An excerpt from ESPN's Gene Wojciechowski (UT '79 grad and former walk-on) top 20 weekly column. Topics #4 and #3 on his list concern UT. Most of us already know most of the stuff in the top part of the article, but I was interested in his discussion of potential coaching candidates.
4. Rocky days on Rocky Top
It isn't an exaggeration to say that Tennessee is about to make perhaps the most important coaching hire in the history of the school. Screw this one up and the Vols' program could become a football dust bowl.
Derek Dooley won just four SEC games in his three years in Knoxville.Tennessee was once a national and SEC superpower. Now it's Belgium. It scares no one.
Phillip Fulmer had his flaws, especially late in his coaching tenure there, but he cared about his alma mater, about the tradition of the place and about winning championships. He won a national title in 1998, but was eventually forced out in 2008, only a year removed from a 10-4 record. Fulmer won as many games in his last two seasons at UT as the recently canned Derek Dooley did in almost three complete seasons (Dooley isn't coaching Saturday's game against Kentucky).
If you're doing the tick-tock of Tennessee's football demise, start the clock with the hiring of Mike Hamilton as athletic director in 2003. That was the first mistake.
The second mistake was giving him the power to fire and hire coaches. Hamilton was a gifted fundraiser, but a lousy personnel evaluator. He hired Lane Kiffin as Fulmer's successor and did so for all the appropriate reasons (Kiffin could recruit, Kiffin could run an offense, Kiffin could bring his old man Monte along as defensive coordinator).
But Hamilton forgot to ask Kiffin a simple question before he hired him: "What happens if USC calls?"
USC called at the end of Kiffin's spectacularly bizarre first and only season (7-6) in Knoxville. Kiffin was gone faster than you can spell U-T.
Then Hamilton hired Dooley, who was so far in over his head that he needed a snorkel. Dooley's numbers were more gross than Smokey's jowl drool: 15-21 overall record, 4-19 vs. SEC teams, 0-15 vs. Top 25 opponents. And did I mention that Dooley presided over the Vols' first loss to Kentucky in 26 years, and that his final game was fittingly a 41-18 loss to the University of Buster Olney (Vanderbilt)? It was the first time Tennessee had lost to Vandy in Nashville since 1982.
3. Rocky days on Rocky Top, Part II
Anyway, Hamilton resigned in July 2011. He is a nice enough man who has since become president of a nonprofit dedicated to addressing water crises and HIV/AIDS in Africa.
But when it came to hiring football coaches, Hamilton was a disaster area. A guy selling hair extensions at a shopping mall kiosk could have done better.
Anyway, Fulmer is gone. Kiffin is gone. Hamilton is gone. And now Dooley is gone.
Dooley actually leaves the program in better condition than he found it, but that's only because it was at ground zero after Kiffin's departure. Not even Dooley's most loyal supporters could make a compelling argument for a fourth year.
So he's history. And Tennessee football will be too if it doesn't get this one right. Athletic director Dave Hart surely has a wish list prepared. And here's guessing back-channel inquiries already have been made.
If I'm making the calls, I contact Jon Gruden first. If he says no, he says no. But you've got to at least try.
I'd call Stanford's Shaw. He has IT. And, by the way, Stanford isn't known for breaking the bank for coaches.
I'd call Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy, though you probably don't want to get into a money-whipping contest with OSU patriarch T. Boone Pickens.
And even though it makes absolutely no sense on about 100 different levels, I'd call Mike Holmgren. Hey, Bill Walsh went from the San Francisco 49ers to Stanford, so there's precedence.
That's my short list.
As much as I admire the job Jim Mora has done at UCLA, it would be hypocritical to rip Kiffin for leaving after one season and then endorse a plan that would ask Mora to do the same to UCLA.
Mississippi State's Dan Mullen is someone to think long and hard about, as is Baylor's Briles, Louisville's Charlie Strong, Florida State's Jimbo Fisher and, wait for it, Vandy's James Franklin. And just watch, somebody is going to hire Texas A&M offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury. He's a keeper.
