Who Should Be The Next Coach At Tennessee?

Incredibly, and for reasons that remain unclear, Butch Jones is still the head coach at the University of Tennessee. What exactly is everyone waiting for? The hole has already been dug, and there’s more than enough people willing to lower the casket into the ground. At this point, the only people who will be unhappy to see Butch go will be liquor store owners, because there’s no way their sales don’t skyrocket in the hours after this man commits a coaching atrocity.

It's going to be really fun watching the pummeling Alabama puts on them tomorrow. One my favorite things in the whole world is when I get to go into a rivalry game with zero expectations for my team to win. I love that!

The only good thing that’s going to come from losing 66-0 this weekend is that it’ll probably be the actual final straw for Butch’s tenure. Hell, I thought we were out of straws when last year’s squad, the most talented Tennessee team in a decade, went 4-4 in the SEC, couldn’t win the worst East Division of my life, lost to a South Carolina team that was starting what should’ve been a senior in high school at quarterback, and gagged their way out of a probable Sugar Bowl berth when they stopped being able to cover the white receivers from Vanderbilt in the second half of their game. But what the hell do I know?

So when they lose, and Butch gets fired on either Sunday or Monday, or hell, gets left on the tarmac in Tuscaloosa, it raises the ever important “who should they hire?” question that everyone has been losing their minds over since Butch blew the Florida game in mid-September.

After that game, I published a list of nine potential replacements for Butch. It's far from a perfect list, but I was pissed about how badly Coach Jones Butch'd that incredibly winnable game that I just started throwing names out there. Here was the list:

1. Chip Kelly

2. Bob Stoops

3. Bobby Petrino 

4. Jon Gruden

5. Dan Mullen 

6. Mike Gundy

7. Mike MacIntyre

8. PJ Fleck

9.Les Miles

At this point, I no longer think numbers 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are viable choices.

Petrino is hurt by his, and this is putting it kindly, less than sterling reputation, and his 4-6 record in his last ten games. I was on the “Bring Bobby Petrino to Knoxville” board of directors last year, but that didn't stop me from being concerned about the personal stuff. It’s much easier to excuse the “I used to have my mistress on the payroll” chicanery when he was winning. But if he can’t do better than 4-6 in his last ten with someone like Lamar Jackson playing quarterback for him, then I think there are better choices out there. 

Mullen comes off the list because I don’t think he’s leaving Mississippi State unless he gets an ungodly amount of money (he makes more than $4 million a year now!), and with as much success as he's had there, I don't think he's worth $7 million a year.

Gundy, despite his immaculate mullet and the, “I’M A MAN, I’M 40!!!” rant (on the short list of greatest press conference moments of all time), doesn’t survive because every single one of his defenses at Oklahoma State have sucked. The man couldn’t stop a nose bleed if he had an entire bag of cotton balls.

MacIntyre is gone because he’s followed up last year’s 10-4 record at Colorado with a 4-3 one this season. Plus, he failed to report a domestic violence allegation against one of his assistant coaches by that individual’s girlfriend, a violation of not only his own contract, but also of Title IX law. If it wasn’t for his 10 win season last year, the man very well may be out of a job. Again, Tennessee can do better than that.

Miles misses the cut because he’s in his early 60s and his offenses at LSU  every year were basically, “We’re going to run straight into the line of scrimmage and fall down 40 times a game”. The play calling while he was there was less inventive than the kind of crap Larry Scott and Butch have mustered up this season, and that’s saying something.

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The last three times the Vols have had a job opening, they’ve screwed it up. Lane Kiffin was a disaster who left the program in shambles after a year, Derek Dooley was a position coach masquerading as head man, and Butch Jones borrowed his coach speak from a motivational seminar taught by Tai Lopez. 

