Tennessee Vols fans attacking Dan Wolken should know the truth

Joe Rexrode | The Tennessean

ATLANTA – Please, Tennessee fans, continue to trash Dan Wolken. I would never try to get in the way of the hours — or weeks, or years — of fun ahead as you tweet-assault your most hated of sportswriters.

I’ll even join you. I have joined you. His opinion on Greg Schiano being a fit for the Vols was, in my opinion, a bad opinion. Quite bad. I’ve argued with him about it on the phone and in person, and I used to throw occasional Schiano jabs at him on the world’s favorite website for rational debate. But it’s not funny anymore, and that’s why I’m writing this column.

Wolken’s opinion on Schiano is truly Wolken’s opinion on Schiano. That’s what I hope Vols fans hear and know. The USA TODAY columnist expressed it long before the text exchange with now-exiled Tennessee AD John Currie that, for some, put Wolken’s integrity in question. This is an explanation of why it shouldn’t be.

But don’t consider it a defense of Wolken. Consider it more of a social experiment. Let’s see if we can have a discussion that doesn’t devolve, like so many these days, into 100 percent name calling and zero percent listening. Let’s see if the folks who possess digital pitchforks with Wolken’s name on them can make it through this whole thing and be open to a different perspective.

Crowd speaks out against Greg Schiano, calls for John Currie's firing More than 100 people gathered outside Neyland Stadium on Nov. 26, then marched on Anderson Training Center to express outrage after reports surfaced that Tennessee is finalizing a deal to hire Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano.

I promise to be open to all critiques and questions afterward, including: “Who paid you off, Rexrode — Wolken? Gannett? Or since Wolken is a Vandy grad, maybe this is a David Williams/Skip Bayless/Buster Olney conspiracy?!”

Why write this? Well, Wolken can tweet about any topic these days and, within seconds, a Vols fan will jump on him and ask him if Currie put him up to it. It’s actually a fun game to play: When Wolken posts something, see if you can untie and tie your shoes before #VolTwitter gets him.

I have no illusions here about changing the minds of the masses, but maybe a few people will listen. Maybe some of the people who cover the Vols and have gone pitchfork-y on this topic. Also, this seems like a nice diversion from the first of four SEC Media Days, featuring a dynamic interview menu of Jimbo Fisher, Mark Stoops and Ed Orgeron.

And it’s about more than Wolken to me. This is about my line of work. It’s under assault like I never could have imagined. We have a president branding journalists as enemies of the state and we had five shot dead in a newsroom in Maryland last month. Link those things or don’t. Either way, there’s a lot of mistrust of journalists out there, and that’s troubling.

We are people in your communities and we love our jobs. We want to do them well, and honestly. We don’t get paid a ton. Some of the best people I’ve known are journalists. The vast majority of journalists I’ve known are ethical. Like any profession, we also have some bad apples. Anonymous sourcing can be abused. I’ve seen both in 20 years of doing this.

The day Vols fans denied Greg Schiano

But this isn’t one of those cases. We demand transparency from the people and institutions we cover, and we can do a better job of being transparent about what we do. So here’s what I know about Wolken:

Twitter time stamping shows that at 12:55 p.m. on Nov. 26, the day Schiano was hired and then quickly un-hired by Vols fans, Wolken tweeted: “If Currie can convince Schiano to take the job, it’s a home run. Tennessee fans will hate it. I think he is a very good college coach.”

This was no surprise. Wolken had said things like this before. He was high on Schiano. So were/are others. Schiano’s tenure at Rutgers was extremely impressive. But to me, his disastrous tenure in the NFL and the uncertainty over his knowledge of what went on while on staff with Jerry Sandusky at Penn State made him the wrong choice.

Anyway, at 1:35 p.m., Currie confirmed to Wolken via text that Schiano was hired. That’s when the exchange — detailed in a UT document dump in March that was way more revealing than expected, presumably to make Currie look bad — took place.

Wolken: “Great hire, man. Seriously.”

Currie: “Gonna need some help on the PR. Our people are wacko.”

Wolken: “I’ll help. Not sure they’ll listen. LOL. I know he’s a very good coach and is about the right stuff.”

Cringe. I wish Wolken simply would have replied: “I already thought highly of Schiano and I will write it.”

But “I’ll help” opened this whole thing up to be twisted. Just as some have twisted one mention of Schiano’s name in a deposition on Sandusky into: “Greg Schiano covered up child rape at Penn State!”

Reporters and sources have conversations like this all the time, of course. Sometimes NFL news breaks, for example, because the news breaker and the source of the news have the same agent. Sausage is made and the public usually doesn’t see how. The question is whether a journalist behaves dishonestly or unethically.

The truth is, Wolken didn’t. I texted him that day (from a Titans-Colts game in Indy) and asked him: “Can you tell me why I shouldn’t be outraged by this hire?”

“He’s a really good coach,” Wolken replied. “And Tennessee wasn’t going to get anyone better.”

I disagreed and wrote my honest opinion. He wrote his. The UT coaching search went, to borrow a term, wacko. And in March when the documents were released, Blake Toppmeyer of the Knoxville News Sentinel — owned, like USA TODAY and The Tennessean, by Gannett — led his story with the Wolken-Currie conversation.

Honesty and ethics, journalism musts

I’ve known Wolken for five years and consider him a friend. I realize this will cause some to dismiss my take altogether. But he wouldn’t be a friend if he did his job like a scumbag. I promise you this: If I thought Wolken wrote anything he didn’t believe, simply to help his source, I wouldn’t have touched this topic publicly. I would have griped to other journalists about Wolken behind his back and rooted for him to lose his job.

I’ve wanted to write this for a while. I asked my editor last week and, after the pause of uncertainty I anticipated, he said he was OK with it if Wolken was OK with it. I called Wolken. I wouldn’t say he was enthused about bringing all this up again, but he agreed. Anyone writing sports, especially opinion, has to have thick skin. He does. But anyone having his or her integrity bashed for months is going to feel it eventually.

I told Wolken I didn’t need him to participate, that I would write my perspective. But he did text me a “statement,” and I will do with it what most journalists do with official statements — paraphrase it and pick out the best part to quote.

Wolken said he has had a high opinion of Schiano for years and has “been pretty baffled that anyone who purports to be acting in good faith would try to ascribe other motives to how I handled that story.”

He shouldn’t be baffled. He opened the door with a poor choice of words, and he blasted Tennessee fans for being “crybabies” about the Schiano choice, overstating things when he said they “hurt the program” even though the program has been broken for a decade.

Vols fans have reason to dislike Wolken. I hope they give him guff for 20 more years. The right guff.

Contact Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.