In March of 2005, the late Tennessee Vols athletics director Mike Hamilton took a chance on a Boston native to lead the UT men’s basketball program based on his success at Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Division II level. There is no way he could have predicted how much that would change SEC basketball two decades later.

This is Bruce Pearl’s legacy.

The Auburn Tigers head coach who announced his retiremend from the game Monday after 11 years at the school made his mark on the league with his six years coaching the Vols. Because of his promotional efforts and success on the court, then SEC commissioner Mike Slive made the decision to start investing more in basketball with the schools.

Now, the SEC is the premiere conference in men’s basketball. It actually dominates that league more than it dominates football. Pearl’s efforts made this happen with his style of play, his public persona and his willingness to schedule tough out of conference. Slive pushed other schools to do the same, and it’s paid off.

Before Pearl, SEC basketball was just an afterthought with one blue-blood, the Kentucky Wildcats, and usually one other team typically lucky enough to have an elite head coach to be competitive. At that time, it was Billy Donovan with the Florida Gators. Nolan Richardson with the Arkansas Razorbacks in the 1990s and Ray Mears at UT in the 1970s also fit that bill.

Pearl arrived in Knoxville with very little fanfare. He was replacing Buzz Peterson who had been fired after four years of missing the NCAA Tournament. Peterson had replace Jerry Green, who resigned after the most successful four-year run in Tennessee basketball history, making four straight NCAA Tournaments, because he was a PR nightmare.

See, in the SEC during these days, PR was more important than winning for men’s basketball. Athletic directors just wanted a coach who could represent the program well and be somewhat competitive, which meant an NCAA Tournament appearance every few years. As a homegrown coach who grew up on the other side of the mountains in western North Carolina, Peterson fit the PR bill.

Unfortunately for the Vols, he couldn’t meet the baseline of competitiveness, which is how they landed Pearl. In addition to losing their top two scorers, the Vols were also coming off a 13-16 season, and they had no high-profile recruits coming in, so Pearl’s rebuilding would take time. Nobody cared, though, because UT football was ranked No. 3 in the nation entering 2005.

For what it’s worth, the Lady Vols were fine too with Candace Parker about to play.

What happened instead, though, was a changing of the guard on Rocky Top, probably one that wasn’t welcome to many fans. Overnight, UT turned into a school that was having more success on the hardwood than the gridiron because of Pearl’s impact. That happened Pearl’s first year, as he got UT to the NCAA Tournament while the football team went 5-6.

It’s ironic. Pearl’s first game with the Vols, a 106-83 win over the East Tennessee State University Buccaneers, would come the night before Tennessee football would lose to the Vanderbilt Commodores for the first time in 23 years and clinch its first losing season in 17 years. UT went from being No. 3 on the gridiron to the most disappointing team in the nation.

That disappointment helped spike the interest in basketball, as fans were thirsty for some sort of success. Pearl delivered, continuing to strike early. Most notably, he got the Tennessee Vols to No. 8 at one point after not being in the top 25 at any time during the previous four years. He swept the eventual national champion Florida Gators and won the SEC East behind Chris Lofton.

Interest spiked.

It wasn’t just the success he had contrasted with the football woes, though. Pearl was a masterful promoter. He actually helped peak interest in the women’s basketball program, embracing the idea that the programs were all in this together. That was a departure from previous UT coaches who resented what Pat Summitt built. Pearl embraced it.

Then there was the style of play. Pearl was a disciple of Dr. Tom Davis, who developed the up-tempo basketball Pearl is known for. It involved a full-court press on every made basket and in-bound, shooting every time you got the ball up the court before the other team got back, and running the flex in half-court sets.

Three years earlier, this style won a national championship with the Maryland Terrapins under Gary Williams, another disciple of Davis. That was Pearl’s first year as a head coach at the Division I level after nine years at Southern Indiana, where he captured the Division II national title, and the style was becoming all the rage.

However, Pearl was the first to bring it to the SEC, and the league wasn’t prepared for it. At the time, most teams ran a half-court offense with uncontrolled athletes. Pearl caught them all off-guard by turning up the tempo, and fans loved it. He went on to oversee what was the greatest six-year run in UT basketball history to that point.

Of course, we know about Pearl being fired due to his NCAA violations and receiving a show-cause before taking over Auburn. However, his impact wouldn’t go unnoticed. Under pressure from Slive, SEC programs started to follow the Tennessee Vols and try to make their basketball teams something to be proud of.

That was a rocky road for a while, as so many of them tried to find their own Pearl. However, what they realized is they don’t have to find Pearl. They just have to find the right fit and right style, and they can settle. While SEC football programs run off any good coach in search of the next Nick Saban, good is fine in men’s basketball.

The strategy has worked.

As Pearl came back into the league in 2014, the SEC Network launched, and things began to change in terms of dollars. Over a decade later, as he retires, his fingerprints are all over its success. It all came back to that splash first year he had with the Tennessee Vols and the desire for the rest of the league to follow suit.