If you love the Tennessee football program as much as I do, you’ll get a chuckle out of John Pennington’s post about the Knoxville natives getting restless with Son of Dooley. The best part of all is Pennington’s advice that comes after a lengthy list of (rumored) examples of how things are slowly sliding out of control:
… a long-term view suggests that UT’s best bet is to stick with Dooley for at least one more season and allow him to further stabilize the program from a roster standpoint.
One can only hope. In fact, I would argue that he needs more than one short season to try to right the ship.
Get The Picture 
I think Dooley will turn it around there. He just needs another 2-4 years, maybe 5.
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That’s what I kept telling Radakovich…. Thank God for my never ending rollover contract negotiated by my UGA grad Lawyer/Agent… 🙂
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If you love the Tennessee football program as much as I do (heh, heh) then you want the Son of Dooley to be the Head Football Coach of the Vols in perpetuity.
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He wears Urnge pants, so, he’s a good coach or something. Right?
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He has been seen about town with an orange dog and that has really started the tails to wagging in Knocksville.
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Son of Dooley…good Senator…The UT situation is more complicated by a fan base that, to some extent anyway, is still not convinced UT did the right thing by firing Fulmer in the first place. In many ways UT today is like Ole Miss with money. I seriously doubt SOD will make it past year three, but I can be surprised. SOD has done some mighty strange things, Bryce Brown, for instance, and said some even stranger things… The only really insightful comment on UT football I have read in the last three or four years is “We really screwed that up.” and that was from Phil. I suspect SOD is in over his head, but we shall see. Without a home grown recruiting base, and with Memphis being almost a separate country, getting back to where they were in just Fulmer’s last three years is a mammoth undertaking.
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Dead on. Without the recruiting base, they cannot turn it around like UGA, Bama, and UF have been able to in the past. They are swimming into some deep waters with the past few years and now the reported player issues. Their fans are still in denial, but they have a long road to hoe.
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Whats with the “road” thing. U don’t hoe roads. There r no roads in a garden. Row u hoe a row.
garden
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Think you are right about that. While I have actually hoed a row when I was younger, I had never written it before. I spelled it like most people pronounce it….including me. My kids don’t have a clue where that saying comes from.
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Other than his name being Dooley, UT hired the La. Tech coach with a losing record. Really, what did they expect? And what happened to that QB Nash, or whatever his name is that went to Rocky Top with D’Rick? I’ll bet D’Rick wishes he had come to UGA now, huh, smart ass?
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Duh rick…got a thousand yards receiving this season.
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He also experienced one SEC victory. Against Vandy.
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I don’t understand the enmity for Dooley. He walked into a hot mess. Just ask Muschamp how easy it is to coach a depleted roster. And UF had more talent and upper classmen than UT.
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I bear no ill will towards SOD. Just the school he works for. 😉
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+1.
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I don’t give a damn about DaRick or Dooley. I do love to see them in disarray. I left for the Marines in 2002 and when I came back in 2006 the Vol’s has stopped getting the Jamal Lewis and Deon Grant type players out of Atlanta and have been on a long slide towards becoming the Mississippi State of the SEC East. Which is different from our lean years under Goff because we still had good players at some positions ( RB-for the most part, QB-although Bobo was at times inconsistent yet at other times really good, and LB-everyone not named Whit Marshall was a decent enough player) just suffered from terrible coaching and a lack of talent on the defensive and offensive lines.
All we have to do is stay where we are with who we have and they do not have a chance. Fulmer held it together for awhile but 7-4 under Richt ( so far) is just the beginning.If we continue getting better and with Alabama’s success it will be really difficult for them to keep a coach long enough to get back to anywhere near where they were. I am all for them firing Dooley. Maybe they will hire Houston Nutt or even better Gus Malzahn.
I think that a commenter on Mr.Sec sums it up best when talking about the brand that is Tennessee football:
“As for protecting the brand, the brand is fast becoming an old Western Sizzlin’ steakhouse that’s now a night club.”
