It's a big weekend for college football. There's a bunch of huge conference championship games that will determine who gets to play in the college football playoff in about a month, all featuring good teams at mostly prominent schools, some of which that have kind of corny chains:

Anyways, you would imagine that for any sport, the week leading up to many of it's biggest games of the year would be spent talking about those games, the analysis of those games and their impact, and so on right? Wrong:

Most of the week was spent analyzing the Tennessee football coaching situation, one that has had plenty of twists and turns, and a lot of hurt feelings.

Here's the quick summary: Tennessee football, one of the (supposed) best programs in college football, has been down on their luck lately. They fired their head coach Butch Jones a little more than midway through the year, which left their current athletic director- John Currie, who had been essentially hired to fire Jones and pick out a new coach- to find a new coach. He chose to hire Greg Schiano, an uninspired choice to be sure, but one that Currie likely didn't anticipate blowing up nearly as much as it did.

You see, Schiano is associated with the Penn State scandal from back in 2013, one that convicted former Penn State assistant Jerry Sandusky of child abuse (more specifically, rape) that had been happening for years. This was a scandal that took down the winningest coach off all time, and one of the top programs in college football (temporarily, as they're back to prominence now), and rightfully so.

What's Schiano's connection? Well, the whistleblower for this- Michael McQueary- stated that he was told by another Penn State coach that Schiano had witnessed Sandusky committing abuse in the Penn State locker room. Now, Schiano was never questioned, never brought to court, and never charged with anything at all from this, but it isn't illogical to think that McQueary had absolutely no reason to lie given everything else he spilled about the program.

There also is the fact that Schiano might just not that be that great of a guy independent of that. At his last college job, head coach of Rutgers, he was 68-67, not too shabby but not screaming "incredible coach". Yet it's his time in the NFL, filled with allegations of releasing private information about players, rigging captain votes, and just in general being someone that at worst is a flat out bully, and at the very least is someone who just rubs everyone the wrong way and shouldn't be in charge of a team:

Anyways, so as you can imagine, the move wasn't exactly popular, and in fact led to things like this happening on Tennessee's campus:

In fact, it basically led to a flat out Twitter revolution started by noted sports talk show host (and noted boob lover) Clay Travis, which earned varying amounts of praise and scorn from the national media. The revolution effectively succeeded, as despite signing a memorandum of understanding with Tennessee, Schiano will not be the head coach there. I could now name the list of people who have since been contacted by Currie and either not been offered the gig or flat out turned it down, but that list is pretty long. After this embarrassing saga, Currie was fired on Friday, after less then a year on the job and was replaced by Philip Fulmer, legendary Tennessee head coach, who in a funny twist, is now replacing the man who had a big role in the unpopular move of firing him in the first place, which should be a satisfying result for Tennessee fans given that they were clamoring for it all week. There also was former coach (and possible candidate, because why not?) Lane Kiffin playing the part of troll during this whole ordeal, which was pretty great.

Anyways, there has been a lot of pushback and defending of Schiano and Currie on social media, saying that the Tennessee fans- Travis particularly- are crazy. In my view, they have every right to do what they did. Did they go way over the top with the Penn State connection? Maybe, given that the evidence isn't necessarily true, but I don't personally believe being offended about any connection with that scandal is something that is worth criticizing.

Yet, the primary reason I am defending the fans is that if you are an elected official, someone whose job is to represent a group of people, than it is your job to make decisions FOR those people. If those people don't like and don't approve of the decisions you are making, that should matter, even if Congress doesn't think so (too easy).

Given the history of Schiano independent of the Penn State stuff, I wouldn't be too happy having him as my coach either. Combine that with the Penn State connection, and there is honestly no reason he should've been considered, no matter how qualified he may or may not be for the position (and again, like I said, he may not even be that qualified!). The Ringer's Michael Baumann summarized it best when he called out members of the media for defending this hire, defending somebody who regardless of whether or not the Penn State stuff is true (again, if everything else McQueary said was true, why wouldn't this be?) is a bully and a bad guy. These fans should be lauded, and representatives should learn to be better at their jobs, and not bite the hand that feeds them, whether it be in sports, politics, or whatever it may be.