Kansas State athletic director John Currie discusses what he sees as the brighter future of the Big 12, during a news conference Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Manhattan, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)KNOXVILLE - Two of John Currie's closest friends in athletic directors' circles are Greg Byrne and Scott Stricklin.
With all three of them recently moving into new jobs, they're now competitors in the Southeastern Conference with Byrne at Alabama (from Arizona) and Stricklin at Florida (from Mississippi State).
"I can't wait to beat those guys," Currie said Thursday during his introduction as Tennessee's new athletic director.
Currie, hired this week after nearly eight years at Kansas State, may have more pressing matters when he takes over at the start of April.
For the most part, fans seem disappointed by the hiring of Currie, the former second-in-command for the Tennessee athletic department under Mike Hamilton. Many of them longed for Tennessee to tab UT-Chattanooga vice chancellor and athletic director David Blackburn to replace the retiring Dave Hart. Others wanted to see Phillip Fulmer, the former championship-winning football coach of the Vols, back in a leadership position.
Currie easily has the strongest résumé of the three, but there are people - ranging from boosters and university trustees to common fans - he will have to prove wrong in his new job.
"All I can do is get out there and work hard every single day, and I think the listening part and recognizing the heritage that all the people represent, this is a very special place and people have poured their heart and soul into the place," he said. "You've just got to spend some time and appropriately honor and recognize and be around. Those things will work out."
Currie won't face the same challenges he did at Kansas State, where his most notable accomplishments included fundraising and facility improvements, though he received an athletic director of the year award in 2013 after the Wildcats won or shared Big 12 titles in football, men's basketball and baseball. But he believes his time there prepared him for his return to Tennessee.
"We should always be learning," Currie said. "Going out to Kansas State when we got there, we had some major problems. We had some major deficiencies. We had financial irregularities. We had lawsuits. We had secret contracts. We had just one thing after another. We had low confidence and were projecting a budget for the next year.
"One of the things we did in that process is we just got out there with our fans and with the K-State nation. There's some similarities. Tennessee has the Big Orange Caravan, and Kansas State's got the Catbacker Tour, so we got out and about and really worked hard. We had to re-earn trust.
"Part of the way that we worked hard and I worked hard to re-earn trust with our constituents is being very transparent and being very accessible. We'll do some things here over the next little bit from the athletics perspective to ensure that the Tennessee faithful and the whole Tennessee family feel like they have a good opportunity to connect and share their passion and feelings."
Though Currie had never run his own shop when Kansas State took a chance on him in 2009, the difference in taking over at Tennessee is his history with the Vols. Some former colleagues remember Currie more favorably than others, and he acknowledged he faces both the learning curve of new surroundings and a "reacquaintance curve" of returning to where he once worked.
"I know a lot of folks around here, but there's a lot of folks I don't know or I knew just a little bit a long time ago," Currie said. "There's a lot of new folks and new buildings and incredible growth in Knoxville. My first thing I've got to do is - the Lord gave me two ears and two eyes and one mouth for a reason - I've got to get around and listen and see and learn and reconnect with folks. I can't wait to start doing that."
Currie's introduction featured him recalling some of his favorite memories from his tenure in Hamilton's regime. He made multiple references to Fulmer, Hamilton predecessor Doug Dickey and former sports information director Bud Ford. He recalled watching Pat Summitt win multiple national championships and having the Thompson-Boling Arena court named after her.
Tennessee has undergone many changes since those years, and Currie believes he's different now, too.
"I think we all evolve in our lives," he said. "I remember Coach Dickey one time when I first got here saying, 'John, the wheels aren't off this thing, so you don't have to go fix everything yet.' Especially as a young person, all of us, we start off thinking we've got to solve every problem right now in a certain way.
"Over time, you kind of learn that sometimes you need to sit back a little bit and (learn) why you're wrong and stuff like that. A lot of times you learn and adapt from that."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.