The radio sports talk show host in Mississippi had a question for the sports writer in Chattanooga on Wednesday afternoon.
“Why,” he asked, “hasn’t the University of Tennessee fired [athletic director] Mike Hamilton yet?’
Understand, this is not necessarily the feeling within the Volunteer state. At least it wasn’t during Hamilton’s talk to the Hamilton Place Rotary Club its Wednesday lunch meeting at the Country Place restaurant.
The boss of the Vols was roundly cheered, even by club president Alan Johnston, an unabashed Alabama fan who said, “I routinely hear good things about what’s going on with the student athletes up there behind the scenes.”
But away from Tennessee, where perceptions are formed by sound bites and news flashes scrolling across the botton of a TV screen, the perception is growing that UT is an athletic department gone wild.