Tennessee Chancellor Jimmy Cheek, left, and Dave Hart, the former Alabama executive director of athletics, hold up a Tennessee shirt during a news conference announcing Hart as the new vice chancellor and athletic director for Tennessee, Monday, Sept. 5, 2011, in Knoxville, Tenn.We'll begin today's column on New Year's Eve, 1993, with Alabama on its way to defeating North Carolina 24-10 in the Gator Bowl.
One of UNC's biggest fans that night was student Rick Hart. One of the Crimson Tide's biggest supporters was Rick's father, Dave, who once played basketball for C.M. Newton at Bama.
"When I got back home, Dad had put one of those Tide detergent boxes with the roll of toilet paper on top on my bedroom door," said Rick, now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletic director. "So he knows how to gig me a little bit."
The Hart family gigging was ratcheted through the roof Monday evening. After a search of nearly three months, the University of Tennessee in Knoxville -- once viewed as Big Brother to UTC -- became Big Pappy with the announcement that Dave Hart is the new Big Orange athletic director.
Or, to slightly tweak the preferred moniker of Dave's five grandchildren, Big Papaw.
So just how much trash talk will Rick hear between now and Jan. 2, when the basketball Mocs face UT?
"I'm sure there will be some," he chuckled over the phone Monday evening. "I know that whoever wins in January will find a way to gig the other a little bit. Of course, on my side of the family, it's my son Trevor who does a lot of the gigging now."
Given Big Papaw's past at East Carolina and Florida State as the top athletic director and his recent role at Alabama as AD Mal Moore's right-hand man, Tennessee just made its NCAA probation-strapped athletic department a good deal better.
As for Alabama's AD future, with Dave Hart taking the UT post, Tide fans should expect Moore to remain in charge for at least five more years.
It was five years ago that the seeds of Dave Hart's only professional blemish were sown, FSU athletes earning unjust credits for online music courses. The NCAA eventually slapped the Seminoles with four years of probation for an academic scandal that involved athletes from 10 sports.
Though Hart never was directly implicated, FSU president T.K. Wetherwell failed to renew his contract, though Dave Hart has always insisted the split had nothing to do with the scandal.
What is clear is that Hart has a tremendous amount of respect from athletic directors all across the country, or he would not have won the James Corbett Memorial Award -- the highest award given annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics -- after he left FSU.
No wonder UT chancellor Jimmy Cheeks said of Hart's hiring: "Everyone I called about Dave Hart said, 'His character, his integrity and his honesty are superb.'"
And Tennessee needs that, even if the same could have been said of former AD Mike Hamilton, whose chief shortcoming was putting too much trust in former coaches Lane Kiffin and Bruce Pearl.
But Hart has a legacy of success at both East Carolina and FSU that Hamilton never could quite claim, despite Pearl's overall success in men's basketball. After all, Bobby Bowden may have won the football games, but Hart was the AD. Beyond that, he also hired the first black head basketball coach in Atlantic Coast Conference history -- Steve Robinson -- then followed that with Leonard Hamilton, who has made the Seminoles a routine NCAA participant.
But around here, there's likely to as much talk about what Dave Hart can do for the Mocs as what he'll do for the Vols.
"Obviously, it's a great resource," Rick Hart said. "But it won't change the dynamic of how we operate. We had managed to get a football game, several men's and women's basketball and a number of other contests when Mike Hamilton was the athletic director. If it's a good fit for our teams, we'll obviously pursue it."
That said, Rick Hart quickly admitted that getting "money" games with programs like UT is "always relationship-driven."
In other words, with Big Papaw Hart now in charge of the Vols, UTC's relationship with Big Brother UT never has been better.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6273.