All Roads Lead to Vols Country with Mark Nagi

Mark Nagi, a long-time Knoxville resident, is both a TDOT employee and former sportscaster who recently wrote a new book on UT sports called Decade of Dysfunction. In this episode of ConnectTheKnox, Mark shares what brought him to Knoxville from upstate New York and why he decided to transition from his dream career of sportscasting to becoming the Community Relations Officer at TDOT. Mark and Julia explore some of the innovations TDOT is implementing on our roads, as well as their focus on safety for motorists and TDOT employees. Mark also gives a fantastic overview of the history of UT sports and what led him to write his new book.

Highlights:

00:20 Julia introduces Mark, a long-time Knoxville resident and newly published author

01:01 How Mark wound up in Knoxville after growing up in Albany, New York

03:06 Mark describes what it was like being a sports announcer and fulfilling that childhood dream

04:30 What Mark currently does for TDOT and why he enjoys it even more than being a sportscaster

06:30 Julia and Mark discuss the impact of neighboring states and new Tennessee residents on our roads

10:12 Ad - Dr. Joe Chiro www.goseedoctorjoe.com

12:57 Some of the innovations that TDOT is implementing to improve our roads

14:42 Mark emphasizes the importance of safety on the roads for motorists and TDOT employees

16:00 Mark explains how TDOT help trucks work and how they’re helping people who break down or crash on the highway

18:41 Ad - Just Homes Group

19:15 Mark talks about his new book on UT sports, Decade of Dysfunction

28:20 Where you can find Marks’ book, Decade of Dysfunction, and how you can contact Mark

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

• TDOT SmartWay cameras: https://smartway.tn.gov

• Decade of Dysfunction: https://www.amazon.com/Decade-Dysfunction-Updated-2019-version/dp/1075446031

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/marknagi

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Transcript:

Julia: Welcome to another episode of Connect the Knox, connecting Knoxville to the nation. I’m your host, Julia Hurley, and today’s guest is a special treat. We have a Knoxville author here on our hands. We have Mark Nagi, who I’ve had to ask four times how to pronounce his name correctly. So, I’m very excited today to bring you Mark Nagi. And a little history on Mark: He was a sports announcer here in Knoxville for a decade. That is huge news for us. But we’re really here to get to know you and a little bit about what Knoxville has done for you and what you have done for Knoxville. And that’s what this whole podcast is about. Mark, thank you for joining us today.

Mark: Absolutely, Julia. It’s great to be with you.

Julia: Absolutely. Well, thank you very much again for taking time for us and our listeners. Let’s start out with obvio—the very first question we ask everybody: how did you end up in Knoxville, Tennessee?

Mark: Well, I’m originally from Albany, New York, and I grew up hearing about Tennessee from my father who got one of his master’s degrees at UT Oakridge. He only lived in East Tennessee for a little bit over a year, but I would always grew up hearing about it. So, when I applied for colleges I applied to UT for undergrad. Got in, but I was 17 years old, scared to death, never would have moved 800 miles away. When it came time for grad school though, it was either to go work at the local fish fry or go to grad school, so I decided to go to grad school.

Ended up getting into Tennessee and got my Master’s in broadcasting at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Had two terrific years at UT, both professionally and personally, and ended up loving East Tennessee. So, I worked in Watertown, New York, for three years, then I worked in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for a year. Always wanted to get back to East Tennessee. And I was hired at Channel Six in 2001. I spent ten years there. In the past 11 years, I’ve been working here at the Tennessee Department of Transportation and really just fallen in love with East Tennessee, and Knoxville especially.

Julia: That is—okay, so that story is the almost identical to every person that we speak with that ends up moving here. They’re either here for Oak Ridge, okay, or they’re here for education and they end up wanting to always return. So, what is it that’s so special about Knoxville?

