Bruce Pearl Finally Gets Fired

The year long Bruce Pearl Controversy has finally come to an end. Yesterday, Tennessee fired Bruce Pearl as the head coach of their men's basketball team. Pearl had been the coach of the team since 2005 and has made quite an impact there until this season when it was discovered that Pearl made illegal recruitment contacts and lied to the NCAA about them. After suspensions and sanctions imposed by the team and the SEC, Tennessee has just decided to fire Pearl. The university has yet to receive any official punishment from the NCAA.

Another recruiting scandal in the NCAA comes to an end. Okay, there is still NCAA punishment to be handed down but the source of the infractions seems to be gone. It seemed that Tennessee really wanted to hang on to Pearl any way they could and their one hope to do that seemed to be in the tournament and how far the team could go. However, losing to Michigan in their first game seemed to be the last straw.

I doubt Pearl will get another prominent head coaching job, at least so soon. As for the university, they won't recover from this for a long while.