2013 College Football coaching carousel

I don't know that they got "so shitty" I just think they got passed by Alabama, LSU and South Carolina. Florida has had some down years, but for the most part, has stayed among the elite and Georgia has consistently been pretty good.

I think if Tennessee hires the right coach they could be back among the elite very quickly.

 

I don't remember if I mentioned it on here or another thread, but Tennessee for whatever reason has some of the weakest high school football in the country (on a blue-chipper-per-capita ratio).

For years, Tennessee raided north Alabama, the Atlanta metro area and the Carolinas for players. With Saban at Alabama, Richt at Georgia and Spurrier at South Carolina, they're no longer able to do that.

 

I think this is a very interesting case. Is it good enough to follow up a BCS bowl appearance with a string of mediocre seasons?

I really doubt that is what they expect for the $4 million or whatever they are paying Ferentz. Getting their asses handed to them in a pretty awful Big Ten this season can't help much.

But can they afford to pay Ferentz's buyout? I think I read on Yahoo yesterday that he's under contract through 2020, with a buyout of 75 percent of his salary. Unless the stands start going empty or the donors make some major noise, that's going to be a tough check to write.

 

Yep, I remember being quite surprised looking at their roster once in their 90s heyday and realizing that almost nobody was actually from in state, or at least nobody who was contributing much on the field.

And I think it no coincidence that South Carolina football was utter dogshit back in the days when UT was soaring. Clowney, Lattimore and company quite likely would've been Vols back in the 90s. Holtz and Spurrier bringing the SC program back to life was one of the worst things that could've happened to UT recruiting-wise.

 

"Can they afford to pay the buyout?" is rarely much of a valid issue IMO. Paying the buyout depends not on the athletic department's finances but on how pissed off the key booster(s) are.

 

You don't usually hear that as an excuse at a SEC school. I could see it being an issue at Cal. It was an issue at Colorado with Hawkins. It may have bought Weiss an extra year or two at Notre Dame.

I'd be stunned if it's an issue at Tennessee or Auburn.

 

The slide started when Phil Fulmer got lazy, and then he refused to fire his OC, Randy Sanders, until it was too late...once he was forced to, he replaced Sanders with Dave Clawson and the impossible-to-learn-in-a-year "Clawfense," and by then, the deed was done.

Once Fulmer was fired, he was replaced by a guy who (a) drove off a lot of talent and (b) refused to sign Taj Boyd, who had committed to Fulmer and still wanted to go to UT, and (c) then stayed just a year. Once Kiffin bolted just a few weeks before signing day, the underwhelming Dooley was chosen over Chip Brian Kelly and Dooley drove off even more players, leaving a freshman and sophomore-laden roster for the two seasons previous to this one.

Meanwhile, Muschamp got his act together, Saban remained Saban, LSU was on the sked for 2 years...yada yada, yada and you get a UT program that's in the shitter.

 

Question is, who really wants the BC job? Clearly they're taking a first-time head coach. Even with Syracuse and Pitt joining the ACC, no one in Boston cares about the conference, and BC football (with the exception of the year they got to No. 2 in the polls) is an afterthought.

Maybe Chip Kelly is fed up at Oregon and wants to come back home, but I'm doubting it. He might be one of the few people who could move the needle on that program.

 

Why on Earth would Kelly want that job, wick? He has money, the financial backing of Phil Knight and every uniform gimmick - i.e., shiny objects - some teenagers want?

Tom O'Brien bolted for another ACC school because he didn't think BC would ever get any buzz in Chestnut Hill and he probably figured he had taken the program about as far as he could. The next coach was fired not long after because he had the unmitigated gall to pursue an NFL head coaching job (Gene DeFilippo is a lunatic) ... and while I've never heard a bad word about Frank Spaziani, he's not getting the bottom-line results.

The biggest positive with the BC job? DeFilippo is retiring. Thank goodness.

 

BC should take a look at Tim Murphy at Harvard. New England guy, been very successful in the Ivy League and has I-A experience - though not very successful - at Cincinnati in the 90s.

He's the kind of guy who would take the job and stay if he's successful.

 

The idea of Tom O'Brien ditching a place because of lack of "buzz" boggles the mind. I feel like you've found a way to divide by zero.

 

That's a good point, forgot about that league --

Is Purdue, Indiana and Illinois also on this list?