Because this job combines high expectations with high obstacles to meeting those expectations. TV contracts and modern college football allow a lot of programs to offer competitive contracts, so our edge there is minimal, and even if it were more, it would be a high-risk job for the smart candidate. Here is why:
1. The number 1 factor in winning is talent better than your schedule;
2. The number 1 factor in recruiting talent is a local talent base with loyalty to your football brand;
3. 9 of our competitors in the SEC have better local talent bases than we do, including Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Miss. State, and 2 are close/comparable in Arkansas & Missouri;
4. This means that if we hire a coach as good as those programs, we should still lose 5 to 6 games each year, due to their built-in local talent base competitive advantage;
5. Our program fired a coach who had, for only the 2nd time in his 16+ year career, lost 6 games in a season, a coach who was a HOF local who had appeared in the SEC title game the year before and won a national title for the program, a fan base who believes we should be "SEC title or bust" in our expectations, should beat our much-more-local-talent rivals Florida, Alabama and Georgia each year, and find 8-win-a-season contracts a "joke."
Given that the modern SEC features good coaches throughout, a coach to meet UT fan expectations would have to achieve what no coach has achieved anywhere -- out-recruit good recruiters for their local talent and out-coach more talented teams on a consistent, exceptional basis. That is why only an idiot (or a big-hat-and-no-cattle kind of coach, exactly the kind we have hired 3 times in a row when the better coaches all turned us down) would ever jump to take the Tennessee job. Fan delusions about the reality of where we stand in the college football landscape (lack-of-local-talent-base in a brutal-SEC-schedule with fans expecting titles-or-bust) is why we are here.
