When the hammer comes down…

Among his other skills, Derek Dooley displays an exquisite sense of denial with this quote:

… Dooley is also a strong proponent of sanctions and/or penalties following the coach who commits them, especially when that coach leaves for another school. In other words, if the NCAA finds that Kiffin and his staff were guilty of any wrongdoing, then they’re the ones who should have to pay the heaviest price.

“I think that’s something they need to look at,” Dooley said. “That’s not right, when coaches can leave and start over and the institution gets hit. That needs to be examined.”

So does Mike Hamilton’s head, but I doubt that’s happening any time soon.

However reprehensible Junior & Company’s behavior may turn out to be once fully vetted, let’s not try to act like the school was some innocent bystander which just happened to be hanging around the crime scene.  Tennessee knew what it was getting with Ed Orgeron.  Nobody expressed concern about the hiring of Steve Rubio.  Everybody was fine with the Laner’s antics when he insisted they were planned.

Those hooker-now-claims-she-was-a-rape-victim stories tend to be a hard sell.

But that’s only half of the story.  Dooley wasn’t exactly buying a pig in a poke when he took the Tennessee job.  He’s a bright guy.  Assuming he’s read even half the press about Kiffin that I have, he knew what was going on and he knows that Hamilton empowered Junior.  So the righteous indignation really isn’t very convincing here.

11 Comments

Filed under Because Nothing Sucks Like A Big Orange, The NCAA

11 responses to “When the hammer comes down…

  1. Further proof that the younger Dooley has already been too infected with the HillBilly virus to save. What a waste of good hair and (what used to be) good blood.

    However, the day the infection spreads to our dear Vince will be the day you see grown Dawgs cry.

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  2. Go Dawgs!

    Certainly, Derek does have a point in principle, the coaches that run off after scorching the earth should have some of penalty visited upon them (and something more harsh than the slap on the wrist they gave Kelvin Sampson when he moved from OU to Indiana).

    Still, Tennessee knew what was going on, and they were all for it, just as the Senator points out. Derek Dooley isn’t in denial, though, he’s taken a front-row seat in Manipulation of Facts 101, taught by Professor Emeritus Lane Kiffin. Dooley knows that UT’s administration was complicit in the antics of Orgeron, et al. He’s trying to spin the facts to make it look like everything was the fault of the coaches who left, and nobody at UT knew a thing! Poor, poor Tennessee… poor, poor Mike Hamilton… that big bad Lane Kiffin who everyone already hates did all these bad things and now the innocents here at Tennessee are going to have to pay the price. Derek, Tennessee’s not the poor bastard left holding the check after his buddies did a dine-and-dash while he was in the bathroom. Everyone at UT was planning to to the dine-and-dash… Lane just ran faster and earlier than everyone else.

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  3. ChicagoDawg

    If he is suggesting that the school where the offenses occured (i.e. Tennessee) and the school where the offending coach(es) now reside (i.e. USC) are both punished, then he has something worth exploring. However, this too raises interesting issues as to how far this would reach. Would this only apply to head coaches or would assistants be included (who may or may not have been equally culpable)? If so, then things could get really messy when the staff scatters and end up at different institutions. Not to suggest that there should not some reasonable system to manage this, but it would have to be carefully considered.

    If young Dooley is trying to suggest that the institution where the offenses took place should not be impacted, then he has lost a lot of credibility. I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt on that point and assume (hope) he is suggesting that USC be impacted as well as UT.

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    • Mayor of Dawgtown

      I think the point that CDD was making is that the offending COACH should get sanctioned some way and that too often the coach does bad things, then leaves when the hammer is about to fall and the school alone suffers the consequences. A legitimate point from where I sit.

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  4. Charles D.

    Man, Derek’s uncle would NEVER have gotten any work again if he had to carry all his sanctions around with him.

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  5. 69Dawg

    It’s as simple as the NCAA suspending coaches, for their trangressions. Hit them where it hurts in the wallet. Heck instead of losing a scholly make the school go a season with one less coach. This would end a lot of the BS.

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  6. keith

    69dawg, I was kinda thinking the same thing. Punish the coaches involved with a suspension minus pay, in accordance with the severity of the offense.

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  7. JC in Powder Springs

    What hammer is coming down? I haven’t heard about anything the NCAA has done to USC regarding Reggie Bush. Why would anyone think something is coming down the road to TN?

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  8. EastCobbDawg

    If things come out and they claim they didn’t know, that would sound like the dreaded “lack of institutional control”. You don’t knowingly hire and empower a serial rule breaker, let him run amok unmonitored, and not accept the responsibility for the end results.

    Bottom line, if the USC job hadn’t come along, Kiffen’s behavior would continued unabated and the administration seemed more than happy to enable him.

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  9. Vious

    You can tell Dooley sticks out in Knoxville

    He doesn’t want players making late hits
    He doesn’t want players jumping around acting like idiots after normal plays
    He doesn’t want players getting arrested

    Yea, have fun trying to get those things in order in Knoxville

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    • Mayor of Dawgtown

      Sounds like CDD is trying to turn UT into a real, honest to goodness, good college football team. If those dopes in KnoxVegas listen to him their team just might become one. I, for one, hope they do not listen, revert to their true selves and run him out of town if he doesn’t win immediately.

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