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It’s impossible to judge Dooley’s coaching ability because UT was such a grease fire when he took the job. He could actually be the guy to make them decent again, or they could be looking at another half decade in the wilderness. I personally would like them to win 8-9 games a year, but crushed by UGA annually.
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Seconded, if only because it’d bring my girlfriend off the ledge a bit. I told her when Dooley got hired, “I’d love it for your sake if the Vols went 11-1 every year, as long as the -1 was UGA.”
Also agree wholeheartedly that Dooley inherited a hot mess from Fulmer and Kiffin, one that couldn’t be turned around in a single season or really even two. We all know what itchy trigger fingers new ADs have, though, and if Dooley can’t hit seven wins at the bare minimum next season, I think there’s a good chance he’s gone.
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Sorry, but no, no, no. Let the Vols be 0-12. Every year until they drop football.
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No wonder Boom has told people “privately” that he is shocked at the level of talent he inherited.
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7291138/former-florida-gators-coach-urban-meyer-short-term-solution-ohio-state-buckeyes
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UGA fans should never wish a turn around for better of any SEC East team except their own.
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John writes;
“To make matters worse, Dooley himself helped to create an air of negativity by spending a heckuva lot of time in the press ripping his players. Reports from those close to the program say more than once players were ready to walk away from Dooley’s program as a result of being thrown under the coach’s bus. (Like him or not, there’s not much about Derek Dooley’s demeanor that reminds one of his father, Vince.)”
This is where Dooley is losing his players. Compare this to Franklin and Vandy. Those guys at Vandy are probably a lot less talented than the UT players, but they seem to play hard for Franklin. A coach can inspire his players to play hard. Or not. It does not seem that Dooley has inspired this players to play as hard as they can
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You mean that an orange dog on a handtruck doesn’t invoke college football passion? Their future is nowhere.
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Dooley will get more time at Tn that Muschamp will at Fl. If Muschamp’s team mails it in again next year, he’s gonna feel heat.
I hope Georgia people (many of whom were wanting CMR replaced in the near past) look at the mess that Tn, Fl, UM, and maybe Au are in and realize that losing a very good and proven coach, esp. a good man like CMR, is a big step leading into dark timber. Times are good..let’s all support CMR and staff as long as we are fortunate enough to keep him.
….and on that subject…a lot of Tech fans were comforting themselves with a rumor that CMR was leaving Georgia on his own…I am thankful that they were as wrong about that as they are about most things football.
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Fire Mark Richt!!1!!
Gosh…been so long, I just had to let one out. Phew.
And I think you’re betting on the wrong pony in freshman coaching messes. Boom simply has more resources and with just two recruiting classes get the gators back to respectable. SOD has no such future.
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That’s where you find the value of a strong alum group. They end up recruiting more than the coaches. Everyone should remember that as well.
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I think they’ll have to give Dooley more time to at least clean up the program and recover from their self inflicted Kiffin. Dooley’s their transitional man.
At least he’s not an ass like Mushychamp.
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I’m amazed at the little success Tyler Bray has passing. Have you ever noticed his where his elbow and hand are on this throwing arm. Is that a side-arm throw. If I’m Dooley I’d change my offense to the spread and hire the OC at Southern Miss. Otherwise he will have trouble keeping pace with Franklin and Vandy.
If he pitches, what does his arm slot look like?
Perhaps Derek Dooley is laying the ground work to be an agent for SEC players bound for the NFL. If so, Crowell will be a difficult contract to get in place. He looked like a $5 million dollar bill in high school, but a $5 bill in the SEC.
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It does seem like Vol Nation as a whole has placed a lot of eggs in Bray’s basket, and while I’ve got no beef with the kid personally, I just don’t see it yet. He’s obliterated the Vols’ cupcake opponents and a few SEC bottom-feeders, but put him up against a halfway competent D and you’d think someone had given him the Mandarin Chinese translation of the UT playbook.
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Oversigning played a huge role in getting Alabama out of a similar situation a few years back.
Derek Dooley was once Nick Saban’s recruiting coordinator at LSU.
I can see Tennessee taking a similar path.
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Agent Dooley is doing a masterful job. “Opportunity is Nowhere.”
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