How Bright Is Tennessee’s Future Under Derek Dooley?

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Jacob Bunn

After head coach Phillip Fulmer’s last year, 2008, the Tennessee Volunteer football program decided to try its hand with a kid from California named Lane Kiffin. In 2009, his first year as the head coach of the vols, Mr. Kiffin brought seven wins, six losses, and plenty of embarrassment over his own foot-in-mouth disease. Many were stunned on Rocky Top when he bolted after only one season and went back to the Pacific Coast to become the new head coach at the University of Southern California.

The Tennessee administration wanted to hire someone who would have success but do it in a quiet manner. They wanted the program to be four million miles away from the way it was handled under Lane Kiffin, a man who never met a microphone into which he would not speak. To do this, the people in charge of the search at Tennessee settled on a person who was an athletic director and head coach at the same time. Insert Derek Dooley. The son of Hall of Fame coach Vince Dooley, Derek’s name had been batted around as a possibility for several coaching vacancies. Then on January 25, 2010, Tennessee hired Dooley to be its twenty-second head football coach.

In his opening press conference, Derek Dooley made it clear that discipline and winning with class would be the aim of his program. As always, though, it would (and will continue to) take some time to completely change the culture.

Last Friday morning, it was reported that a number of Tennessee football players had been involved in an altercation at a local Knoxville bar the previous night. During the altercation, an off-duty Knoxville police officer was seriously injured when trying to put a stop to the violence. One of the Tennessee players, Darren Myles, is accused of harming a University of Tennessee officer who tried to assist the injured Knoxville police officer.

A massive bar fight involving several key players is just what a first year head coach needs six months after he is hired. But, these kinds of situations reveal a great deal about a coach. Simply put, this was Dooley’s chance to make a statement early in his tenure. The question is, did he deliver?

Dooley kicked Darren Myles off of the team and indefinitely suspended two more players. He also issued a strongly-worded statement regarding the issue. In the statement, Dooley expressed that playing football at Tennessee was a privilege, not a right. He went on to express his extreme disappointment with the athletes involved. The most interesting thing about the Dooley statement to me is the timing. Dooley handed down these punishments and verbalized his displeasure only hours after the story exploded in the local sports media, which is hungry for any college football story in the dead of summer.

These days, people are going to judge coaches' disciplinary abilities according to how they handle these sorts of problems. I give Coach Dooley a high mark for his handling of this situation last week.

One thing is for sure about the future of Tennessee football, things need to take a dramatic change from where they are currently. Once the Dooley administration becomes well-established on Rocky Top, resurgence should soon follow.

Tennessee fans probably will not care for the coming comparison. However, when Nick Saban arrived at Alabama, he had several altercations to sort through involving players getting into trouble at bars. He handled it, though, and proceeded to weed out the bad influences on his team.

Because of his time spent on Saban’s staff, Dooley is considered by a lot of people to be another version of the reigning national championship winning coach. Some have even given him the tag “Nick Saban Jr.”

The biggest difference between Saban’s first year and the coming year for Derek Dooley is the fact that Saban was already a proven coach on the major college football level. Dooley is not. He (Dooley) did well in his short tenure at Louisiana Tech serving as athletics director and head football coach. But, he certainly does not have the built-in rock star status that Saban did immediately upon arrival. Because of this, he naturally is given a shorter leash than Saban.   

Of course, no one can predict the future, and there are many external factors that can alter the situation. However, after what the Volunteer football program has had to endure lately, Tennessee administrators should give Dooley all the time he needs.

Contact Jacob Bunn at Jacob@bunnsports.com