Mark: You know, it’s the obvious things of, you know, no state income tax, it’s a good place to raise kids, the climate, you don’t have to have the, you know, negative temperatures for so long like you may have in upstate New York. And that’s why a lot of folks have moved to this area, especially from the northeast or maybe from out west. It’s just a terrific place. I’m really happy that I ended up here and I expect to be here for many more years.

Julia: Tell us about your time as a sports announcer. That’s got to be—I—you know, it’s very interesting. I don’t meet very many sports announcers in all of my years in sports. So, tell us about how that works out and how that was for you.

Mark: Sure. Well, I grew up wanting to be a sportscaster. I knew what I wanted to do since I was seven years old. I think I realized pretty early on that I wasn’t going to be a professional athlete. There’s very, very small percentage of people that can make a living that way.

I thought that very—the next best thing would be to be able to go to the games, be able to talk about sports. I couldn’t believe that there were people that were getting paid to go to all these great sporting events. I think that’s why so many people become sportscasters in—to begin with is because you want to go to the games. I ended up working, like I said, three years in Watertown, a year in Myrtle Beach, ten years here.

For the most part, I just loved that job. It was terrific. By the end of the career, it just—it got to be just a little bit too much. The pay isn’t as good. The hours are really, really difficult. You know, I was working 46 weekends a year and hundreds of nights a year. And especially when you have kids, it’s just not a good job for that. It’s a great job if you’re young and single. It’s a difficult job then, when you become an adult and have more responsibility. So, I loved my time as a sportscaster, but I can be honest and say that I’ve loved my time here at the Tennessee Department of Transportation even more.

Julia: That is awesome. So, what do you do for TDOT? And this is not Texas Department of Transportation. We’re Tennessee people. It’s TDOT. We’re the only T [laugh].

Mark: That’s right. Yeah, they have to be the TXDOT. Yes, I’m the Community Relations Officer, so folks have any questions about things that are going on with the Tennessee Department of Transportation, they can email me, they can call me, you know, hit me up on Twitter. I tried to get as much information out there to folks about what’s going on our Tennessee interstates and state routes. In East Tennessee alone, which is what I’m responsible for, we’ve got 24 counties over 9000 lane miles. It can get very busy. Love interacting with the public. There are a million questions that folks have. I get those questions every day and I try to get them the information as quickly as possible. So, it’s a job I never really expected to have, but it’s one that I feel blessed that I have.

Julia: I love TDOT, I think that, honestly, if you look at the la—every state that I’ve been to—not very many—like, 36 out of 50, so not every state, but many states across the country, we have decent roads. I don’t think that people understand how lucky we really [laugh] are to have decent roads.

Mark: Well, I think that, you know, it’s a major responsibility. You know, we are the one state agency that people really—that affects people’s daily lives. Even if you’re not driving on the roads, if you’re trying to get goods to your house, they’re using the roads to get there. It’s a—we take a lot of responsibility to try to keep people safe on our roadways, trying to make sure that our roadways are in as good working condition as they can be. One thing that we always like to stress too, is we’re one of only six states in the nation that operates with no transportation debt. And what that means is that the projects that we’re working on, you know, your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids aren’t going to be paying those roads off. So, you know, we do the best with the finances that we can. And, you know, we’re proud to serve the public.

Julia: So, are there any—because I mean, I should know the answer to this question, but I’m going to ask you because I know you would definitely know it—I think Tennessee is the only state in the nation that has seven other states that touch it. So, seven other states have people using our interstate system, correct?

Mark: I think that’s right. I would have to go back and look at that again. But that’s one of the interesting things about Tennessee and especially about East Tennessee alone because, you know, you have I-81 you have I-75, for upper east you have I-26. You have all these interstates that are, you know, converging in this one specific area, and that’s where things can get very busy. You know, also you take a look at that interchange, it’s the busiest interchange in the state, up in Sevierville: exit 407.

Julia: Really?

Mark: Yes.

Julia: Well, I would say the exit, definitely. I would have thought that would have been [White Road 00:07:12] because I live in Lenoir City, so for me, that’s like, oh my gosh.

