Tennessee fans protest the potential hire of Greg Schiano as the Vols' football coach

The more I see national media — including some near-and-dear friends — tee off on Tennessee’s fan base during this hold-my-beer search for a new head football coach, the more I’m convinced this story isn’t being covered in its proper context.

Being crazy doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

Placing this situation in a vacuum is like mentioning the destruction from a wildfire without explaining what started it.

Were Tennessee fans unfair to Greg Schiano? Yes. Without a doubt.

Were Tennessee fans unfair to Dave Doeren? Yes. Without a doubt.

Were they wrong to be upset about either potential hire in the first place? No. Without a doubt.

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If you’ve been around the Tennessee football program the past decade, you know that that fan uprising — the Volshevik Revolution, the ReVOLt, whatever you want to call it — wasn’t a spontaneous combustion. It was a volcano that had been building for years.

The first college football game was played in 1869, and all of eight teams in college football have more wins than Tennessee. Do times change? Sure, they do. Sewanee and Tulane used to be in the SEC. But a cursory glance at the winningest programs in college football shows you clear as day that Tennessee is a big-boy program. The past decade is what it is. The past century is something else.

If Alabama or Nebraska or Oklahoma or Michigan or USC or Ohio State went through a decade like Tennessee’s past 10 years, and they tried to hire a coach who was nearly on the hot seat at N.C. State, and that happened in this social-media-driven era, the result would be exactly the same. Exactly. The. Same.

Call it entitlement if you want. That’s fine. Tennessee fans are entitled. But that’s not always a dirty word. Tennessee fans have every right to expect their team competing at or near the top of college football on at least a somewhat-consistent basis.

A decade’s worth of bad decisions have led to decent-to-mediocre-to-bad football, and that has made Tennessee fans crazy. But what else would you expect? Losing is a disease, and this fan base is sick. It’s begging for medicine, and it knows some medicines won’t work.

The hire of Lane Kiffin rubbed some the wrong way from the beginning, but most quickly got on board. The Vols had all of two head coaches in the previous three decades, and they were both Tennessee Men, so the thought of mixing things up with a young, brash, unconventional outsider was appealing. That didn’t work.

The hire of Derek Dooley rubbed many the wrong way from the beginning, but most quickly got on board. The Vols had just had their world turned upside-down and inside-out by Kiffin, and the son of SEC legend Vince Dooley had a disposition and an accent that fit East Tennessee like cornbread fits beans. That didn’t work.

The hire of Butch Jones rubbed many the wrong way from the beginning, but most quickly got on board. The Vols grew tired of Dooley’s brutal honesty, inability to get anything out of his defense and inability to gain consistent traction on the recruiting trail, and the upbeat Jones felt like a breath of fresh air. That didn’t work.

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Vanderbilt — yes, that Vanderbilt — has a better SEC record than Tennessee the past seven seasons. Seven. Seasons.

Tennessee just went 0-8 in the SEC play for the first time in history. It just lost eight games in a single season for the first time in history. It just lost to Vandy and Kentucky for the first time since 1964. And that terrible movie was set to a score of Butch Jones' press conferences and interviews.

Now imagine Tennessee trying to respond to that by offering you Greg Schiano or Dave Doeren.

Put yourself in the position of a Tennessee fan.

Would you not be furious?

Of course you would. You would be furious.

Tennessee athletic director John Currie

I’m not defending some of the things Tennessee fans did to Schiano and Doeren, especially the former. Some of that went way too far. But the craziest fringes of any proud, win-starved fan base are going to do things like that. That doesn’t make it OK. But it’s going to happen. Bury your head as deep in the sand as you want, but that’s a fact.

Try to imagine being a Tennessee fan who has a 10-year-old son. That kid loves sports, like many kids do. But he has never seen Tennessee win anything close to a legitimate championship. He’s seen your two biggest rivals — Alabama and Florida — do it a lot. He’s watching another big rival — Georgia — doing it right now. And every time he flips on SEC Network, he’s seeing people laugh at the school his parents love.

If you’re that parent, you’re not just worried. You’re terrified.

Tennessee has lost long enough that it’s in danger of losing a good-sized chunk of a fan base that’s usually as large and loud as any in the country.

Put simply: This is a hire Tennessee needs to nail. It needs this hire to soar through the air, spin around several times and still stick the landing.

Why spend $340 million on a facelift to your iconic stadium but not spend a few extra million to get a coach who will fill seats in that stadium? That’s like thinking a Diet Coke will offset the 4,000-calorie fast-food meal you just shoved into your mouth. On what planet does that make sense?

I’m not suggesting that Tennessee absolutely has to hire an expensive coach, because people have won championships without doing that. I’m not suggesting that Tennessee absolutely has to hire a coach its fan base will love from the beginning, because people have won championships doing that. Auburn under Gene Chizik did it.

What I’m saying is this: Those odds aren’t great. Why risk it?

Tennessee’s fans are crazy, but they’re not wrong. You didn’t see wild protests at the thought of Mike Gundy or Kevin Sumlin or even Jeff Brohm — who I think will be a star — becoming the Vols’ head coach. You didn’t see wild protests at the thought of Vols legend Tee Martin getting the job, and he’s never been a head coach. Perhaps tugging at the heart strings causes a blind spot, but it’s not crazy to imagine a staff full of former Vols pouring their hearts and souls into a place they love and finding a way to fix it. And it’s not tough to imagine Tennessee fans giving some of their beloved VFLs a longer leash during the rebuilding process.

Do I love everything about the way Tennessee fans are acting right now? No, I don’t. But this is way of the world right now. It’s not just sports, either. It’s taken over the political landscape, as well. It’s permeated into every pore of American life.

Tennessee fans are serious right now. You can’t fool them. And the sooner Tennessee’s administration and top-level boosters understand that, the better.

Can you blame the inmates for trying to run an asylum that’s been managed so poorly by so many wardens?

You don’t have to love all the methods — and I don’t — to understand the point here. And I’m saddened to see so many media colleagues completely miss that point.

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Contact Wes Rucker by email at wes.rucker@cbsinteractive.com or ON TWITTER, or FOLLOW GOVOLS247 ON FACEBOOK.