Dave Hart insisted that the University of Tennessee's athletics department would more judiciously manage its money more prudently moving forward, but the top official in UT's athletics department also made clear that academics and athletics must work in concert moving forward.

Hart addressed the Vols' Southeastern Conference-worst reserve fund --- scarcely $2 million --- and other topics with VolQuest.com.

"Actually, the (Knoxville News Sentinel report Thursday), there's nothing new in the article. In the sense that, when we put all that out, there was total disclosure two months ago, three months ago about what we had found in a lot of months in looking at A to Z in what we had and in assessing everything. We put it everything out there, put it on our own Web site and said here's where we are financially," Hart said. "Here's everything. I didn't see anything (Thursday) that was anything new. The fact that we were under $2 million in reserve funds in the Southeastern Conference was unheard of, and we talked about all of the reasons. Some of it was that we could be better stewards and are now being better stewards of our own resources. Some of it was the transfer funds. And that was all historical in nature [predating this administration's arrival].

"Until we started the dialogue, I don't think the university was even cognizant of a lot of that or they didn't really understand or know what had happened."


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