Ok, 05 and Beecher, you're both just wrong. I can only think of one other way to try to explain it to you. A thought experiment.
We're going to take Nick Saban, and have him succeed either Kiffin or Dooley, and see how long it takes him to set the boat right.
CASE ONE: Saban Follows Kiffin
-- '08, Fulmer is fired. Kiffin comes in.
-- '09, Kiffin trolls Urban Meyer, turns out Kiffin was the idiot ... Kiffin tries to turn recruit hostesses into "hostesses," ends up the punch line in a book about corruption in sport ... Kiffin goes 7-6 (4-4 SEC), losing to Va Tech in the Chick-Fil-a Bowl. Kiffin leaves town for the USCw siren song. SABAN IS HIRED.
-- '10, Saban shuts down the "hostess" thing, shuts up all his assistant coaches, and gets down to football. With a fairly decent roster, he goes _____ (what do you think? 8-4? 9-3? 10-2?) in his first year, and then gets hot on recruiting and is competing for championships the very next year ... Tennessee football is right back in the mix, as if the Kiffin year never happened.
...and compare that to...
CASE TWO: Saban Follows Dooley
-- '08, Fulmer is fired. Kiffin comes in.
-- '09, Kiffin trolls Urban Meyer, turns out Kiffin was the idiot ... Kiffin tries to turn recruit hostesses into "hostesses," ends up the punch line in a book about corruption in sport ... Kiffin goes 7-6 (4-4 SEC), losing to Va Tech in the Chick-Fil-a Bowl. Kiffin leaves town for the USCw siren song. Dooley arrives.
-- '10, Dooley insults our own players, gets a taste for it ... gets kinda imperious ... goes 6-7 (3-5 SEC), losing to UNC in the Music City Bowl.
-- '11, Dooley turns making fun of our own players into a habit, seems really proud of himself for trashing them ... Dooley tramples relationships with a number of key high school coaches in the state, and with some key boosters ... also begins making it harder for former Vols players and coaches to come back into the program ... players start to show resentment, in off-field antics, including some stop going to class, and on the field where it is rumored the QB and friends intentionally threw the final game because they couldn't stand the idea of going to a bowl with this coach ... team goes 5-7 (1-7 SEC). The wheels are coming off.
-- '12, Dooley begins his piece de resistance season, utterly alienating everyone associated with the program who wasn't already pissed at him ... some high school coaches are quoted as swearing they will never recommend another of their players go to Tennessee ... meanwhile, Dooley's own team is in open revolt ... practically all the talent on the roster has left or will shortly ... the team goes 5-7 (1-7 SEC) again. Finally, it's enough; Dooley is fired, and SABAN COMES ABOARD.
-- '13 -- Now, I don't care how good you think Saban is, he's not going 8-4, 9-3, or 10-2 with the roster at this point. And he's going to have to spend a year doing the same kinds of things Butch Jones in fact did, repairing relationships, reestablishing links, and so on, before he can start refilling the roster with talent. Fact is, the recovery curve might have been a little steeper with Saban, because we all acknowledge he's a better sideline coach than Butch, but he still couldn't get there without having to fix everything Dooley broke. So it would still be 2-3 years before he was able to compete for championships.
The point? Kiffin's one year was a blip. A blip that could easily have been overcome with a decent AD and a good coaching hire. Dooley's three years, in contrast, were a full-out scouring of the program.
It wasn't Kiffin that drove us into the ground for the better part of a decade. That was largely on Dooley.
