One of the most ill-advised moments in Tennessee Vols history is also the moment that forever changed the football program….for the better. 

In early 2021, Tennessee announced that head coach Jeremy Pruitt was being fired due to NCAA rules violations. UT made the announcement via a bizarre press conference where Chancellor Donde Plowman admitted that Tennessee had committed a "stunning" number of violations. 

During that same press conference, former Vols head coach Phillip Fulmer, the last man to lead Tennessee's football program to a national championship, announced that he was stepping down as UT's athletic director. 

Fulmer was hired as Tennessee's athletic director in late 2017 after previous athletic director John Currie was fired because of a botched coaching search. 

The decision by Fulmer to step down is the moment that changed Tennessee football for the better. 

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Fulmer may have led the program to incredible success during his time as the head coach, but he was driving the program in the wrong direction while sitting in the athletic director's chair. And if he had continued in that role, Vols football would almost certainly still be in a vicious tail spin. 

And we know this because of the texts/emails uncovered by the Knoxville News Sentinel this week in the wake of the NCAA's announcement of penalties for Tennessee's recruiting violations that occurred under Pruitt. 

Those texts show that Fulmer wanted to keep Pruitt around as the program's head coach. 

From KnoxNews.com: “You also have to realize how bad the program was when we arrived here,” Fulmer wrote to Plowman. “We had no big linemen, no one that benched 400 (pounds), and no natural leaders.

“(Pruitt’s staff) inherited a very bad 2018 football team. … The loss to Vanderbilt was really hard for anyone to swallow. Vanderbilt had an excellent QB that picked us apart.”

Fulmer also told Plowman that he didn't think a coaching change needed to be made because he had seen signs of progress under Pruitt, despite the program going 3-7 in 2020 (which included an embarrassing home loss to Kentucky). 

If that wasn't bad enough, Fulmer also had a list of names just in case Pruitt was fired. And some of the names on that list weren't exactly inspiring — Army's Jeff Monken and former Texas A&M defensive coordinator Mike Elko, for example.

Absent from Fulmer's list was current Vols head coach Josh Heupel.

If Fulmer doesn't step down — regardless of how that decision was made — then Danny White is never hired as the program's athletic director. And Heupel almost certainly never sniffs Knoxville. 

Pruitt's dismissal and/or the decision by White to hire Heupel are the moments that most folks point to as the turning point for Tennessee football. But it was really the switch from Fulmer to White that was the catalyst for the turnaround. 

Fulmer wasn't implicated in the NCAA recruiting violations. It's possible that Tennessee could've chosen to stick with Fulmer — given his status as a Tennessee legend — and allowed him to run another coaching search.

Instead, Tennessee went in a new direction. And that new direction is ultimately what saved the program and turned the Vols from a disaster to one of the best redemption stories in college football. 

Why Vols fans should have a lot of respect for Jeremy Pruitt after NCAA penalties were announced

Tennessee Vols fans should have a lot of respect for Jeremy Pruitt after NCAA penalties were announced

Featured image via Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports