On Monday, Dennis Dodd released his College Football Hot Seat Ratings for the 2011-12 season and it has created quite a bit of buzz among college football fans, especially those in Tennessee.
According to Dodd, Derek Dooley is one of three Southeastern Conference coaches on the hot seat. On a scale of 0-5, with 0 being “Don’t even think about it — can’t be touched” and 5 being “On the hot seat — it’s time to win now”, Dodd ranked Dooley a 3, which translates to “On the bubble — you never know”.
Even with today’s “win now” mentality, I don’t believe many people would agree that Derek Dooley is on the bubble after one season as the head man in Knoxville. Posters on this site certainly don’t; most classify the idea as idiotic.
Tennessee won the games it was supposed to win last season, closed strong in November and earned a postseason appearance in the Music City Bowl. The Vols finished with a record of 6-7, but were two last-second, once-in-a-lifetime type plays away from 8-5.
On ESPN’s SEC Blog, Edward Aschoff gave his take on Tennessee.
“After a slow start to last season, the Vols got on a roll with four straight wins to end the regular season,” Aschoff wrote. “To get Tennessee back to its old ways, Dooley has to become more competitive in recruiting.”
Is Dooley recruiting well enough to compete for conference titles?
After finalizing the 2010 class, which ranked ninth nationally, Tennessee finished with the No. 13 recruiting class in 2011, according to Rivals. A top 15 class is respectable, but it’s also important to consider that equates to just sixth best in the SEC.
The Vols have just three commitments for 2012.
Other SEC coaches on the hot seat according to Dodd: Mark Richt and Houston Nutt.
16 responses to “Is Dooley "on the bubble" of the hot seat?”
idiotic,absurd! Derek Dooley is the best football coach we have had since Johnny Majors and maybe General Neyland.
Dodd you’re crazy a 3 go slap your teachers for letting through school (( can’t fix stupid ))
Dodd you’re crazy a 3 go slap your teachers for letting you through school (( can’t fix stupid ))
I can’t believe you decided to give this ignorant article an ounce of attention!
It’s o.k. Folks, sports writers have to reach for stories every year in June. Dooley is going to be just fine. There is no way Tennessee fires this guy in the next three years.
A logical person is not worried at all.
This assessment is not fair to Derek Dooley. Not one bit. Dennis Dodd has forgotten one prevailing truth about Tennessee football at this point in time. We are about five years behind in recruiting. The debacle that has befallen Tennessee football is not his fault; as a matter of fact, he is the one who is trying to fix this problem. Given where we are, Dooley and his staff need at least four years to build this program back to where it once was. I don’t know what part of that is so hard for people to understand.
I figured it was worthwhile for the entertainment value.
This article is interesting in the respect that this fella has no clue about the way Tennessee Athletics operates. If he did he would know that UT is pretty darn faithful to their respective staffs even when its fair to cut them lose. Coach Dooley however is making all of the right moves in my opinion, and just like it was said above, we are years behind in recruiting and the whole Kiffin era guys are gone so that is even farther behind because those guys will not ever be able to replaced as a class so four years from now we will close the gap on just that year since the top ten class that came in left four years early. By Coach getting warm bodies in the program and then them being cleared to play has to be looked at as a positive in recruiting and will translate into wins.
Good grief. How old is Dodd anyway, 15?
Dead on. The fact that anyone even is commenting on this moronic article gives it credibility that it doesn’t deserve.
It would be absurd for Tennessee to even think of firing Derek Dooley…. The man brings in quality talent (gets them in school and on the field) and runs a clean program…. We have one of the best looking QB’s and WR’s in College Football, who have 3 year of eligibility left to play… So the fact that he cannot recruit or may not be able to recruit enough talent to challenge the top SEC teams is even more absurd.
Not trying to burst your bubble or anything but Bray was a Kiffin recruit . Hunter was mostly recruited by kiffin and staff and already had him leaning towrds UT and Dooley gets partial credit for sealing that one up.
look whats the two things a new ad wants.he’s own head coach in both fooball and basketball.and coming off a losing season.he neeeds to win this is tenn. and were in the sec.
Never said Dooley initiated or was the first one to start the recruitment of Bray, or the one to get the initial commitment from Bray or Hunter, (which would have been hard considering Dooley was not at Tennessee at the time) but that merely he was the one that ultimately brought him into the University to play. But if were going the route of he who recruited was the one to get the credit then was Dooley not the one who got the commitment from Da’Rick Rogers?
my head hurts after reading this