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Tennessee never should have hired Donnie Tyndall

Dave Hart was hired as athletic director at Tennessee in September 2011, with a mandate to bring some stability and continuity to a program roiling in chaos.

Friday, Hart announced the school fired basketball coach Donnie Tyndall, all of 11 months after hiring him.

Donnie Tyndall was fired 11 months after being hired by Tennessee. (AP)
Donnie Tyndall was fired 11 months after being hired by Tennessee. (AP)

“One of the things we’ve strived for is to get stability,” Hart said. “... That is not how it’s panned out, as we stand here today.”

No, it sure hasn’t. The basketball revolving door now spins with the speed the football door once spun.

From 2008-13, Tennessee had four head football coaches: Phil Fulmer, Lane Kiffin, Derek Dooley and Butch Jones.

From 2011-15, Tennessee will have had four head basketball coaches: Bruce Pearl, Cuonzo Martin, Tyndall and Next.

Stop the madness.

The Tyndall hire turned out to be a disaster. A rushed and risky decision that blew up on Hart and the school.

Likely NCAA violations during Tyndall’s tenure at Southern Mississippi forced the issue. There was no way Tennessee could keep Tyndall – not after he also had committed violations at Morehead State, and not after what the Volunteers went through in having to fire the popular Pearl for violations in March 2011.

When your school has been through the NCAA wringer with Pearl, hiring a guy with a rap sheet three years later was an odd choice. Today it looks especially foolhardy.

“I was convinced at the time [Tyndall was hired] that Donnie had learned from [Morehead State],” Hart said Friday. “Was that a risk worth taking? Not standing here today, it wasn’t.”

Not only had Tyndall not learned from probation and sanctions at Morehead State, it seems he’d already committed “likely” major violations at a second school. And if he’d gotten away with it at Southern Miss, what’s to make anyone believe he wouldn’t have done more of the same at Tennessee?

From that standpoint, the Volunteers are lucky. The penalties will come down on Southern Miss, not Tennessee.

As it is, Tyndall apparently was in cover-up mode while on the job in Knoxville. In addition to possible violations pertaining to academics and financial aid, Tennessee’s termination letter states that Tyndall acknowledged deleting emails from a Southern Miss account he still had access to last November.

If the “likely” violations are deemed actual violations by the NCAA Committee on Infractions in the months to come, it seems a long shot that Tyndall will be a coach at an NCAA institution again. But in reality, he never should have been Tennessee’s coach.

He was hired one week after Martin left for California. While it’s true that the Martin departure was an abrupt and surprising move that caught Tennessee off guard, the hire of Tyndall reflects some panic on the part of Hart.

A seven-day goodbye-hello cycle that ends in hiring a guy with an NCAA track record, just eight months after the basketball program came off probation? Probably not the best idea.

Despite the fact that Tyndall deserved his pink slip, the timing of events this week doesn’t add up.

Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart now finds himself in a tough spot. (AP)
Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart now finds himself in a tough spot. (AP)

I received a text Wednesday at 7:16 p.m. ET that said Tyndall would be fired at Tennessee on Thursday. That turned out to be off by a day, but the larger news was accurate.

I made a few calls Wednesday night, trying to nail it down, without success. But I was told that if Tyndall was in imminent danger of being fired, it would come as a huge shock to the coach. Tyndall’s recruiting activities certainly bear that out; he had a junior-college point guard on campus for an official visit Thursday.

By all reports, that’s the day Hart had his decisive discussions with NCAA enforcement officials in which he learned with what Tyndall would likely be charged. But the tip I got Wednesday night strongly indicates that Hart already knew what he was going to do.

So while Tyndall doesn’t have a case for being unfairly terminated, he may have one for being blindsided and even misled about the timing of the decision. That’s one more aspect of the Tyndall tenure for Hart to try and explain.

For now, the athletic director had better root like crazy for Butch Jones’ continued momentum on the football field. Going 7-6 isn’t the stuff of parades at Tennessee, but it was the Volunteers’ first winning record since 2009. And recruiting is going gangbusters.

If Jones succeeds, Dave Hart can claim that hire as a sign of insightful leadership. Right now, that’s about all he’s got to cling to in terms of revenue sports.