Gruden is a good NFL coach, but he is far from a great coach. For those that have experienced the Gruden coaching system they know there is little chance he would ever coach at the college level. First, Gruden's system is incredibly complex and near impossible to learn for young professionals, let alone college aged kids that don;t have 80 hrs/wk to dedicate to the playbook. Second, Gruden's major weakness is at developing interpersonal relationships. Finding former players that will say something nice about the guy is harder than spotting bigfoot. Third, he has a history of destroying young talent. You will be hard pressed to name more than a handful of young players, drafted and developed by Gruden on offense. His successes in the league were with grizzled veterans. Fourth, he could not co-exist with a GM, let alone an AD. Gruden is a total control guy. There is no total control at the college level. Fifth, he would be a recruiting disaster. Sure, you could make the argument that some offensive players would be taken by his reputation and his work on ESPN, the reality is that he would be hard pressed to truly develop the relationships with high school coaches and parents necessary to find true success at recruiting to a big time program. Sixth, Gruden's agent is the master at floating rumors to keep Jon in the game, so to speak. There has not been a job opening at the the major college or pro level that Gruden's name has not been associated with, even though he was never a real candidate for any of them.
UT will be best served going after an experienced college coach that will bring character back into the program.
