Pat Forde on Fulmer

In a section of his forty-yard dash, under the subhead Smashing Pumpkins, ESPN's Forde:

With Great Pumpkin Phillip Fulmer (13) off the hot seat and officially into the fire(d) zone, it's time to ask what defines unsatisfactory in the Southeastern Conference. Specifically, can the third-winningest active coach in America with at least 10 years' experience (.746 winning percentage) justifiably lose his job less than a year after playing in the SEC title game?

The answer is a complicated yes. The bottom line is that it's simply time for a change in Knoxville. Fulmer will leave as one of the most accomplished coaches in SEC history, but Tennessee is engineering his exit.

The best parallel is a basketball one: Tubby Smith at Kentucky. The record says he should have been able to stay as long as he wanted. The reality says Smith did the wise thing for himself and the Wildcats by bolting ahead of the posse for Minnesota in 2007.

Both Fulmer and Smith caught lightning in a bottle in 1998, winning national championships. Both continued to win a bunch of games over the ensuing years -- enough for people on the outside to wonder why people on the inside never seemed satisfied.

But both failed to replicate that high point, or even to come very close to hitting it. There were too many losses to prime competition, not enough victories worth real celebration. Fulmer was outwitted by Steve Spurrier early, and by Urban Meyer and Mark Richt late. Tubby was eclipsed by Billy Donovan.

It was never as good as '98 again, at schools that demand to win big.

For Fulmer, this is a long way from '98. The Dash predicted back in June that a superstar coach would resign or retire in the SEC this season, naming Fulmer and Steve Spurrier the most likely candidates (of course, The Dash also predicted in June that Texas' streak of seven straight 10-win seasons would end). But this season has been even worse than the most pessimistic prognostications.

The Volunteers are 3-6, in direct danger of losing seven games in a season for just the second time in school history. Their offense is anemic without security blanket David Cutcliffe (14) at coordinator, scoring 14 or fewer points six times in nine games. Tennessee is No. 64 in the Sagarin Ratings, and that's never going to fly at a place that sells more than 100,000 tickets for every home game.