University of Tennessee Athletics
UT & Peterson: A Perfect Fit
October 12, 2001 | Men's Basketball
Oct. 12, 2001
By Haywood Harris
Before Buzz Peterson decided to move to the University of Tennessee, friends warned him repeatedly that Vols football was king and that basketball was accepted mainly as an amusing way to bridge the long, cold nights between a bowl game and the start of spring practice.
But Peterson knew something about UT sports history. He remembered as a child in Asheville, N.C., hearing family members talk about Doug Dickey's 1967 football team winning the Southeastern Conference championship only months after Ray Mears coached the basketball Vols to their first-ever NCAA tournament appearance.
Mears and Dickey, two strong personalities, neither of whom answered to the name of Caspar Milquetoast. If those two could co-exist and thrive at UT, why couldn't he and Phillip Fulmer share the legendary devotion of Vols fans 35 years later?
A call to his old college coach, North Carolina's Dean Smith, cinched the decision to accept the job, Peterson says. "He told me it was a no-brainer. If I had a chance to go to Tennessee, take it. This was coming from a man who understood the pitfalls of the profession and talked to me about the good and bad points of previous offers I was considering. Coach Smith called UT a perfect fit."
That was good enough for Peterson.
Shortly after talking to Smith, Peterson got back to Dickey, now the athletics director at Tennessee, who was looking last winter for somebody to take over the Vols basketball program from the departed Jerry Green.
If Peterson had any lingering doubts about the wisdom of his move from Tulsa to UT, they must have vanished on a recent Saturday morning at a church in West Knoxville.
Haywood Harris is a special assistant to athletic director Doug Dickey and retired as Associate AD for Media Relations. He writes a column for the Maryville (Tenn.) Daily Times.
The Men of the Church breakfast normally brings out an audience of about 100 for pancakes, eggs and sausage. But with the new Tennessee basketball coach as the featured attraction, the Family Life Center at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church was overflowing with a sellout crowd of 464.
At 7:30 a.m. on a September Saturday, at a time when football was just getting started, almost 500 men and their sons had gathered to listen to Peterson discuss UT basketball. He didn't disappoint them, enlivening his talk with a becoming dose of self-deprecating humor.
For instance, Peterson joked that coming out of high school in North Carolina the same year as Michael Jordan, he was under the distinct impression he (Peterson) was the better basketball prospect of the two. "But I evaluate players better now than I did then," he reassured his audience.
Everything Peterson has experienced since his appointment in April has reinforced a belief UT's strong football program helps rather than hurts basketball. "Football's success - and the same goes for women's basketball - convinced me there are good resources at this school," he said.
Peterson has become friends with Fulmer, who gave him a timeless piece of inside advise during a conversation that turned to the subject of football tickets. "Don't worry about game tickets, just worry about parking," Fulmer told him.
Support of Vols fans has been exceptional. "I'm not talking only about the crowd at Cedar Springs church," he said. "I spent a day with the kids at Holston Methodist Children's Home at Greeneville and we had almost 400 people show up at a fund-raiser for the home that night."
This man who traveled the Asheville-Knoxville highway in his youth is comfortable as a Tennessean. He likes it here, and it's obvious UT fans have welcomed him and his family warmly.
Dean Smith had it right: "A perfect fit." It's a fit that should prove once and for all that football and basketball can prosper simultaneously at the University of Tennessee.
--Haywood Harris is a special assistant to athletic director Doug Dickey. He previously served as associate AD for media relations. He writes a column for the Maryville (Tenn.) Daily Times.