What did all three have in common? They were utterly unproven, in the mold of “golly gee, I hope they figure it out and become something special!”. Kiffin was the offensive coordinator on Pete Carroll’s staff at USC when they had Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, and a zillion other NFL guys, and then flamed out badly with the Oakland Raiders, going 5-15 in a little over a year. Dooley was the head coach at Louisiana Tech, and finished his illustrious career there by going 17-20 in three years. Butch went 23-14 in three years at Cincinnati and never beat a ranked team or won a major bowl game. What exactly had any of these guys done to earn the Tennessee job? And why is Tennessee, a school that is one of the Top 10 revenue producing athletic departments in the country, totally comfortable with rolling the dice on some, “hell, we hope it works out” guy when they could go out and drop $6 million on some A-lister who has had a ton of success somewhere else? Clemson, a school that isn’t even a Top 25 revenue producing athletic department, is paying their head coach Dabo Swinney $7.5 million this season, and his defensive coordinator Brent Venables is making $1.7 million. If they, again, a school that ISN’T EVEN A TOP 25 REVENUE PRODUCING ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, can pay two football coaches a combined $9.2 million, I think Tennessee, a TOP TEN REVENUE PRODUCING ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT should be able to manage $6 million for Chip Kelly or Jon Gruden or Bob Stoops. So if you hear someone say, “Oh, they just can’t afford Chip Kelly”, they’re either an idiot or they’re lying. This is great job! The facilities are top notch, the fan support is among the highest in the country, the recruiting budget is enormous, they’ve got boatloads of cash, etc. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to draw a top name to Knoxville.

Of course, if Tennessee is comfortable getting their skull caved in every year by Alabama, or losing winnable games to Florida every September, then hell yeah, go roll that dice on another Butch Jones-type coach. And if that happens, then no one should ever buy season tickets again. Why should you? What’s the point? Why would you want to support that group of penny pinchers and cheapskates who aren’t doing everything they can do make sure Tennessee is in the best position to win every week? Why should you waste your hard earned money on expensive tickets, or spend your limited free time to driving down there seven times a year?

Which is why PJ Fleck also shouldn’t be seriously considered. We just don’t have enough information on him yet. He turned Western Michigan into a viable program, but he’s just 3-3, and 0-3 in the Big Ten, in his first year at Minnesota. I think Fleck will eventually make the Golden Gophers contenders in the Big Ten West, and I suspect he’ll even get better job than Minnesota one day, but why bet on the unknown when you can spend the cash you have on a known commodity? Which is why this coaching search should really only be a three man race between Chip Kelly, Bob Stoops, and Jon Gruden.

And please don’t @ me with, “How about Jim Bob Cooter?” or, “Bring Tee Martin home!” or, “Jeff Brohm is an up and comer at Purdue!”. 

Most of you guys only like Jim Bob Cooter because he has a funny name and because he’s an alum. Sure, he’s done a good job as the offensive coordinator for the Lions, but he’s also been popped twice for DUI, and got arrested for entering an apartment that wasn’t his through a window and crawling into bed with a woman. Plus, he looks like that high school teacher we all had or knew about that probably shouldn’t have been teaching because his only real purpose for being employed was because he was football coach. 

Tee Martin is in just his second year as USC’s offensive coordinator, and in the two games he called against big boy competition (Alabama and Stanford) that weren’t quarterbacked by probable number 1 draft pick Sam Darnold, the Trojans scored just 6 and 10 points. I’m not saying he’s a bad offensive coordinator, but we also don't have enough evidence to suggest that he's a phenomenal, out of this world one either. And since we don’t know, then he shouldn’t be considered at Tennessee. 

As for Brohm, he made Western Kentucky viable, as he finished 30-10 there in three years. In his first year at Purdue, he's 3-3. Great. Maybe he’ll end up being something. But again, why take the chance when you can just spend the money on something known?

Which brings us back to our three contenders; Kelly, Stoops, and Gruden. To me, Stoops seems like the least likely of the three to accept the position. He abruptly retired this summer, and he’s apparently always had concerns about what the job was doing to his health, due to his father dying on the sidelines while coaching a high school game back in the 80’s. Honestly, he’d probably be my top choice if I felt like he was totally 100% interested in jumping back into coaching. All he did at Oklahoma was win a national title and 10 conference championships while playing in the BCS Title Game four times. He also made the college football playoff in 2015. There’s probably never been a more accomplished coach on the open market in the history of college football than Stoops. He’d be a roaring success in Knoxville if he came here.

I never thought I’d say this, but because the “#grumors” won’t die, Jon Gruden suddenly seems like an actual realistic candidate at Tennessee. According to Paul Finebaum, Gruden is the top choice among Tennessee boosters, and I suspect he’d be the overwhelming favorite among most Vol fans as well. Plus, there’s the whole, “I’m coming home” element with him, due to the fact that his wife is from the area and that he was once a grad assistant there in the mid-eighties. And don't forget the "OH MY GOD HE MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAD DINNER WITH 'IMPORTANT FOLKS' ON FRIDAY" and, "HE WAS AT THE TENNESSEE GAME ON SATURDAY! THAT MEANS HE'S COMING TO BE OUR FOOTBALL COACH!!!". 