Mark: [laugh] Yes. I live out west, too. And that’s something you’re going to see—you just see a lot of traffic here in East Tennessee. It’s built up a lot. You know, kind of like we talked about before, a lot of people decided that this was where they’ve wanted to live. I can say that just in the 20-plus years that I’ve lived here consecutively, you know, Knoxville has grown so much, you know, West Knoxville, the Hardin Valley area, and it just goes on and on. So, I think that that’s actually one of the bad things is our a secret has kind of gotten out and more and more people are moving not only to Nashville—everybody kind of talks about Nashville, and rightfully so it’s growing by leaps and bounds—but also East Tennessee as well.

Julia: Yeah. So, Knoxville just got ranked 10th most underrated cities, by the National Association of REALTORS for 2023. We’re number ten. Last year we were number 25.

Mark: Yeah, that’s not surprising. It is not surprising. This is a—it was a hidden gem. I think that more and more people have figured it out. And that’s great, obviously. I was one of the transplants. I was one of the people that were like that. It was only 20-some years ago, you know? It’s just sometimes it gets a little bit busier than maybe that you would have liked. But I guess that’s the cost of doing business.

Julia: Well, at the end of the day, you know, where I live in Lenoir City is super close to the interstate exit. So, I can just jump on the interstate, and I used to be able to jump on the interstate and get to Farragut in five minutes. And now it takes me 20 minutes to get to Farragut.

Mark: Yeah.

Julia: Still, 20 minutes to get somewhere to a larger area to do major shopping and do major events, anywhere else in the country, they beg for 20 minutes. So, I know to us locals that 20 minutes seems like a long time, but I know for a fact 20 minutes is nothing if you’ve ever traveled outside of the state of Tennessee [laugh].

Mark: No, I was just in New York City a couple weeks ago with my oldest daughter and, you know, to go a mile it’s going to take you 30, 35 minutes, sometimes, even more. You know, drove down to Atlanta a couple of months ago and you just see how busy it is there. So, I guess you put it into perspective that way. There are levels of traffic. Believe me, it can get busy here in East Tennessee, especially rush hour in the West Knoxville area for morning rush and for afternoon rush, but by no means are we Los Angeles at five o’clock.

Julia: Lord no. And we’re so blessed not to have that problem. Any—and you don’t have to share this information if you don’t have it—any ideas if we’ll get a Knoxville bypass in the next 20 years? I know it will take that long to build it.

Mark: I don’t h—[laugh] I don’t have that information, but you know, we’re always looking, you know, 10, 15, 20 years in the future when we’re talking about what to do with our roadways, you know, because you have to be proactive that way because again, so many people are moving into the area. And I don’t see that slowing down anytime soon.

Julia: I don’t either. We were actually—I had a lady contact me from Oak Ridge. I send out mailers every month, like, “Hey, this is what your home value could possibly be. Let’s talk.” So, she calls me and she says, “Hey, I’ve got your mailer.” And I put the population at the bottom of the card, just so people kind of know what’s going on, and sometimes people just don’t pay attention to the census or the news.

So, she was like, “There’s no way there’s only 31,000 People in Oak Ridge.” I said, “I would honestly agree with that, and here’s why. The census was done before Covid.”

Mark: Right.

Julia: We have absolutely no idea that in two years, I’ve personally relocated hundreds, not a hundred—hundreds of people, and I’m only one of 6000 real estate agents in the Knoxville market. So, we really don’t know the number anymore.

Mark: No. It’ll be interesting, honestly, I’m very curious to see what the census will be like in 2030 because I think that you’re going to see that growth from 2010 to 2030, and it’s going to be pretty [laugh], pretty large. And I think—

Julia: It’s going to be [crosstalk 00:11:03].

Mark: —going to probably still shock some people. It will.

Julia: I think so as well, and I think the first thing I said was, hey, you know, just make sure that when you pay your taxes, you thank your roads commissioners because they—[laugh] they’re going to be the brunt force of that maintenance of effort. It may not even be the school systems. People aren’t really coming here and bringing droves of children; they are bringing cars, and it’ll be our transportation that suffers if we don’t, to make sure that that’s taken care of. So, as I’ve always said about TDOT, one of the most forward-thinking and affordable roads we drive on because I know as soon as I—no offense to North Carolina, but the minute I cross that border, it’s like, [bumpy noises]. And I’m like, “I’m so glad.”

Mark: Well, you know, it’s tough. And every DOT does the best that they can to serve their areas. But it’s, you know—I go drive north to go home, probably four or five times a year now up into New York and you can see those roadways when you start, especially get into the more northern climates that are really weather-beaten. You go into Pennsylvania and parts of New York especially and they’ve got a really difficult job because not only do you have the rough weather, but you also have so much truck traffic, and that can take its toll on the roadways.

Julia: You know, the trucking system absolutely beats us to all heck and that’s in all fifty states and that’s all over the world, actually, trucking. Getting goods and services to people has always been a challenge. Have you all done—and I know you have, but I mean, it’s years and years and years away; we’re always well behind some of the—not Tennessee, just the nation in general, well behind—China has come up with basically rubber roadways.

Mark: Okay.

Julia: Have you seen those?

Mark: I have not seen those.

Julia: Where they recycles old tires and rubber and just put rubber on the road. There’s just a hundred percent rubber roads.

Mark: Hmmm well, I haven’t seen that. I know that, like, on I-640, we were actually doi—which is an important, very important project—we’re working on something, it’s called rubblization. And what that’s doing is basically, you know, getting the current roadway that is—and they’re knocking it into tiny little pieces and then that’s going to be used as the base for the next resurfacing that goes along. And we’re hopeful that is going to make that roadway, you know, even smoother for folks for decades to come. So, you know, we’re always trying to be as innovative as we can. You know, we’re trying to, you know, be, you know, forward-thinking instead of looking to only what has taken place in the past and I think that the Department of Transportation does a good job with that.

Julia: I do too. And I thought when I saw that, you know, obviously China is—their population is, you know, six times our population, so they have a ton of people on their roads as well, and I had seen some mixture of that the last commission event that I had gone to where you could feel it and how the road felt different with the rubber mixed in there. It was so quiet. And I thought, I don’t know, sometimes that kind of actually want to hear if somebody’s on the other side of me or something along those lines. But I understand the concept [laugh]—

Mark: Yeah, sure.

Julia: —there—and then I was like we can’t put Matlock Tire out of business yet, you know? [laugh].

Mark: [laugh].

Julia: Just kidding. I love them. But yeah. So transitioning, thank you for all of your service to TDOT. I really don’t think that people understand the effort that it takes, again with a no-income-tax state, and no-debt state to maintain roads.

Mark: Mm-hm. Well, I’ll say this. My job at TDOT is extremely easy. It’s the folks that are on the roadways every day that are working that close to oncoming traffic. Every time I talk to folks, I try to stress the importance that when you’re driving and you see any orange cones and barrels or you see any crews in the area, slow down because you don’t realize how fast you’re going.

You may think, “Okay, I’m slowing down to 55,” you’re still going 55 miles an hour in a very heavy vehicle. And we have seen TDOT workers over the years that have lost their lives in the line of duty. And it’s an awful, awful thing, and we want our folks to get home safely just like we want motorists to get home safely. So, stressing the importance the that job that our folks are doing on the roadways, it is extremely important work, it is extremely dangerous work. So please, when you’re behind the wheel, make sure you’re concentrating one hundred percent on the task at hand, and that is driving your vehicle. That way, it’s the best way for you to get home safely and for our folks to get home safely.

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Julia: So, question—because I see these very often, which is really great, the helper—I don’t, I don’t know what they’re actually called—the helper trucks—

Mark: Yeah they Help Trucks.

