Five and a half years ago, Tennessee fans basically ran John Currie out of Knoxville, and with good reason.

Currie, after firing Lyle “Butch” Jones In November of 2017, spent the next two weeks consulting search firms and sunbathing in the Bahamas. He had wanted to hire Dan Mullen, but Florida beat him to it while Mr. Currie was waiting on his precious search firm to identify any other candidates.

Plan B for Currie was one Gregory Schiano. Schiano, of course, was mentioned in a sworn affidavit by former Penn State assistant Mike McQueary. McQueary claimed that Schiano had known about the abuse carried out by Jerry Sandusky. After word got out to the press on November 26, 2017 that Currie’s hire would be Schiano, all hell broke loose in Knoxville. Protests on campus and emergency broadcasts by Knoxville radio personalities filled the next six hours. Even Tennessee congress members chimed in with pleads to not go through with the hire.

Finally, smarter people than Currie stepped in and stopped this atrocity of a hire from taking place. The next four days saw Currie embarrassing himself even further, being turned down by Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy and North Carolina state Coach Dave Doeren. Currie finally had somewhat of a mental breakdown and went rogue. Currie, without permission from the University, flew across the country to pitch the job to the late Mike Leach who was at Washington State. Currie, having been turned down once again, landed back in Knoxville and was fired on the spot.