After exactly eight months on the job, John Currie is no longer Tennessee's athletics director, sources told VolQuest.com.

In what's simply been a disastrous and embarrassing coaching search, the school parted ways with Currie on Friday morning after top administration officials met with the first-year AD in a short meeting.

Coming out of the meeting, a VolQuest.com source said, "John Currie no longer works at Tennessee."

WVLT was first to break the report.

The news comes on the heels of circus coaching search full of dysfunction and tension behind the scenes. After several public embarrassments, Currie met with Washington State’s head coach Mike Leach about Tennessee’s opening on Thursday. No deal was struck, per VolQuest.com sources, and Currie came back to Knoxville to meet with Chancellor Davenport on Friday morning.

The meeting lasted less than 15 minutes, and following the sit-down, news leaked and the school's public relations personnel gathered in the University Administrative offices to prepare a statement for later today.

Former Hall of Fame head coach Phillip Fulmer, who has been involved in Tennessee's coaching search since Sunday's fiasco with Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano, is to assume a greater role — if not take the lead — in Tennessee's continued quest for a new head football coach, per sources.

If fired without cause, Tennessee would owe Currie $100,000 for every month remaining on his deal (54), coming in around $5.4 million.

Currie, 46, spent a decade at Tennessee in a variety of roles before taking the AD job at Kansas State in 2009. After a nine-year stint in Manhattan, Currie was hired to replace Dave Hart in late February. His early moves at Tennessee included bringing Fulmer back into the fold and reinstating the Lady Vol logo, but his tenure had come under fire in recent weeks.

Many believed Currie waited too long to fire Butch Jones, and the announcement of a $340 million renovation project on the heels of a blowout loss to Missouri did not sit well with many fans.

His decision to try and hire Schiano ultimately became his undoing.

In the last two weeks, the search for Jones’ replacement has been completely mismanaged, and the dysfunction among Tennessee’s brass complicated the process this week. The Vols were all set to hire Schiano last Sunday, but administrators, led by President Joe DiPietro and Dr. Davenport, opted to withdraw the offer following nearly unanimous fan and booster unrest.

Tennessee’s search only unravelled from there.

The Vols targeted Duke's David Cutcliffe, Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, Purdue’s Jeff Brohm and N.C. State’s Dave Doeren before Currie met with Leach on Thursday. Former Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin, SMU’s Chad Morris and Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele have been linked to the job, too.