Phillip Fulmer was the head football coach at the University of Tennessee from 1992-2008.
Fulmer grew up in Winchester, Tennessee where he attended Franklin County High School. Fulmer enrolled at the University of Tennessee as a student in 1968. He promptly joined the football team as an offensive guard. Fulmer helped Tennessee to a 30-5 record from 1969-71, where he played for coaches Doug Dickey (who returned to UT as athletic director and hired Fulmer as the Volunteers' coach) and Bill Battle. The Volunteers captured the SEC championship with a 9-2 record in 1969, went 11-1 and won the Sugar Bowl in 1970, and finished as Liberty Bowl champions with a 10-2 record in 1971.
Fulmer served as linebacker coach and defensive coordinator for the Vols freshman team in 1973 before moving to Wichita State University the following season. He spent five years at Wichita State, where he coached the offensive line in 1974 and 1977-78 and served as linebacker coach in 1975-76. He followed those years with a one-season stint at Vanderbilt, serving as an aide to Commodores head coach George MacIntyre.
Fulmer served 13 years as a Vols assistant coach beginning in 1980 before becoming the 20th head football coach at Tennessee, after a controversial decision to replace then-coach Johnny Majors, who had been ill.
In Fulmer's early career Tennessee won two Southeastern Conference championships, in 1997 and 1998, and a national championship in 1998. The Vols made two other SEC Championship game appearances in 2001 and 2004, losing both. Fulmer's winning percentage is still among the top in the country for coaches who have over ten years' experience.
Fulmer helped return Tennessee to national prominence from 1993 to 1998, when he won the first ever BCS National Championship Game. The Vols appeared in three consecutive Bowl Alliance or BCS games from 1997 to 1999, and posted 10 or more wins from 1995 to 1998. The senior class of the 1998 team complied a record of 45-5, losing only to Florida (3 times), Nebraska and Memphis.
He resigned from UT in 2008. On May 15, 2012, Fulmer was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
