VTTW Board Index

https://twitter.com/BruceFeldmanCFB/status/1454953401301684224?t=m68sr7J97QDITZKC1B_bGw&s=19

The one that got away. Interesting to think about what our program might look like today if Hamilton hadn't blown him off in favor of Kiffin in 2009.

This still makes me sad.

One of many horrible decisions by Hamilton.

The thing is, he gambled with Kiffin and failed.  I can, at the end of the day, accept that.  Hamilton did not control the USC job coming open.  You can criticize him, and should, for not being a better judge of Lane's character and lack of experience, but at the end of the day he swung for the fences and missed.

Where Hamilton really lost it was his panic hiring of Dooley.  Dooley was .... wait for it....4-8 in 2008.  At La Tech.  FOUR AND EIGHT!  In what hell do you hire a 4-8 mid-major coach at the fizzleING UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE!!!

I know, I know...we were desperate.  It was a week before signing day.  Blah blah blah.  But surely to GOD there was a better choice than Dooley. 

Worst coaching hire of all time. 

All Butch was able to accomlish really was to undo some or maybe a lot of the damage Dooley did.  Butch at least returned us to the top 10, if only briefly, and he started in a really bad place.  For all that happened from mid-2016 on, I at least give him credit for that. 

Hamilton could have (SHOULD HAVE!) recovered from the Kiffin mess much more easily than he did.  The Dooley hiring is IMO the no. 1 reason for the last 10 years.  The badly handled firing of Fulmer and hiring of Lane Kiffin were one thing.  The response to the Kiffin flight was where we lost it, IMO. With a better deicion there, we would have had a much better decade following it.

I can't. I still haven't forgiven Hamilton. In November-December 2008, this program was still one of the most respected programs in all of college football. Could we have picked any coach we wanted? No. But this was probably one of the top 10 or so coaching jobs in America at that time. We didn't need to take a wild swing at the fences. We could've taken a safe swing into shallow right with a runner in scoring position. We went for a wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-out-of-the-cradle virtual nobody who had been fired after less than one season with the Raiders.

That was Hamilton's MO. He prided himself on being a money man first and foremost. He could solicit donations with the best of them, but he also saw himself as a cost-cutter. By hiring bargain bin coaches, he could pad the bottom line. He struck gold with Bruce Pearl, and that just emboldened him. But the Kiffin experiment was a huge failure and we're still paying for it today.

This, all day long.

Hamilton was doing his best to dry the coffers while other schools (to wit: UGA & Bama) dug deeper into their pockets to strengthen their staff & recruiting. Guess which two schools have done the best, and made the most money, in the last decade?

Creek Walker from the top rope. :thumbup:

So, any reports on why Patterson is out?

A couple nits.  As pointed out to me on another message board, Kiffin actually was with the Raiders for ~ 1.5 seasons.   He got fired by Al Davis halfway into his second season, which is still pretty bad.

If you are looking to me to defend the Kiffin hiring, forget it.  Never said that was a good hire.  I did say that we still could have recovered in Jan 2010 from the one-year fiasco.  Plenty of talent was left from Fulmer, and Lane had a decent (not great as some claim, but decent) single year recruiting also.  With just about anyone BUT Dooley, I think the program still could have recovered.

The worst thing about those years was having to listen to Kiffin and then Dooley spout off about how they needed to "restore" things.  We hadn't fallen that far.  I even recall gator fans on Mudlizard stating that Tennessee didn't need to be "restored", it hadn't fallen that far.  When your enemies say things like that, it says something. 

The other thing is that that Kiffin is considered a hot coaching commodity now.  I am not sold yet, maybe he is a good HC now, maybe he isn't.  Finebaum certainly has been fawning over him (Kiffin is a good interview I guess, creates buzz, etc. WETF). 

But whatever you say about Kiffin I will likely mostly agree with), but Dooley is the worst hire of this entire lost decade, and it's not even close.

I’m not sure that the Kiffin hire was all Hamilton’s doing. I was told weeks before Fulmer was removed that Lane Kiffin would be the new head coach. Not being an NFL fan, I had to ask who Lane Kiffin was. According to the person who gave me that info, there were branches of the money tree that wanted LK in the position.

Interesting.  That may well be true.  If so, then Hamilton was a powerless figure head, which was also an issue.  I can't resist taking one more shot at Hamilton.  For all his renown as a financial guru, he gave Fulmer a two year extension and more money, then fired him (very incompetently) six months later.  Then the Univseristy is stuck with huge payouts to Fulmer for years, tying our hands. It was stated in the press, and not denied by the Athletic Department, that Dooley would have been fired after the Kentucky debacle of 2011 but we just couldn't afford it.  What a fizzleing mess that was!  But...Hamilton is a financial genius?  Not if you count all the payouts to coaches we had to make.   :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

The thing about Lane is, although I only admit it reluctantly, he was the best coach we hired after Fulmer.  Of course, that's a low standard, a VERY low standard, and it could be argued that Kiffin 2009 was about on part with Butch Jones (I myself have made this argument).  There are plenty of what Vol "fans" that just slobbered over Lane and acted like he made great improvements in 2009 (7-6 vs 5-7.  Really?!?  If that's a "great improvement" then I have some good land in the Everglades those fans could buy).

It is fair to remember that Lane brought his father with him also, and he did some pretty good things on defense.  Until we played Ole Miss near the end of the season. Pops wasn't too good against the type of spread that Ole Miss ran, nor in the bowl game.  But I have to admit, Monte Kiffin did add quite a bit to Kiffin.