Vol Fans justifiably irked by national talking head's comments on Texas A&M-Mark Stoops situation
The Texas A&M Aggies appeared to have their guy. Then the fans came along and blew it up. That's a story that sounds awfully familiar to fans of the Tennessee Vols. Hours after the Aggies fell 42-30 to the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge, reports began to surface that Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops was […]
The Texas A&M Aggies appeared to have their guy. Then the fans came along and blew it up. That's a story that sounds awfully familiar to fans of the Tennessee Vols.
Hours after the Aggies fell 42-30 to the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge, reports began to surface that Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops was close to being named the Aggies' new head coach. That apparently sat terribly with scores of Aggie fans, who took to social media to express their extreme displeasure with the anticipated move. The school apparently listened, as the hire never came to pass, and Texas A&M looked elsewhere for their new coach.
Josh Pate of CBS Sports and 247Sports had quite the response to the non-hire.
That understandably drew a strong response from Vol fans, who called out Pate for either his shortsighted response or passive-aggressive slight at what happened with Tennessee and Greg Schiano in 2017. The responses were such that Pate felt the need to make prickly responses to Tennessee fans reacting to his initial post.
Clearly Pate, despite claiming to have done shows on the Tennessee-Schiano situation, has forgotten what a seismic response that Tennessee fans provided to the news that Schiano and the university were working to make him the next head coach of the Volunteers. The move was unlike anything that had been seen before, as it was the first and most pronounced instance of a coaching hire being derailed in the era of social media.
News broke in the afternoon on Sunday, November 26, 2017 that Tennessee was working to hire Schiano as its next head football coach. That same evening, USA Today reported that the proposed hire was off after extreme backlash to the proposed hire.
Except in Tennessee's case, it wasn't just fans and boosters thumbing out messages and making calls (there were plenty of those, to be sure). State legislators got involved. There were protests on campus. It was a groundswell of support against the move unlike anything ever before.
As such, for Pate to say he'd never seen anything like Texas A&M's rejection of Stoops means that he had his head in the sand when Tennessee was doing the same to Schiano almost six years ago to the day.
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