Honestly, I’m torn on Gruden. There’s no denying he has an enormous, room-filling personality, one that would definitely allow him to sell the program big-time to everyone from a 17 year old recruit to that recruit’s mother to the media to a big time booster. But he’s also been out of the coaching grind for almost a decade now. Does he still have the desire to bust his ass like that again? I’m not saying he doesn’t work hard now, but his life is much simpler now than it was when he was coaching. He basically prepares for one game a week by watching film, with the pressure to win completely removed. He then interviews the head coach and a few players from each team, and then helps call the game on Monday night. He repeats this cycle for 16 consecutive weeks. And when that’s over, he sits down with incoming quarterback prospects for “Gruden’s QB Camp”, turns up the craziness to over 10,000, creates a few soundbites, and then goes home. 

Oh yeah, and he makes millions of dollars a year to do this. I mean… why would you give that up if you didn’t have to? Tennessee is going to be expecting him to work much, much harder than he currently is, with significantly more pressure, while being unable to pay him all that much more than what he’s making now. Does he still have the fire in his belly? Maybe? He’s been out for a decade though, and I can’t think of someone who has been out of coaching for that amount of time who jumped back into it and became wildly successful. Where's the historical example of this happening? 

And it’s not like he was Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, or Bill Belichick when he was in the NFL. When he won the Super Bowl in his first year with Tampa, it was because he had one of the greatest defenses of all time, a group that he basically did nothing to help assemble. Then, he watched that team turn around and finish 7-9 and 5-11 the next two years, as they fell apart due to personality and chemistry issues. In his last six seasons with the Bucs, the team made the playoffs just twice, and lost in the Wild Card Round both times as a home favorite. He only won 50.9% of his games in Tampa, and couldn’t ever find the right quarterback. Yeah, I get it, he’s the big sexy name because he’s the TV guy, but are we sure he’s a great coach?

Which is why the right answer to the question we’ve been trying to solve is undoubtly Chip Kelly. He’s 53, and unlike Stoops and Gruden, the man clearly has the desire to be a head coach somewhere. Plus, his four year run at Oregon from 2009-12, a stretch that saw the Ducks go 46-7 and finish with three Pac 12 championships and three AP Top 4 finishes, is one of the best in the sport this century.

"But Matt, he's a jerk!" Ok... why do I care? So what if he’s not the coziest or warmest personality? Is Nick Saban “warm”? Hell no, but the guy wins games, and isn’t that the ultimate point of fielding a football team in the first place? Because that’s what Chip would do. "Hey dumbass, it didn't work out in the NFL for Chip!" Yeah, of course it didn't, because Chip shouldn't be an NFL coach. That up tempo attack will never work in the pros because of the 53 man roster limit. Eventually your defense gets worn out playing heavy minutes against grown men for 16 weeks during the fall and winter, as they never get enough time to rest because the offense either scored or punted too quickly. In college, he might face 8 teams a year that have the athletes to matchup with him, and in that case, he's got 80 scholarship players he can just keep rotating in and out. Oh, and by the way, there's not an offensive system that's perturbed Saban more than Kelly's type of spread, up tempo attack. He's bitched about it for years. He hates playing against it. This sounds like something the athletic department should keep in mind when they're making a hiring decision.

The only reason Chip Kelly shouldn’t be on the sidelines in Knoxville next season is if he gets hit by a meteor, if he gets arrested for moving kilos of Columbian bam bam across state lines, or if he inexplicably decides he doesn’t want to coach anymore. And since all of those are unlikely, then there are no excuses. Tennessee is by far the best job opening this off-season.

It’s a big hire for new Tennessee athletic director John Currie. What kind of AD are you going to be John? The one that says, “screw it, I don’t care if Alabama whoops our ass every year, I ain’t paying more than $3 million for a coach”. Or is contending for championships as soon as possible your top priority? We’ll know when he makes the hire.

And when Tennessee screws up and hires Jim Bob Cooter, that’ll probably be the time to cancel your season tickets.