Last Tuesday night found new University of Tennessee athletic director and former football coach Phillip Fulmer at the Chattanooga Convention Center for the Classic 150's Roast/Toast of close friend John "Thunder" Thornton.
Wednesday had him still on the job close to midnight thanks to the basketball Volunteers' 9 p.m. tipoff against Florida inside Thompson-Boling Arena. Come Thursday, he flew to Dallas for the inaugural Jason Witten Collegiate Man of the Year award ceremony, another dinner that stretched close to midnight.
So how's the 67-year-old College Football Hall of Fame coach holding up some 86 days into his second career?
"It will gobble up all of your time if you let it," he said by phone Thursday evening, just after landing in Big D for the Witten event. "But it's never boring. Every 30 minutes it's something else. I'm enjoying it, though. I really enjoy being around young people every day. They keep you energized."
At this moment, Fulmer would appear to be one of the nation's most fortunate ADs. His men's basketball coach, Rick Barnes, hasn't been linked in any way to the ongoing FBI investigation into corruption in college hoops. His new football coach, whom Fulmer hired, hasn't yet coached a game so there's no hot-seat talk yet concerning Jeremy Pruitt. Also, as Fulmer proudly pointed out, "Nine of our 13 spring sport teams are ranked in the top 25 in their sports."
As for the coach who may be least popular with the Big Orange Nation right now - Lady Vols coach Holly Warlick - Fulmer refused to get involved in any speculation regarding her future.
"You support all of them until you can't," he said. "Now I'd like all of them to win every game they coach. I would certainly like to see us one day win the (Learfield Directors' Cup) All-Sports Trophy. But I was talking to (Wisconsin AD and former Badgers football coach) Barry Alvarez one day about this and he said, 'A coach is a whole lot better equipped to evaluate another coach than someone who's never been a coach.' So I like to think that I'll make the the best decision for the program when those situations arise."
Later, when asked if having to part company with a coach would be the most difficult part of his job, Fulmer replied, "It would be up there. I had to let people go a time or two when I was the head football coach, and it's never fun. In many cases, these folks are your friends. They have families to support, bills to pay. It probably is the hardest decision you have to make in this job."
One decision that wasn't hard to make was the future of the Big Orange Caravan. Unlike his predecessor, John Currie, who seemed uncertain what to do with the longstanding spring event, Fulmer was adamant in proclaiming, "Oh, yes, there will definitely be a Big Orange Caravan. We're not ready to announce all the stops yet, but we're in the process of making those decisions now."
When asked about the current college basketball scandal and how concerned he was over the dark shadow it could cast on collegiate athletics in general, Fulmer said:
"Sports is part of the rest of the world. There are always going to be people who don't want to follow the rules. That doesn't make all of them bad people. Many of them are folks who've made one bad mistake. But compliance is at the top of the list of what should be expected of you in college athletics. We had very few compliance issues when I was a coach, and our culture at the University of Tennessee will always be to be compliant with NCAA rules. That will never change."
He's also not sure many changes need to be made regarding treatment of today's student-athlete, despite pleas from some corners to pay them.
"I've been impressed by how much better it's gotten for them in the few years since I last coached," Fulmer said. "There's cost of attendance now. More autonomy with the academic side, more concern for them having time away from their sport to study, as well as time to have a life apart from their sport.
"I'm sure if I really thought about it there's an improvement or two (the NCAA) could make regarding the student-athlete, but I think they've got it pretty darn good right now."
He hopes the hiring of Pruitt has the football team in pretty darn good shape right now, even if he also admitted that of all the UT sports, "Football has the furthest to go."
Yet to return to those dark comedy days of late autumn and that Dec. 1 afternoon that he was hired to save Currie's catastrophic coaching search, Fulmer noted how far friends and former colleagues went to help him find the perfect fit for the Vols.
"Obviously, I reached out to Coach (Doug) Dickey and Coach (Bill) Battle," he said, referring to Dickey - who both coached Fulmer at UT and hired him to replace Johnny Majors while Dickey was AD - and Battle, who followed Dickey in coaching Fulmer and much later became Alabama's athletic director for a bit.
"But there were a lot of guys I called about our football job," Fulmer said. "Fortunately, they all called me back."
Judging by his schedule this past week only, Fulmer is getting a lot calls to do this and do that. Given the nearly 10 years he was semi-retired, someone asked if wife Vicky wasn't happy to have him out of the house a bit more.
After describing himself as having a "Type A personality," Fulmer said, "I think she's happy that I'm happy."
Eighty-six days along, his return to the top of the UT athletic department appears to have the Big Orange Nation happier than it's been since his controversial forced exit as football coach nearly a decade ago.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.