Vols AD drops the ball on coaching hire
Derek Dooley? Hamilton missteps will cost Tennessee dearly down the line
Lisa Norman-hudson / APAthletic director Mike Hamilton, right, introduces Derek Dooley as Tennessee's new football coach on Friday night.
OPINION
By Matt Hayes
updated 3:29 a.m. ET Jan. 16, 2010
 | Matt Hayes |
|
And for Mike Hamilton's next act, he'll make the University of Tennessee football program completely disappear.
Remember that episode of The Flintstones, where our beloved Fred was being berated by the lovely and talented Wilma, and shrunk in his chair, moment by moment, until he was nothing but a small shell of a man with a squeaky little voice?
Welcome to Tennessee football, 2010.
The Tennessee Volunteers suddenly have become Tennessee-Chattanooga. No offense to the Mocs.
I don't know that I've ever seen a coaching search so bumbled, so utterly void of clear, concise goals, as what we had at Tennessee. And now there's this: For the second time in two years, Hamilton — Tennessee's beleaguered athletic director — has hired a coach with a losing record for one of the top 10 programs in all of college football.
The hiring of Derek Dooley from Louisiana Tech fits right in with the rest of this wacky week. In the last three days alone, Hamilton was turned down by a defensive coordinator, the coaches at Air Force and Duke, coaches at two other non-BCS schools (Utah, TCU), and an NFL color analyst (Jon Gruden).
With each public humility, with each press release from schools stating that Coach (insert name here) has decided to stay at (insert school here), the once proud Tennessee program takes another public relations whipping.
And don't blame Lane Kiffin; he's just another coach who followed his dream and left a wake of destruction. Happens all the time.
The blame here falls squarely on Hamilton for two reasons:
- He had an $800,000 buyout in Kiffin's contract. If you're going to invest $2 million a year in a coach — and millions more in his high-priced coaching staff — you better have some security. If Kiffin had a $4 million buyout, maybe USC would've thought twice about extending an offer.
- Hamilton had prior notice this could happen. When Carroll left for the NFL, Hamilton asked Kiffin if he would be interested in the USC job, and Kiffin said yes. So Hamilton had three days to come up with a short list of names he knew would be interested and would more than likely accept the job.
That list, we now know, included Gruden (who turned down the Vols last year), Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp, TCU coach Gary Patterson (who has a better team than UT right now), Utah's Kyle Whittingham (who is waiting for the Florida job should Urban Meyer decide not to return), Air Force coach Troy Calhoun and Duke coach David Cutcliffe.
Everyone in that group, for various reasons, is a long shot — with the exception of Cutcliffe. So what does Hamilton do when it appears Cutcliffe will return to Knoxville and soothe the wounds of the Vol Nation?
He forces Cutcliffe to hire a few of the assistant coaches Kiffin left behind, or no deal. And what does Cutcliffe, who earlier this decade was told by the Ole Miss administration to change his coordinators or walk — he refused and was fired — do with that ultimatum?
Cue: press release from Duke University.
As bizarre as this sounds, Hamilton was willing to further damage Tennessee's reputation for a few stragglers Kiffin left behind. A few guys that, more than likely, didn't give a flip about Tennessee a year ago before Kiffin hired them.
Meanwhile, the coach who spent a majority of his coaching career in Knoxville as an assistant, who likely would've crawled back to save the school, who is one of the true, loyal men in the business, chose Duke over Tennessee.
That's like choosing Roseanne over Beyonce.
So what did Hamilton do? He hired the coach who would keep the assistants who likely won't be around this time next year — either by Dooley's hand, or their own desire to get out of town.
This isn't rocket science, everyone. Yet there is Hamilton, rolling the dice and crapping out over and over and over.
How hard can this be? It's not like he's selling a used Yugo. He's got a sleek, hip Maserati that needs a full tank of fuel.
Here's an idea, Mike: Randy Edsall at UConn. Or Butch Davis at North Carolina. Or Jim Grobe, or Mark Dantonio or Bret Bielema.
You want a hot assistant coach? Kirby Smart or Gus Malzahn. You want to steal a coach from another SEC school? Houston Nutt or Bobby Petrino.
Hamilton had a better chance getting every last one of those coaches than he did with Calhoun or Patterson. Then he settled for Dooley, and now the Tennessee program is a mess — a tattered, torn program shrinking in the chair.
If we've learned anything from our loveable oaf Fred Flintstone, it's that he eventually realizes his mistakes and humbly gives in.
Where's Wilma when we need her?
© 2013 Sporting News
![]()
advertisement
More newsCFT: Senior receiver Wilson Van Hooser is transferring from Tulane to help care for his ailing mother.
DPS: Alabama head coach Nick Saban was recently trash-talked by colleagues, and he tells Dan Patrick he wishes he was spoken to in private prior to the insults.
