Nashville City Paper: Fulmer wants to see balanced coverage

(Note: Cal’s first opponent this year is Tennessee, so I’m including limited coverage on the Vols.)

 

By Nate Rau, Sports Correspondent

Media coverage of all things wrong with college athletics is at an all-time high. With the Duke lacrosse scandal ruling front page headlines and national television newscasts, people want to know, ‘What’s wrong with college athletics?’   On the heels of dismissing one player and suspending another indefinitely, Phillip Fulmer is all too familiar with the topic of conversation. The Tennessee football coach was in town on Tuesday as the Big Orange Caravan made its way through Nashville.

 

Fulmer’s program has been under scrutiny over the course of the past 18 months as nine players have been arrested or given citations. But Volunteer players have managed to stay out of trouble for the better part of a year, until starting middle linebacker Marvin Mitchell was arrested for disorderly conduct and consequently suspended indefinitely by Fulmer earlier this month. “My job, and we did it very well for a long time and then we had an off year last year with too many distractions in our program, is to support and give advice to young men who want to be in our program,” Fulmer said. “To be in our program is not a right, it’s a privilege and more of the kids need to understand that.”

 

Fulmer said the media scrutiny of his and every other major athletic program has never been more intense. Although he doesn’t feel the attention paid to the legal troubles of Volunteer players have been unfair, Fulmer did say he thought the media coverage was uneven. He pointed to the lack of coverage given to former Vol offensive linemen Michael Munoz after he won the prestigious Vincent dePaul Draddy Award – given to the top scholar-athlete in the entire nation.

 

“I don’t think anybody’s been unfactual, it’s just trying to find the balance,” Fulmer said. “Munoz wins the… academic equivalent of the Heisman trophy and it’s on the sixth page in very small print. Now if one of the guys turn right on red and gets stopped, it would have been the front page headline, so that’s screwy.” Given the team’s share of negative headlines and the sub-par 2005 campaign, in which UT failed to qualify for a bowl game for the first time in almost 20 years, Fulmer was grateful for the strong-as-ever support from the Big Orange faithful. UT supporters gathered for a banquet featuring Fulmer, men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl and women’s coach Pat Summitt at the Governor’s Club in Brentwood.  “It’s more than anything a way to say, ‘Thank you’ for all the support,” Fulmer said of the caravan.