Tennessee Should Hire Cutcliffe or Fulmer with a Coach in Waiting

For the long term, Tennessee is better off without Lane Kiffin, if only because Kiffin wasn't going to be around long anyway ($800,000 buyout). In the short term, it is a disaster. Mike Hamilton, the athletics director that hired Kiffin and will make the next hire, is embattled. Also, who knows what type of class Tennessee will sign this year, or even how many members of the previous class will transfer?

That likely means Tennessee having very few upperclassmen 3-4 years from now, which generally means a tough time winning games. That is a bad spot to be in if the AD who hired you is fired and the new AD—hired to clean up the mistakes of his predecessor—wants his own guy. So, it is small wonder that the guys that Tennessee has gone after, even guys for whom it would be a real opportunity like Troy Calhoun of Air Force, have said no.

What Tennessee SHOULD NOT do is hire someone so low-profile or desperate that they will take the job under these conditions. First off, such a person would not be able to save this recruiting class, and more important even if they could, saving a recruiting class is not worth hiring a bad coach.

Instead, Tennessee should either simply have Kippy Brown be the interim coach and hire the best candidate that they can next year (and fire Hamilton so the next AD can make the hire) or they should bring in Fulmer or Cutcliffe and hire a top assistant as a head coach in waiting.

Going the Kippy Brown route would basically mean kissing this class goodbye. However, there are advantages. It means getting a new AD immediately instead of watching Hamilton battle for survival and having a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the program. