I still don't know why many people here think Dooley isn't a "real" coach.
Understand that Tennessee effectively lost three full classes before Dooley got here. There was a thread on this earlier today that mysteriously vanished. Twice. Anyway, of the last three pre-Dooley classes, we've retained Tauren Poole, Dallas Thomas, Prentiss Waggner, an injury-plagued Ben Martin, Herman Lathers, and a collection of players who are fringe-starters at best. Repeat: from the 2007-2009 classes, only five starter-level players are still here.
The rest of our team is freshmen and sophomores. On deep teams, our starters would be the backups: the youth and fresh legs that would go in to hold the fort down while the starters caught their breaths.
Dooley has made some coaching mistakes. I acknowledge that, although I think it's worth noting that even the best coaches make mistakes in every game - people seem to forget that sometimes. But nothing that Dooley has done thus far has warranted all of these "Fire Doolittle" topics in my opinion - especially not a shutout victory, no matter who the opponent was.
I think Dooley deserves his four years before these topics start becoming as rampant as they are now. If we're still getting blasted by Alabama and losing to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina at that point, then he'll deserve some of this treatment. But not now, and especially not in a year in which he's lost his best players for most of the season.
Understand that Tennessee effectively lost three full classes before Dooley got here. There was a thread on this earlier today that mysteriously vanished. Twice. Anyway, of the last three pre-Dooley classes, we've retained Tauren Poole, Dallas Thomas, Prentiss Waggner, an injury-plagued Ben Martin, Herman Lathers, and a collection of players who are fringe-starters at best. Repeat: from the 2007-2009 classes, only five starter-level players are still here.
The rest of our team is freshmen and sophomores. On deep teams, our starters would be the backups: the youth and fresh legs that would go in to hold the fort down while the starters caught their breaths.
Dooley has made some coaching mistakes. I acknowledge that, although I think it's worth noting that even the best coaches make mistakes in every game - people seem to forget that sometimes. But nothing that Dooley has done thus far has warranted all of these "Fire Doolittle" topics in my opinion - especially not a shutout victory, no matter who the opponent was.
I think Dooley deserves his four years before these topics start becoming as rampant as they are now. If we're still getting blasted by Alabama and losing to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina at that point, then he'll deserve some of this treatment. But not now, and especially not in a year in which he's lost his best players for most of the season.
