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The Tennessee Volunteers named their new head coach and its Derek Dooley, the former head coach of Louisiana Tech. Yes, Dooley had success at Louisiana Tech, but this is not the quality name that Vols fans wanted to see on the sidelines as their head coach. Many high-quality candidates interviewed for this job; including David Cutcliffe, Kyle Wittingham, and Texas defense coordinator and head coach in waiting Will Muschamp, but all of them declined. It has been reported that Muschamp declined a monumental offer to take the head coaching job, which says to a lot to how far the Volunteer program had fallen after Lane Kiffin left for USC.When Kiffin was fired, I thought that David Cutcliffe should have been the leading candidate for the Vols job. He knows the program extremely well and is doing a good job at a Duke program where winning 9 games is considered a great accomplishment. But, even he turned down the job to stay at a Blue Devils team that can not compete for an ACC title every year. Tennessee is still a respectable program with a NFL pipeline that has produced Peyton Manning, Reggie White and Albert Haynesworth, just to name a few. I expect this program to get back to respectability, but with Derek Dooley, it might take longer than expected.
True, Dooley has the potential to lead the Volunteers back, but right now with the quality of head coaches in the SEC, he is widely considered as one of the bottom tier coaches in the conference. With a program losing players such as QB Jonathan Crompton and S Eric Berry, expect a long year in Knoxville come this fall.