Julia: —they are very helpful, actually extremely helpful. They’re faster response time than AAA—no offense to AAA—TDOT is a faster response time, and I’m starting to see people calling TDOT, over maybe the police chief or whatever it is that they need help with on the side of the road. So, their car breaks down or they need help getting off of—something’s happened. TDOT is super responsive. Tell us about how to get in touch with that situation, maybe if somebody’s stuck on the interstate?

Mark: Well, we have what’s called our Transportation Management Centers, and those are the areas in our—at TDOT that we’re able to monitor our TDOT SmartWay cameras, which we have placed on interstates throughout the state. Here in East Tennessee specifically, our Help Truck units, they are circling on the Interstate in the Knoxville area 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just for that to happen. Because if there is a crash, we’re trying to get those crash vehicles off the roadway. You see so many secondary crashes with people rubbernecking, with cars that have backed up, and our Help Trucks do a terrific job of clearing the roadway to make sure that traffic can continue flowing because you see more and more crashes when cars are brought to a stop. Because all it’s going to take is one person not paying attention, they rear-end one car which rear ends another, and then you have a lot of bad things happen.

Our Help Truck units do a terrific job. They are available to help change a flat tire, push a car off the roadway, somebody has run out of gas, they can assist that way. You know, they’re not specifically there for, like, what AAA would do, but the main thing, their main goal is to try to clear that roadway and get traffic going again.

Julia: How do people get in touch with them, or they just—

Mark: Again, it’s not—I mean, they’re welcome to call us but they would be better served calling AAA, calling local law enforcement. Our Help Trucks in the Knoxville area, they’re circling 24 hours a day. The TDOT SmartWay system, I mentioned those cameras, that’s a terrific resource for folks to use—you know, kind of getting on a tangent here—that’s a great resource for folks to use to see what’s going on in the interstates. Are there backups? Are there crashes? Should I take a different route? It’s great for folks to kind of look at that the old know before you go. And that’s accessible at smartway.tn.gov. But obviously, we tell folks, do not use that resource when you yourself are behind the wheel.

Julia: Oh yeah, for sure. Please stop texting and driving. It wears me out [laugh].

Mark: It does.

Julia: I see it all day. I’m like, “Come on, [Betty 00:18:37]. Come on.” Anyway. Alright, I’m going to shift because I’ve only got ten minutes of your time left and I really want to talk about this book.

Mark: Sure.

Julia: Because that’s how—that’s—I was like, “Okay, I had no idea.” I saw you tweet it. I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I don’t [unintelligible 00:18:50] I love Twitter. I get all my news from Twitter. It’s real quick. I’m like, “Who’s local? What do I need to know?”

And I saw this book that you had posted and I thought, “You did what now?” I had no idea that you wrote a book. So, cool when somebody local there’s something I don’t know about. It is called a Decade of Dysfunction.

Mark: Yeah.

Julia: Tell us about this book.

Mark: Okay, well, Decade of Dysfunction—I always like to show folks the cover; get a good look at Neyland Stadium—decade basically when Tennessee had the crazy coaching search of 2017 when Butch Jones had gotten fired and they tried to hire Greg Schiano and the fans had this uprising. And there was a national narrative that it was just a bunch of hillbillies that got mad because they didn’t get Jon Gruden, who was [unintelligible 00:19:38] at the time. And I felt that like that was very short-sighted because this wasn’t something that just happened on November 26th, 2017. This had been building up for a period of at least ten years. And it was all that fan frustration that finally got to the breaking point.

So, in the book, I tried to basically look at it as a historical document. I tried to go through all the things that had happened to Tennessee athletics—and the university itself—in that ten-year period, which led to the fan uprising. And that she—was now known as Schiano Sunday, when Tennessee fans revolted, it was a battle on multiple fronts. It was boots on the ground with fans that protested in front of the Tennessee football complex. It was, especially on social media, if anybody remembers that day, it was an absolute dumpster fire. Nobody wanted that hire to take place.

