So here we are, halfway through the season and lucky to have a 5-1 record. Coach Heupel has been good for us, helping turn us around from a national laughing stock to a fringe playoff contender. But I think he is still green and needs some help in getting us to the next step. As I was thinking about what I can do to give my all to Tennessee, I came up with a great idea. All of the large corporations in the US have a board of directors, an advisory board. I think it would be a good idea to form an advisory board for the staff. Sometimes, a staff can be so close to the team that it's hard to see the issues that are plaguing them. For instance, I think last year Heupel was blind to the fact that Joe Milton was holding back the team. I would suggest that the advisory board meets once a year after the season to provide guidance to the staff. And as part of Heupel's yearly evaluation, he can be graded against the board's recommendations. And then in crisis situations, like we are in now, the board can have an emergency meeting to provide recommendations. As for board members, I would suggest having 8 members, we can have 2 former players, 2 media members, 2 fans, and 2 non football related members who can provide a non football point of view. For the players, I might suggest choosing from Peyton Manning, Al Wilson, Josh Dobbs, Eric Berry, Tee Martin, etc. True VFLs who know what it takes to win. As for the media members, I would choose 2 members who are close to the program. A lot of times these media members are able to point out issues within the program and blind spots on the coaching staff. For instance, maybe Heupel doesn't realize that Elarbee hasn't been developing lineman, the local experts like Basillo have been pointing out forever that not a single OL recruited out of HS has started a game. I think Basillio would be a great choice since he has all kinds of connections, has been covering the team forever, and he is a true fan as well. As for the other media member, I think AP or Hubbs would good. For the fans, I would volunteer myself to be a part of the board. We can also choose another well respected poster, someone like Nighthawk Vol, LittleVol, MetalVolunteer, King VFL, Dobbs 4 Heisman, guys that have been here for a while and have proven to provide outstanding analysis. And then the two non football related members can provide more organizational input. Maybe get guys like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. Those guys know what it takes to build a successful organization and I think their viewpoint will be useful to build the best possible TEAM.
Some of the ideas we might suggest in an emergency session would be 1, strengthening the OT position. I know AP has said many times that Big O would be a first round draft pick as an OL. We are currently very deep at DT so we could switch Omari to OT and we have more than enough depth at DL and we could now plug in a future 1st rounder at OT. I have also noticed that our offense has stalled the last few games, but we don't have a lot of easy throws for Nico. So I would suggest running some shorter routes or having a hot routes available to Nico to get him some confidence and give him an outlet when the opposing D get pressure. Then in the offseason, we can also provide some recruiting advice so that we are not in the same situation with a struggling OL again. I think in the first few years (and to some degree now), we were targeting too many diamond in the rough type of OL. I think we should just target all of the 5 star linemen and force them to say no before we move on to the 4 star linemen. We should recruit these guys aggressively whether they are interested or not. If we push hard enough, some of these guys will become interested and we should exhaust all of our efforts with the 4 stars before moving on to the 3 star guys. Also, we can analyze who the best OL recruiting staff is. Lets say it's UGA, if it is, as soon as they offer an OL, we would do the same and offer even more NIL and recruit the player even harder. If we had this board last year, I would have also told the staff to go after Caleb Downs with everything they had. Our D is already dominant, imagine how unbeatable we would have been with Downs in the secondary. We should have forced him to say yes by giving him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Does anyone know if there is a better way to talk to coach about this other than Twitter? I checked the directory and his email is not listed, only his Twitter handle but I don't do Twitter. I'm also open to other recommendations and other nominations to be on the board.
