Bruce Pearl is optimistic about his future

Bruce Pearl thinks he'll get a chance to coach again, and he's probably right.

If you don't remember, Pearl was fired from his post as the head coach at Tennessee for a myriad of wrongdoings. The biggest issue, however, was lying to the NCAA about a picture taken with Aaron Craft, then a point guard recruit who is currently playing for Ohio State, at Pearl's home at a time that Craft was not allowed to be at Pearl's home. Throw in some other bogus behavior -- including a recruiting violation just days after his original punishment was handed down back in September -- and the Vols had no choice but to get rid of him.

And now, Pearl is finally giving interviews. He spoke with 790 the Zone in Atlanta in his first interview since he got the axe.


"I do think that I'm going to have the opportunity to coach again," Pearl told the radio station. "I've got to wait and see what the Committee on Infractions, what they say, probably coming up sometime in the middle of August and how quickly will they allow me to come back into coaching. That's going to go a long way towards whether or not I do coach again."

"Do you want me to write the book about how do you lose $10 million jobs? I can write the book. How can you be so dumb and so careless? ... It's not so much about what we did, it's about how we handled it."

"I think there was some decisions that we made. Specifically, in my visit with the enforcement staff. I answered about 150 questions. I answered 148 of them honestly. There were two questions that I did not answer honestly. Had I answered those two questions knowingly, willingly, honestly, instead of a week later asking them to come back because I knew I had made a mistake ... you guys would be interviewing the coach at Tennessee."

I'd be willing to bet a decently large sum of money that Bruce Pearl will one day coach college basketball again.

Most people in charge of hiring college basketball coaches don't exactly care about what you have done, they care about what you can do for them. And at every level, Pearl's proven to be a winner. He won at D-II Southern Indiana, he won at UW-Milwaukee, and he won at Tennessee, a place where basketball success is far from a given.

And what did Pearl in -- what has him heading in front of the Committee on Infractions -- isn't necessarily what he did. He had illegal contact with recruits, inviting them to his house for a BBQ when the rules stipulated that they weren't allowed to be there. That's, without a doubt, an offense you can recover from. His attempt to cover it up -- his lies to the NCAA and to the fans -- is what got him in trouble. Its like being a parent; you can get over the dumb stuff your kid does while growing up, but lying to keep themselves out of trouble is what gets them grounded during the summertime.

Pearl is a bit of a polarizing figure. Fans in Tennessee love him. Some of the media members that cover him feel differently. But the bottom line is that he wins games.

So did Todd Bozeman. He got an eight-year show-cause penalty after admitting to paying the family of Jelani Gardner $30,000. He's currently the head coach at Morgan State. Tim Floyd allegedly put thousands of dollars into the pocket of OJ Mayo's handlers and played a role in bringing down the USC basketball program. He's currently the head coach at UTEP. Eddie Sutton went on to finish his career at Oklahoma State after nearly bringing down the Kentucky basketball program in the late 80's. Hell, even Kelvin Sampson, whose excessive phone calls at Oklahoma and Indiana got him a five-year show-cause penalty, is coaching in the NBA right now.

People care about whether or not you can win them basketball games, and Pearl can flat out coach.

He'll get another job if he wants one. Its only a matter of time.