It’s less about culture, mostly about appearances and always about resistance to change.
That’s how you arrive at the intersection Tennessee vice chancellor and director of athletics Dave Hart found Thursday in defending the athletic department and football coach Butch Jones.
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"I believe very, very strongly in what we're doing here in the athletics program at the University of Tennessee and I trust Butch Jones implicitly,” Hart said. “I know who he is. I know his work ethic and I know what he's meant to this university well beyond the department of athletics.”
That statement will define — or decry — where Hart and Jones go from here. Culture is the buzzword attracting the most attention after incidents spanning 20 years have created the latest offseason toxic mess amplified with each day since Jones told The Tennessean, “There is no culture problem” on Saturday.
There is the incident between Peyton Manning and a former Tennessee trainer in 1996, though that’s been taken off the record. There is a Title IX lawsuit from six women that alleges Tennessee has created a culture that enables sexual assaults. There is a current player on suspension after being arrested on charges he assaulted a female. There is a former player that alleged Jones called him a “traitor” for helping a woman who said she was raped by two teammates. More women joined the lawsuit Thursday. There is a protest on campus.
There is a problem. Nothing proven, yet everything directed at that sometimes-indefensible notion a program faces when a social issue hits campus. It happened in Oklahoma, Florida State and Missouri the last two seasons. It’s a chance for Tennessee to respond. It’s a chance for Tennessee to make changes.
"I am proud of the culture that we have here, but I also understand it is all of our responsibility to continue to address what is a national problem across America,” Hart said. “We should take a leadership role in trying to address it."
Culture is a subjective problem at Tennessee. That culture can be beautiful. Tennessee puts 100,000-plus in Neyland Stadium every Saturday and expects to win SEC championships. The “T.” Those orange-and-white uniforms. That first chorus of “Rocky Top.” It’s tradition. It’s awesome. It also leads to a blind loyalty that creates a mess.
It’s a refusal that leads to that objective mess.
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It’s realizing it’s not 1996 — or even 2006 — anymore. Manning and Phillip Fulmer — both pulled back in for their alleged roles in an incident dating with trainer Jamie Nauhright’s claims of sexual harassment from 20 years ago — were part of a different time. No smart phones. No social media. Not saying Fulmer and Manning got away with more, but Fulmer and Manning could have gotten away with more. It’s different now, even if the expectations stay the same. Hart admitted protocol is different now, but now it needs to be foolproof.
It’s a refusal to take a step back from those expectations. Knoxville is one of many football-first fortresses across the country, a checkered-orange-and-white bubble forever designed to go, fight, win. An attack on the Vols is met with relentless self-defense mechanisms from those with no self-awareness. Why is the media out to get Tennessee? Why is the media trolling? Why is the media butthurt?
No matter how insular the viewpoint, you can’t ignore the problem. It’s about a rash of alleged sexual assaults on college campuses. If these alleged incidents happened with the Tennessee Titans, there would be outrage, but it would be confined to the Titans, NFL and Roger Goodell.
This is college football in college football’s best conference. This is state pride. Tennessee football is the No. 1 source of that “We’re No. 1” state pride. That “We’re No. 1” state pride makes college football the best. It also can make college football the worst.
Because it breeds a refusal to believe it can happen to you, even when it does happen to you. Hart showed that self-awareness Thursday. It has to extend to athletes, coaches and administrators. Offseason arrests happen. They always will.
Jones can’t control the behavior of every player in the program. But there are too many incidents — The Tennessean published a timeline of the events — to say that the culture is great. Tennessee at least recognizes the problem now, even if it took 20 years and a bunch of separate incidences to collide into a PR mess for that to happen.
It’s about appearances now.
Spin control. Damage control. Why else would every coach band together in the same room? Why else would Hart be so open and honest with reporters on Thursday?
Big-time college athletics is the never-ending quest to delineate what is real vs. what is fake, or more specifically who is real vs. who is fake. Appearances are always deceiving. That’s difficult when dealing with coaches who take on so many different personalities at any given moment. Is he a general? An evangelist? A Wall Street banker? And, of course, the most-frequently used and least-endearing label.
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Used-car salesman. Once a coach inherits that title, it all goes downhill. Jones is venturing into that territory and he doesn’t have a national championship to fall back on. He’ll continue to say there’s no culture problem, but unless there’s a change — and that means no more incidents and the proper response to each and every player behavior issue moving forward — then nobody will believe the message he’s spreading in light of the recent allegations from a former player.
“I will fight all these false attacks on my character,” Jones said in a statement Wednesday. “And I know that once this process has been completed my reputation will be affirmed.”
Or he could just win big on the field. Jones appears to have the Volunteers on the right track in that regard. Tennessee will be picked by a lot of publications to win the SEC East in 2016, and Jones has sold the program to build strong recruiting classes the last few seasons.
Jones could lead Tennessee to an SEC championship next season. The appearance of a successful program can help make some of those other problems disappear, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Player behavior remains the No. 1 problem in college football, and Tennessee is the latest program dealing with it. It can maintain an affable appearance and with or without Jones. They can fix that culture by accepting change in the one sport most resistant to change.
Then they can take that position of leadership Hart is talking about. No football team did that better than Oklahoma last season after a racist video threatened to divide the campus, and the Sooners responded by banding together to make a run to the College Football Playoff.
"We do look inward,” Hart said. “That's the point I hope you're hearing, because we have to. We have to. The culture in our building is good. Now I cannot stand here and tell you of those 550-plus student athletes that we aren't going to have future issues with poor decisions because we are.”
Hart is right, but the department can take preemptive measures. Change the standards on player behavior within the program. Change the standard for coaches and administrators who fail to comply. Change the protocols between the athletic department and the rest of the college campus.
Change won’t change the culture overnight, but Hart gave the appearance that they’ll make every effort to try. They better.
Any more resistance will tear everything down when the next incident occurs.
