Will the last assistant coach to leave Knoxville turn out the lights?

Look out, boys, there’s somebody else who didn’t fit into the culture in Knoxville.

It looks like Tennessee is down another assistant coach.

Willie Mack Garza, who coached the Vols’ secondary last season under Lane Kiffin, packed up his office and left town sometime in the last 24 hours and apparently didn’t notify anybody on the current staff that he was leaving.  [Emphasis added.]

Damn, that’s cold, brother.

Three things here.  First, I’ve officially crossed the border into Sympathy Land.  I don’t care how much Kool-Aid Vol fans swallowed, nobody deserves to have this much crap dumped on them.  Second, presuming that Garza shows up on Junior’s staff – now there’s a stretch – how does anybody listen to a Southern Cal coach with a straight face when he starts piously intoning about commitment?

Third, what in the world does it take to get Mike Hamilton in serious trouble over his job?  Something like this?

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It’s the little things that matter.

After reading these perceptions of Todd Grantham and Al Groh from their first respective meetings with the local press since taking on their shiny new jobs, it’s clear there’s one big difference already.  Recruits will have to make a tough call between the guy with an old Super Bowl ring on his hand and the guy who’s on a first name basis with Jessica Simpson.

We’ll have to wait and see how that shakes out.

Seriously, Bradley’s got one interesting Q & A with Grantham worth mentioning:

… Grantham has spent the past decade working in the NFL. Not to go all Charlie Weis on you, but it’s clear Georgia’s new DC believes his new team will have a schematic advantage because of his background. Here, responding to a question submitted by Luke, was Grantham’s response about the ongoing quest of pro teams to exploit matchups, as opposed simply to playing a basic defense every down:

“The last 11 years I’ve been dealing with matchups, and that’s what you have to do in the NFL. You don’t get guys running free to the quarterback very often; the best you can hope for is getting a one-on-one…

Doesn’t that sound like the defensive equivalent of what spread offenses try to do?  It sounds like there could be some interesting chess matches this fall for us to watch.

A couple of thoughts on lateral moves

Not that this is going to slow down any of the rampant Internet speculation that Rodney Garner is gone, gone, gone to Knoxville, Tennessee, but David Hale reports on his Twitter feed that Todd Grantham is going right ahead and plugging Garner in as his defensive line coach, thank you very much.

And given that we’ve seen plenty of names bandied about for the UT defensive coordinator job – here’s the latest – with none of those being Garner’s, it’s probably safe to assume that if he were asked to return to the Vol staff it would be at roughly the same level he’s at in Athens.  So outside of contract leverage, what’s the point?

By the way, speaking of lateral moves, Virginia Tech just announced the numbers for Bud Foster’s “golden lunchbox” deal.  If he sticks around for the full five-year term to collect the bonus, the numbers work out to about $560K per year – definitely not too shabby, but definitely not as good as what Georgia, LSU, Alabama and Tennessee are paying (or offering to pay, in UT’s case) for their DCs.  Hell, DeRuyter’s almost making that per year at TAMU and he doesn’t have to wait for any bonus.  Somebody needs a new agent.

They don’t write; they don’t…

Some Texas TV station made a written request for Texas Tech’s written records of complaints regarding Mike Leach’s mistreatment of players and, guess what?  That’s right.  There aren’t any.

… Among the records we requested were “copies of any and all written complaints about Mike Leach’s treatment of players from the time he was hired to the present.”  The official response was “after a review of known records, no documents exist which are responsive to your request.”  In other words there are absolutely no written complaints about the way Leach treated players during his 10 years as head coach.

Good news, though.  The school may have something on the insubordination front.  It just doesn’t want to disclose it.

Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

Chris Low posts one of those fairly mindless exercises EPSN has its bloggers go through – a preview of ten things to watch for in the SEC over the next decade.  Nary a mention of Georgia there.

I guess I can go ahead and cancel my season tickets now.

“It ended up not being a good cultural fit.”

No, it ended up not being a good hire.

Mike Hamilton really should acquaint himself with the First Rule of Holes.

Friday morning buffet

It’s MSG-free!

• ESPN’s ombudsman, Don Ohlmeyer, weighs in on his employer’s (and Craig James’ employer, too) coverage of l’affair Leach.   I think it’s fair to say that no one involved covered himself/herself in glory.  (h/t EDSBS)
• “… the worst idea in the history of ideas”?  Hardly.  It’s not even worse than New Coke.  But I’m amused by the outrage.
• “You want to have that mentality as a player and when you hear that, it gets you excited,” cornerback Brandon Boykin said. “I remember last year in spring football, we were real aggressive…” So what happened, Brandon?
• Looking back, maybe this should have been a clue about what to expect.  But at least Junior doesn’t have to get a new one now.
• I always loves me some regression to the mean talk.
• I told you the judge doesn’t want to see the Leach case in court.
• Sonny Dykes jokes about not putting guys in closets.
• Big money for defensive coordinators:  it’s not just for the SEC anymore.
• The bad thing about claiming something was a joke is what happens when the school makes you out to be a liar.
• You may have noticed the Gator commenters here who got their panties in a wad a few days ago over some religion-laced comments attributed to Urban Meyer in his recruitment of a five-star player and pointed to a subsequent comment from the kid claiming Meyer never made the comments in question.  Well, about that denial…