AJC > Sports > Blog > Archives > 2008 > November > 04
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Will Tennessee get the rock star coach it wants?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Given where the Tennessee football program is in relation to its biggest SEC rivals (Alabama, Florida, Georgia), an entirely logical case can be made for asking Phillip Fulmer to step aside after 16 years as head coach.
But those Tennessee fans who chose to be in a celebratory mood yesterday, when Fulmer fought back the tears at his press conference in Knoxville, are about to get hit with a sober reality: Tennessee, for all of its great tradition and vast resources, is probably not going to get the rock star head coach that so many people want.
I understand the emotion. Tennessee fans who felt the program was slipping, and it was, looked around the league and saw Nick Saban (Alabama), Urban Meyer (Florida), and Mark Richt (Georgia), three coaching stars who will have their programs in the Top 10 for more seasons than not in the future. Then they looked at their guy who is today what he has always been: A former offensive lineman who believed that that answer to just about every problem was to work a little harder tomorrow than you did today.
That value system was pretty effective, as Fulmer will leave Tennessee averaging just under 9.4 wins per season. But it wasn’t sexy. Fans want sexy. Sexy sells. Tubby Smith was pushed out the door at Kentucky averaging 26 wins per year because he didn’t have Rick Pitino’s charisma.
Now to be fair to Fulmer’s critics, Tennessee was not a well-coached team this season. The transition to new offensive coordinator Dave Clawson was just terrible on every level. And the facts are that with David Cutcliffe as his offensive coordinator, Fulmer’s teams were 85-19. Without Cutcliffe Fulmer’s Tennessee teams were 65-32. Again, after 16 years, the case could be made to bring in another head coach.
But understand that the search for a new coach is going to be very difficult. Athletics Director Mike Hamilton is under tremendous pressure to hit a home run with this hire. In today’s culture, winning the press conference has become almost as important as winning games. But the guys who would allow Hamilton to hit it out of the park are probably not going to come for a host of reasons.
One of the first names I heard early this season was North Carolina’s Butch Davis. Davis would be a perfect fit because he is a great recruiter, which Tennessee must have, and a very good coach, which Tennessee also must have. Fulmer took Tennessee’s program to another level starting in 1993 because he was a relentless recruiter. Davis rebuilt the Miami football program and left enough players behind to win one national championship and come within one an eyelash of another. But Davis is not going to leave the relative comfort of Chapel Hill, N.C., to come to Tennessee. Why?
I talked to one head coach yesterday who pointed out that, in his mind, Tennessee is one of the toughest jobs in all of college football. It’s because the expectation is that Tennessee will be on par with Alabama, Florida, and Georgia on a yearly basis without some of the built-in advantages that those programs have, especially in recruiting. When Tennessee had it going in the 1990s, Fulmer and his staff were able to dip down into Georgia and Alabama for great players. Now Richt and recruiting coordinator Rodney Garner, a former Tennessee assistant, have put up a wall around Georgia. Saban is doing the same thing at Alabama.
The new head coach at Tennessee has to accept the fact he will have to recruit nationally and work significantly harder in order to get the talent to compete with those three schools. Can it be done? Absolutely. Tennessee will spend whatever it takes to recruit. But it is hard.
The other names I see out there are younger coaches who would want to step up. Here is where it gets tricky and where, if Hamilton hires the wrong guy, he could be the next guy out the door.
Do you turn the keys to the Tennessee football franchise over to a Mike Leach (Texas Tech), whose offense is entertaining but plays in a league where the best defense (Texas Tech) is ranked No. 54 in the country?
Do you hire a young up and comer like Will Muschamp, 37, who looks like the next Bob Stoops or Mark Richt but has no head coaching experience?
Do you completely step outside your comfort zone and hire a Todd Graham (Tulsa) or Chris Peterson (Boise State) with no ties to the South?
Jon Gruden? Lane Kiffin? Are you kidding me?
Here’s the point. You can’t just plug anybody into a job like Tennessee, no matter how successful they might be elsewhere. There is a cultural component to this job that must be taken into account. Some Tennessee fans say they want to find the football version of Bruce Pearl. Pearl is a brilliant combination of basketball coach/promoter. But basketball and football in this part of the world are like Venus and Mars. What works on one planet does not work on the other.
That is why this is going to be such a tough hire. Let’s put it this way. Alabama, for all its great tradition, had to go through a painful process with some very public turn downs (Rich Rodriguez) before it convinced Nick Saban to come. Saban and his agent, Jimmy Sexton, had all the leverage and were able to extract one of the best contracts in college football history. Tennessee now finds itself in the same situation.
But is there a Nick Saban out there who is willing to come to Knoxville? That is the question Tennessee fans must face as they move forward.