It took place with state politicians. They were the ones who ended up getting involved as well, making their voices heard. It got Tennessee’s big-money boosters also ended up having a say in this, and it turned into kind of this booster-on-booster crime with some guys wanted one coach, some wanted another coach. I mean, it was a complete mess of that day. But again, it’s because there had been ten years of, you know, just awful coaching hires, a terrible decision to get rid of the Lady Vols name change, which—

Julia: Yeah, that was rough. That was a rough week. I was, like, “You are kidding me with this.”

Mark: Yeah. I mean, oh, so many of those things built up. And I felt like there was a place for a book like that. And I had a lot of fun writing the book. It was a really tough experience. I mean, I do a lot of sports writing, but that was the first time I’d ever written a book itself. And I’m really happy that I did it.

Julia: Tell us about, kind of the—so the conversations that started this ten years ago, what was the culmination of the result of it? I mean, we call it—if you—if anybody knows anything about the University of Tennessee Knoxville, we call it Vol Twitter; you can—it’s got its own hashtag—there are hundreds of thousands of people a day that Tweet about University of Tennessee Knoxville sports, all day long. University of Tennessee Knoxville has the second largest fan base in the whole world, right behind Florida Gators. And I think that’s just Gatorade, you know? Just, people know Gatorade. They’re lucky; they got Gatorade. That’s the only reason they’re number one, I guarantee it.

But we’re the second-largest fan base in the entire world. So, it’s not as if people aren’t constantly looking at what we’re doing. Not to mention that we’re the second-largest football stadium in the country, period. So, I mean, we have a lot of people that want to know what’s going on all the time. They’re investing their money, they’re investing their time, they’re putting their effort, their children. We have a very large following. How did we go from one era of success—the ’98 win—to this decade of what the heck? How did that happen?

Mark: Well, I mean, it isn’t like you can just find one reason why it happened. You know, there are some that feel that the firing of Phillip Fulmer is what started off this in 2008. I don’t maintain it was necessarily the firing of Phillip Fulmer. Whether that was the right decision at the time or not, that can be debated. But the problem was the hires that they’ve made afterward.

I mean, when Georgia, you know, pushed Mark Richt out the door, they hired Kirby Smart, and that’s worked out great for Georgia. When Alabama fired Mike Shula, they moved heaven and earth to get Nick Saban; that’s worked out great for Alabama. Tennessee fired Phillip Fulmer—a Hall of Fame coach just, like, you know, Mark Richt was as well—they fired Fulmer and they hired Lane Kiffin. And Lane Kiffin was never ready for this job, Used—Tennessee went the opposite. They went from, like, the beloved grandpa type to the young trash talker and it did not work out.

And some people like to wax poetic and say, “Well, if he hadn’t left, Tennessee would have won so many games.” I don’t think that’s true at all.

Julia: He was always going to leave.

Mark: Yes. He would—no. And that was the differen—there’s an interesting point. Johnny Majors was Tennessee’s coach for 15, 16 years. Tennessee was the place that he wanted to be over any place in the world. Phil Fulmer was the Tennessee coach for 15, 16 years and Tennessee was the place he wanted to be more than anyplace else in the world.

Tennessee had three straight decades of having two coaches in charge of the football program that Knoxville was their dream City; Tennessee football was their dream job. Lane Kiffin never looked at it that way. So, when Lane Kiffin left, Tennessee all of a sudden had an inferiority complex that they’ve never had before. Because it was somebody telling them, “It’s not you. It’s me.” You know, is basically being dumped. And then—

Julia: [crosstalk 00:24:41] [laugh].

Mark: Yes. And then Tennessee goes and hires Derek Dooley. Absolutely awful choi—it was a panic hire.

Julia: He was terrible, but I loved those orange pants.

