Tennessee's prolonged athletic director search takes another twist


              FILE - In this Oct. 14, 2011, file photo, Bubba Cunningham smiles during a news conference after being introduced as the new athletic director at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C.   North Carolina continues to be plagued by its long-running academic scandal. University officials say they have discovered more violations related to the scandal while preparing UNC’s response to the notice of allegations they received from the NCAA in May. The response, due next week, has been delayed. (Shawn Rocco/The News & Observer via AP, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 14, 2011, file photo, Bubba Cunningham smiles during a news conference after being introduced as the new athletic director at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C. North Carolina continues to be plagued by its long-running academic scandal. University officials say they have discovered more violations related to the scandal while preparing UNC’s response to the notice of allegations they received from the NCAA in May. The response, due next week, has been delayed. (Shawn Rocco/The News & Observer via AP, File)

KNOXVILLE - The latest twist in the prolonged saga of Tennessee's search for a new athletic director included the emergence and subsequent departure of one high-profile candidate.

North Carolina's Bubba Cunningham was trending toward becoming the favorite to replace the outgoing Dave Hart as the weekend began, but he's no longer a candidate, the Times Free Press confirmed Monday.

VolQuest.com initially reported that Cunningham removed his name from consideration at Tennessee.

Cunningham's decision - it's not the first time recently he's flirted with a move to the Southeastern Conference - means new Tennessee chancellor Beverly Davenport, the search committee and the Turnkey Search firm will have to re-shuffle their lists of potential candidates who could get interviews.

Though there is pressure from fans and other influential people for Tennessee to hire an athletic director with ties to the Volunteers, Cunningham would have fulfilled Davenport's desire for an experienced sitting power-conference athletic director.

Florida "nearly hired" Cunningham before he removed his name from consideration for the position the night before he was scheduled to finalize a deal in Gainesville, according to a USA Today report in September.

A month later, Cunningham received a raise of more than $60,000 to bump his annual salary to more than $705,000, according to figures released by North Carolina. Florida wound up hiring Mississippi State's Scott Stricklin.

Cunningham was hired at North Carolina in October 2011, months after predecessor Dick Baddour announced his resignation in the wake of the NCAA expanding its investigation from allegations that football players were receiving improper benefits from agents to years of academic fraud.

In March 2012, the NCAA levied a postseason ban, the loss of 15 scholarship and three years of probation on the Tar Heels' football program for violations including academic fraud for a tutor's illegal involvement and failure to monitor.

North Carolina has managed to avoid any other major NCAA sanctions during the prolonged investigation into allegations there were hundreds of fraudulent classes offered by one university department.

In six years at Tulsa, Cunningham was honored as the 2008-09 regional athletic director of the year, guided the Golden Hurricane as they moved to Conference USA and orchestrated a $60 million athletics initiative, which included a $20 million renovation to Tulsa's football stadium.

Cunningham's main hire at Tulsa was football coach Todd Graham, who won 10 or more games in three of his four seasons there before moving on to Pittsburgh and then Arizona State, and the Hurricane won a total of 34 league championships.

Prior to Tulsa, Cunningham was the athletic director at Ball State (2002-05), where he completed a $12 million campaign to renovate the football stadium and raise the largest single gift in the department's history. He spent 14 years in various athletic department roles at Notre Dame, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees.

Where Tennessee goes from here is unclear.

Of the two candidates with Tennessee ties, Phillip Fulmer, the former championship-winning football coach of the Vols, looks to be a much stronger candidate than David Blackburn, the UT-Chattanooga athletic director who spent two decades at Tennessee and has been publicly pining for the chance to interview for the job.

One potential name to watch is Danny Morrison, a former athletic director at Wofford (1985-97) and TCU (2005-09) and Southern Conference commissioner (2001-05) who resigned from his post as the president of the NFL's Carolina Panthers on Feb. 9.

"There are other endeavors, particularly on the college level, that interest me as a final chapter in my career," Morrison told the team's official website when he stepped down.

Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.

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