Now that the University of Tennessee done chugged Coach Dooley’s butt clear out of the football program, consider the words in my post’s title. They were written not long ago by a Tennessee person who, given Dooley’s string of losses and that big ol’ empty expensive football stadium he and the guys were playing in, was anticipating his firing and reviewing UT’s situation.

It is not a good situation. It’s possible that even the constantly shifting gaggles of good old boys running UT are capable of grasping this.

The university’s athletic department posted a $3.98 million budget deficit for the 2011-12 fiscal year in part because of buyouts it was paying to [Phil] Fulmer, former athletic director Mike Hamilton, former men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl and former baseball coach Todd Raleigh.

The football program is on probation until August 2015. The NCAA handed Tennessee a two-year extension of its probation Friday after ruling former assistant Willie Mack Garza provided impermissible travel and lodging for an unofficial visit by former prospect Lache Seastrunk…

Dooley’s buyout will cost UT an additional five million dollars. Other millionaires on his staff will almost certainly also be fired, and they too will get million-dollar buyouts.

One of their hotly recruited players has been named as a suspect in the theft of objects from campus. Dooley knew he was a thief when he recruited him; he had a record.

The eyes of the world have been riveted to UT’s Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and its wine-enema-loving brothers.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things. Blog posts are supposed to be relatively short, and I haven’t yet gotten to why Knoxville is an attractive tourist destination.

So let’s take up the statement in this post’s headline. Although UT has a long history of filthy coaches and a filthy program; although its football program is on probation; although it has impoverished whatever academic value it had by continuing to give money to its filthy sports programs; although its sports programs recruit criminals; although the frat system that comprises the core of its football fans is currently a national laughingstock; although it will have to take millions and millions more from the school’s academic mission to hire a big-time coach (if it doesn’t, not only all of its investments in sports facilities — like its “eye-popping new athletic facility, a virtual Taj Mahal with cascading waterfalls, state-of-the-art technology, and workout areas that rival the U.S. Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs” — implode, but UT students almost certainly stage riots) — despite all of this, the culture of UT sports is a real fine drawing card for Knoxville. People want to be part of this picture.

And talk about generation of revenue! Football season lasts “up to eight weekends” a year!

Yes! For the sake of those few precious autumn days, a public university in the United States of America has turned itself into a tattered stinking whore.

Once they find the veteran cheater-coach they think will save their lives, the stench from UT will rise even higher.

UD will be there to sniff it — every aroma of the way.

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UD thanks Mike.