Its official, Bruce Pearl has been fired as Tennessee’s head basketball coach .
The news came down today. Pearl will be getting a little less than $1 million as a parting settlement. You can read Tennessee AD Mike Hamilton’s full statement here.
The most interesting part of that statement is the revelation that Pearl committed a violation in March of 2011. For those without the aid of a calender, that is this month.
“The dynamics of our case with the NCAA have evolved further,” Hamilton said in the statement, “including additional violations committed on September 14 and in March 2011. The cumulative effect of the evolution of the investigation combined with a number of more recent non-NCAA-related incidents have led to a belief that this staff cannot be viable at Tennessee in the future.”
And while the nature of that violation has yet to come to light, the fact that a violation was committed clears a lot of confusion up.
Since Pearl came out in September and announced to the world that he had lied to the NCAA in their investigation of recruiting violations, Tennessee has wholeheartedly backed Pearl. But one day prior to the first NCAA Tournament game for the Vols, Hamilton released a statement that more-or-less said that Pearl would not be retained once the season ended.
The question everyone had asked was what changed? Well, now we know. For the second time since the allegations came to light, Pearl and/or his staff committed a recruiting violation. Just days after his teary September press conference, Pearl “bumped” a recruit at Oak Hill Academy.
Apparently that was the final straw.