerald Sandusky and children?”

A: “He said he knew of some things. … He said another assistant coach had come to him in the early ’90s about a very similar situation to mine, and he said that he had — someone had come to him as far back as early as the ’80s about seeing Jerry Sandusky doing something with a boy.”

Q: “Did he identify who the other coaches were that had given him this information?”

A: “The one in the early ’90s, yes.”

Q: “And who was that?”

A: “Greg Schiano …”

Q: “And did he give you any details about what Coach Schiano had reported to him?”

A: “No, only that he had – I can’t remember if it was one night or one morning, but that Greg had come into his office white as a ghost and said he just saw Jerry doing something to a boy in the shower. And that’s it. That’s all he ever told me.”

That is the extent of allegations involving Schiano, which first surfaced in 2016 during the unsealing of documents in the civil case.

That quickly became the issue. It wasn’t all the other stuff they had been complaining about. No, it was a moral high ground against enabling child rape.

I’m perfectly willing to believe the worst in everything about Penn State. And especially about the football program there.  But recollections of a conversation with another person where the name was mentioned. I’m at least willing to hesitate to be sure of it. And I’m definitely not going to make the case — that Vol fans decided to claim — that Schiano directly covered up child rape.

But with that issue in hand, the fans, other boosters, grandstanding politicians and others were able to kill the hire.

As Wes Rucker at VolQuest put it.

Sunday was a democratic hanging of Greg Schiano. But was it fair?

Look, I think Greg Schiano would’ve been an absolutely terrible fit at Tennessee. His autocratic style and inability to relate to people would’ve been an awful hire on the heels of Butch Jones.

Yet that wasn’t purportedly Tennessee fans’ issues with the hiring. “It has nothing to do with Jon Gruden or his record at Rutgers,” many implored. The entire ordeal became a backlash against Schiano’s time at Penn State and his alleged involvement in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. As Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel outlined, the details of the allegations against Schiano are entirely hearsay, but that didn’t matter on Sunday afternoon.

Perception became reality.

An accusation of “covered up child rape” was painted on Tennessee’s famed rock.

In the court of public opinion, Schiano totally lost whatever reputation he once had on Sunday. Local politicians, businesspeople, former players and partitioners decried Tennessee’s offer and implored Currie to back out of the deal. Fans protested on campus. Perhaps their cries were totally justified, but it all certainly felt convenient.

The same consensus and righteous moral high ground was certainly absent during the school’s Title IX case just two years ago.

They didn’t want Schiano because he wasn’t worthy of the job. And that’s fair. He wasn’t Gruden, Dan Mullen or even Mike Norvell.

In the end, Tennessee fans made a mistake Sunday turning a convenient narrative into a mob movement, but the true blame lies with others — especially considering GBO Nation has faithfully supported a fizzling program for years. The fact fans had been Scooby Doo’d by misinformation throughout the coaching search simply exaserbated Sunday’s backlash.

And that created a fascinating backlash by sportswriters. Some who thought the hire would have been fine. Some who didn’t. But most were more upset at the use of the Penn State story to further trash Schiano’s image and reputation.

And I can’t totally disagree with them on this. If you watched the insanity unfold on Sunday, you know that the moral claims were total bullshit.

If you are any sort of decent reporter, you really do want the truth (I know for many these days, this apparently is a controversial thing to say). And the writers sat there on Twitter, watching the story change right before their eyes. Where the fans who first started tweet-ranting directly at them about all the reasons Schiano was a bad hire — it all changed. Once the Penn State stuff was found and disseminated, their story changed. Right on their feed.

But, of course, some in the media had to go over their own deep end. With all of Schiano’s other failings with his treatment of players. With his documented history. They went over the top to defend Schiano. Some were even willing to cite Paterno apologists and conspiracy lunatics (who they had very likely dismissed as such in the past) like Anthony Lubrano and John Ziegler when those clowns defended Schiano.

And that was followed by the backlash to the backlash. The stories on how Schiano is hardly worth this much support from sportswriters.

There is a larger point, though. The fans made a difference.

It’s also something Tennessee athletic director John Currie should have considered as he was zeroing in on Schiano. The vetting process is supposed to bring every potential land mine into view before a school gets too far down the road with a candidate. When a candidate is potentially controversial, a school will often leak that it is considering that candidate as a trial balloon. Had Currie floated such a balloon in the past few days, Tennessee’s fan base would have reacted in similar fashion. The difference is the sides wouldn’t already have a Memorandum of Understanding. The Vols could have moved on to another candidate without a full-on revolt that will wind up making the search even more difficult going forward.

Another issue Sunday was what appeared to be an effort by some of the most influential voices in college football’s media corps to tell Tennessee fans to shut up and accept the hire. Whether this was because those people believe Schiano to be a great coach or because they want to stay on the good side of agent Jimmy Sexton is irrelevant. It came off as people in our business talking down to our customers who already had made their decision on the issue. We do that often. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone, and Sunday’s events should make all of us step back and consider listening to our customers a little more.

But here’s the tough part for us and the even tougher part for Currie. Every individual voice isn’t correct. When a consumer bloc rises up the way it did Sunday, it’s fairly easy to determine that the best move for the future of the business is to give the people what they want. (Or, in this case, to take away the thing they don’t want.) But what about next time? At some point in the coming days, Currie and company will settle on another coach. There is a 0% chance that coach will satisfy 100% of the fan base, so what happens then? Currie gets paid a lot of money to determine whether he’s dealing with a few cranks or a full-blown meltdown. He’ll have to figure it out.

And I know, every Pitt fan is thinking about former AD Barnes’ ramming through of Stallings, and how he didn’t listen. Or float a trial balloon out there. Like the Tennessee AD, he favored secrecy and trying to get the deal done first.

For the more conspiracy minded Pitt fans who saw the Stallings hire solely as a crony/backroom move with the search firm that Barnes hired and was recommended previously. Well, I’ll turn it over to the Boston College folks.

Well guess who helped place Currie at Tennessee? Former Boston College AD Gene DeFilippo. Yes, Gene D handpicked Currie, who cited him as a mentor when introduced. Now less than one full football season later, Tennessee fans have neutered Currie and are ready to send him packing. Great pick, Gene!

In theory Gene should understand Tennessee given his past their and numerous ties. I am sure Gene and Turnkey [Editor note, Turnkey Sports & Entertainment is another search firm in the college athletics world. DeFilippo is now employed there.] would explain that the Schiano mess could have been avoided if they had been directly involved with that search. My guess is that they were conflicted out since Gene was already running the Ole Miss search. And who did Ole Miss hire after all was said and done? Their interim head coach. Gene really worked that one hard. It was like hiring Spaz all over again.

If you go back to last season, you start to notice a pattern. Gene ran LSU’s coaching search last year. Who did they end up hiring? Their interim coach. Once again, money well spent on Turnkey!

It doesn’t surprise me that Gene keeps getting these plum assignments. He was at his best when he was networking, mentoring and working the gossip. That’s a major reason why BC got invited back into the ACC. However, the aspect of the job where Gene was least successful was hiring coaches.

Finally, it’s good to see that Scott Barnes appears to still be out of his depth at a Power 5 school. Oregon State still hasn’t hired a new head coach and some how Dennis Erickson’s name is being raised as a possibility.  Can’t wait until they hire Mack Brown.