I'm not crazy about Norvell for the same reason I'm not crazy about Charlie Strong or Jeff Brohm. I don't like people who have built their programs off of the momentum from someone else. I'm not necessarily saying "Oh, they won with someone else's players," but it's easy to win if you follow a winner. The culture and expectation of winning is already there, and it does make a difference.
Strong is doing well, but he followed Taggart who rebuilt USF. Brohm followed Petrino (who followed Taggart) at WKU. Norvell of course, while doing good things, has just continued what Fuente did. And all three of these may be great coaches. But I'd prefer to have someone who built something vs. someone who just continued on the winning culture that someone else built. We saw what happens when someone who followed someone's coattails to big programs and kept winning. We just fired him..
So, for me? If we did hire Norvell, I wouldn't be mad about him, because he's obviously not ruining what Memphis has become. But he wouldn't be my first choice.
My board looks like:
1. Gruden - I realize what people say. But I see him being great at recruiting, and he would not take this huge risk of a job to fail. He's not going to do it if he's not positive he can succeed. I just don't see this move going bad. Worst case scenario is he busts his butt for two years or so, kills it, decides it's too much work, and leaves us for the NFL in good shape for someone else.
2. Gary Patterson or Chris Petersen. Either one. The best two pure coaches in football. Obviously Saban and Meyer and Swinney are on that list, but Patterson and Petersen do more with less than anyone else, and with Tennessee having a "lesser" recruiting base than some schools in SEC, player development is huge. We saw what bringing in talent without development looks like. It's a lot of disappointment. These two guys are talent developers. They're unlikely to come, but if we got either of them, it'd be a grand slam.
3. Scott Frost. The dude of course was partly responsible for Oregon in their success, but look at what he's done at UCF in two years. Taking them from 0-12 to 9-0. And its' GOT to be frustrating to see your team be undefeated and yet know there's practically no way you can get to the CFP anytime soon. He turned a program around. I'd take him in a heartbeat and be ecstatic about it.
4. Willie Taggart. Guy is a program builder, rebuilt WKU, and then USF, and now at Oregon, but I don't think he'd leave there after only one year, so I'm not going to get my hopes up there.
5. Greg Schiano - He won at Rutgers, and I think he'd do well here. However, it took him 5 years to start winning at Rutgers...would we give him enough time here?
6. Lane Kiffin - Yup. I said it. Players loved him. He played Bama close. He beat UGA. He brought excitement back. Yeah, he did some stupid and brash stuff. But he made UT football fun for the year he was here, turned Crompton into a legit QB, and I think if given a second chance, he'd do it right this time.
