Musings of a Catholic Convert

I sat here tonight watching Phil Fulmer coach his last football game at Tennessee.  Yes, a tear or two did well up in my eyes.  You will forgive my hard heart for a moment of weakness.  I genuinely will miss the man, and I was not the one calling for his head.  Remind me sometime to write an article about my opinion of University of Tennessee fans.  It was a time of great emotion for Coach Fulmer.  That much was obvious.  Listening to the radio and reading the paper these past few days, you would think that every man, woman, and child in Vol Country was Phil's best friend.  Don't understand?  

Have you ever resigned?  Ever left a job to go elsewhere?  Now, maybe you have an idea.

I noticed it back when I was an collections manager.  I resigned to take a Church in Tennessee.  I was no one's best friend there.  It was a job.  I was leaving to take a position I was more passionate about doing, namely church work.  Did I get a bunch of hate mail, or disgruntled complaints?  Nope.  Everybody was my best buddy for my two weeks of lame duck management.  It wasn't that people previously hated me, or at least if someone did I never knew it, but when I left everybody was just SO NICE.

Same thing happened when I had to resign my position at the Church.  In my mind, I was leaving in shame.  A man who was stepping down from a leadership position in ministry because, to put it mildly, I was failing as a leader, husband, and father at home.  I called my own bluff and resigned.  Did anybody give me a hard time?  A couple of folks did, but the majority of people, even those who made it clear they did not want me there in the first place, were cheerful and seemed sorry to see me leave.

So I see what has been going on now that Phil Fulmer is leaving.  I've seen it for myself, and I've seen it in others' lives.  What I hope is that Coach Fulmer is able to see through the BS to the genuine folk who are trying their darndest to let him know just how special he was and STILL IS to them.  You don't give 35 years to a program, 17 as a coach and winning 75% of your games, to not impact some lives.  I'm proud of all that Phil Fulmer has accomplished at the University of Tennessee, and I wish him all the best.

As for whoever comes in next (Lane Kiffin?), good luck, sir.  I believe you'll need it. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.