UT Fired And Helped Pearl Get Fired

Blame Tennessee for Bruce Pearl's misdeed

PUBLISHED Monday, Mar 21, 2011 at 6:16 pm EDT

LAST UPDATED 13 hours and 48 minutes ago

Mike DeCourcy Sporting News



Bruce Pearl is out after six seasons as head coach at Tennessee. (AP photo)


In sports, competitors such as Bruce Pearl never stop driving, never stop chasing that edge. So even after he was caught in a lie by NCAA investigators, and even after he acknowledged this to his bosses, and even after the university invalidated his multi-million dollar contract, and even after he made a tearful, public, I-have-sinned-against-you revelation, he and one of his assistant coaches engaged in a short conversation with a junior prospect: a conversation the NCAA charged was outside the bounds of its recruiting rules.

You want to know why Pearl no longer is coaching Tennessee basketball, even with six consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances -- it’s right there. It’s why Kelvin Sampson is no longer at Indiana. Sampson never was the NCAA outlaw many have come to believe, but he certainly became the victim of his own aggressive pursuit of a competitive edge.

Recruiting is that brutal. Coaches come to believe if they relax, they’ll be flattened. And what coaches under investigation for recruiting irregularities really need is some calm.

The greatest irony of Pearl’s dismissal is that this recruiting contact with an Oak Hill Academy player that ultimately cost him his job – in the business, it’s known as a “bump” – occurred during the two-week period during which he and his assistants were allowed to continue traveling to visit prospects before commencing school-imposed bans from the recruiting road that resulted from the NCAA investigation.

Tennessee wanted Pearl to be able to finish his recruiting work for the 2011 class and set up 2012 before beginning a one-year recruiting ban, and it’s quite likely Pearl wanted that time. It was a sleazy deal for UT to delay that suspension, and both sides paid for it.

The university did not desire to fire Pearl because it never has had a more successful coach, both on the floor and at the box office. Its basketball program already is in disrepute, and it’s about to fall into disrepair.

Someone with Pearl’s gifts might have prevented that, or mitigated it, but Tennessee’s sordid conduct in delaying the suspension quite obviously agitated NCAA investigators, who scoured the coach’s trail, found the alleged bump and included it among the charges against the program.

Tennessee not only fired Pearl, it got him fired.