Mark: Everybody loved the orange pants. He was quirky, he was fun, he just could not coach to save his life. So—and then they hired Butch Jones, and he could recruit, but he came across as, kind of like, a snake oil salesman and when they underachieved, then that was another disaster. And then you can go back, you know, after all the mess of Schiano Sunday, they hired Jeremy Pruitt. That has not worked out.

What Tennessee fans need to know now—and I think they obviously do—is that at least now you’re back in the conversation with Josh Heupel as your head coach. You have Danny White as your athletic director, you have Josh Heupel as your head coach. Men’s basketball is in great shape. Women’s Basketball is a little bit down this year, but let’s see what happens the rest of the way, and baseball has been an absolute juggernaut.

So, the athletic department as a whole is on as steady a foundation as maybe since those late-90s glory years. And I think that that’s what Tennessee fans need to think about. And enjoy it. It’s the old line from Andy in The Office. It’s like, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve left them.” This is it. This is the good old days. You’re not going to win a national championship everywhere, but at least you want to be relevant, and that’s what Tennessee athletics is right now.

Julia: I 1000% agree. I can’t wait to get my hands on your book. I’m very excited to read it. I think that anything that anybody takes the time to actually delve into the history and the conversation of what has happened—because it reminds me the book Tipping Point. Have you read the book Tipping Point?

Mark: I have not.

Julia: I would highly suggest that read. And it just talks about all the things that happen throughout different moments in history, what it really was that made it just tip. But it wasn’t one thing; it was all the things that got to the top, and then some one small thing went boop and everybody lost it. And it’s like, that was one of those moments. And we’re always looking at, in the University of Tennessee, the athletic section of it and the fans are always looking for the next big thing, the next whatever it is. We’re in it, just like you said. We’re in it.

Mark: Yeah.

Julia: Enjoy it while you’ve got it.

Mark: That’s what the Schiano Sunday thing was, though. It wasn’t even—it really didn’t even have anything to do with Greg Schiano. It was a final spark that got Tennessee fans to say, “Okay, enough.” It’d been ten straight years of basically, you know, being beaten down, and it took that one moment for the spark to hit. And Tennessee’s fan base did something that had never happened before and really has never happened since is that they were the ones that were able to squash a hire before it had ever happened. Back in the day, you could have a coach come in, have his press conference, that’s it. This is the first time you had a fan base basically unite and stop a hire even if they didn’t realize that’s what they were doing at the time.

Julia: Yeah, and even [unintelligible 00:27:29] politicians. I mean, it’s like come on, seriously. This has gotten bad [laugh].

Mark: [laugh].

Julia: That did make me laugh. Inside. I was like, “Oh, they finally do get along.” And UT sports brought everybody together, per the usual. So, [laugh]. Mark, thank you so much. Tell people where they can get your book.

Mark: Sure. Decade of Dysfunction, it’s available on Amazon. That’s the easiest way to get it. They can also find me on Twitter at @marknagi, M-A-R-K-N-A-G-I. They can send me a direct message, I can find a way to get them to book that way. But again, the easiest way is on Amazon. Everything’s easier on Amazon.

Julia: Everything is easier on Amazon. Send us that link—we’ll find it if you don’t—and we’ll make sure to [post it on this podcast 00:28:08]. And we appreciate you taking our time today. Everybody, again, Decade of Dysfunction with Mark Nagi. And he is one of our local favorites.

Works currently for TDOT, but still took time to make sure that we understand what happens at the University of Tennessee, which as you know if you move to Knoxville, is your next full lifetime of experiences. So, we want you to be here, we want you to experience everything Knoxville has to offer. I’m Julia Hurley, your podcast host for Connect the Knox, connecting Knoxville to the nation. Mark, thank you so much for attending today, and thank you to our sponsor.

Mark: Thank you, Julia.

Julia: Bye.

Julia: Thank you for tuning into the show. Make sure to like and subscribe, leave a five-star review on your podcast player of choice, and if you would like information on moving to Knoxville, send me a private message. As always, this is Julia Hurley, connecting Knoxville to the nation.