Recruiting Forum Football Talk III

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Freeze wants this job so bad. He isn’t even hiding it. Signs are in plain sight if you look hard enough at people he is connecting with.
Who exactly is he connecting with? Not being facetious - I've heard this a ton but the people making the statement never say the types of people he's connecting with.
 
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If Kingston has inside sources at UT I’ve got ocean front property in Pigeon Forge.
Damn, Bass. Eat a Snickers. You're being ornery this morning.

Seriously, it's a message board. I take anything anyone says with a grain of salt.
 
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Damn, Bass. Eat a Snickers. You're being ornery this morning.

Seriously, it's a message board. I take anything anyone says with a grain of salt.
Inside sources or not, legitimate information or not, Bass and I have always bumped heads.

He's a good guy, but we usually end up on polar opposite sides of every discussion and opinion.

I'm still waiting for Jeremy Pruitt to win an SEC title.
 
UT should not be in the business of financing a first rodeo SEC stint for an “up-and-comer”, “hope he can work the same magic here” kinda coach. Not with our past 3 hires. He may eventually be good down the road. Unless you want to be in this same spot in another 3-4 years, you need someone who’s gone toe-to-toe with the BIG 3 in the SEC and preferably beaten at least one of them AS A HEAD COACH. Hard pass on Chadwell and Napier at this time. You’re hoping some penny stock is gonna turn into Bitcoin for ya. Good luck!

I think our last 3 hires show you the perception of UT by proven head coaches. We have done nothing on or off the field to change that. I fear we are stuck in this cycle of mediocrity until we luck into a coach that pans out.
 
I'm just sick of the "prove it" coaches. It hasn't worked for us this decade.

Having P5 experience as an HC is not some guarantee that the coach will be successful, and obviously there are coaches who have had success despite having no experience when they took the job. We absolutely need what you're talking about - leader, needs to hire a good OC and DC, team of good recruiters, be a CEO. I think that Tennessee in particular, since we're terrible at identifying up and coming HCs, would maximize their chances at hiring a good HC if they hired a guy that has done it before at some other P5 school. Hiring a "proven head coach" has never been Tennessee's M.O., and it is probably time to do something different.

Post-Fulmer, the only guy who was remotely close to a proven HC was Butch. He did have some success at G5 programs, but he was also following in the footsteps of Brian Kelly at both stops. Dooley's HC experience was a joke (losing record at La Tech), Lane had no college HC experience (although he's the only one of the lot who can actually coach), Pruitt had none.

I’m with ya.

Going back over the coaches we’ve had post Fulmer, the mistakes made were easily avoidable.

Kiffin-it’s My belief that has it not been USC, he may still be here to this day. I believe he regrets leaving here and would come back tomorrow. So the admin can’t be blamed on that.

Dooley- impatience. I believe leaving Kippy Brown in as an interim for that year would’ve saved us the last 10+ years of heartache. We would’ve had more time to thoroughly vet a coach and made a great hire. But the lack of patience cost us.

Butch- we almost got it right. He fits the modern day coach description except for several personal problems that we couldn’t have predicted. Allowing the demise of the S&C program is absurd and unheard of. That removed the element of accountability and discipline required to be elite. His unwillingness to take his hands off and allow his coaches to coach did him in. (We’re seeing the same thing with Pruitt.)

Pruitt- he was the tallest midget. With the coaching search debacle, we felt lucky to have him. Everything we were sold about him sounded great and made sense. But at the end of the day, he’s never been a HC and it’s showing big time. He looks and sounds in over his head. Plus, he couldn’t be more of a Bama homer. That’s never sat well with me. At no time should a program like TN hire a coordinator to be a first time HC. Lesson hopefully learned.

All of that being said, if we will apply what we’ve learned from these hires, we should have a good blueprint of what will work and what won’t.

But we’re Tennessee. So...
 
Inside sources or not, legitimate information or not, Bass and I have always bumped heads.

He's a good guy, but we usually end up on polar opposite sides of every discussion and opinion.

I'm still waiting for Jeremy Pruitt to win an SEC title.

Don’t lose heart.

@Bassmaster_Vol and @Ron Swanson use to have virtual skirmishes daily. They now stand arm in arm.

They share a common dislike for Pruitt.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend!”

One day you’ll find that common ground.
 
I’m with ya.

Going back over the coaches we’ve had post Fulmer, the mistakes made were easily avoidable.

Kiffin-it’s My belief that has it not been USC, he may still be here to this day. I believe he regrets leaving here and would come back tomorrow. So the admin can’t be blamed on that.

Dooley- impatience. I believe leaving Kippy Brown in as an interim for that year would’ve saved us the last 10+ years of heartache. We would’ve had more time to thoroughly vet a coach and made a great hire. But the lack of patience cost us.

Butch- we almost got it right. He fits the modern day coach description except for several personal problems that we couldn’t have predicted. Allowing the demise of the S&C program is absurd and unheard of. That removed the element of accountability and discipline required to be elite. His unwillingness to take his hands off and allow is coaches to coach did him in. (We’re seeing the same thing with Pruitt.)

Pruitt- he was the tallest midget. With the coaching search debacle, we felt lucky to have him. Everything we were sold about him sounded great and made sense. But at the end of the day, he’s never been a HC and it’s showing big time. At no time should a program like TN hire a coordinator to be a first time HC. Lesson hopefully learned.

All of that being said, if we will apply what we’ve learned from these hires, we should have a good blueprint of what will work and what won’t.

But we’re Tennessee. So...
In my opinion, Dooley is the only one that was a bad hire in hindsight. Kiffin was EXACTLY what this fanbase wanted post-Fulmer, it's too bad a perfect run of events allowed for USC to come open and fall to him. He was going to take that job no matter where he was or how much his buyout was. I don't blame Hamilton for it at all.

But pivoting to Dooley instead of giving Cutcliffe the program was the killer. That one move explains exactly why we are where we are. Hamilton has said recently that a number of big name coaches were not interested in the job because they were convinced Kiffin was dirty and we were going to be left with sanctions in his wake. I believe him when he says that - I believe it was Muschamp and Wittingham who turned us down. But you allow the mess to force you to hire a .500 coach from Louisiana Tech just because his dad was a good coach 25 years prior. Hamilton did that because he didn't want Fulmer back around the complex and he knew he couldn't keep him away if Cutcliffe was the HC.

Butch was a fine hire - he was a proven winner at Cincinnatti and brought the kind of recruiting cheese this program needed at the time. He's a less intelligent Bruce Pearl. It was very close to succeeding.

Pruitt was a fine hire at the time as well - just because he's going to get fired does not mean the process didn't work.
 
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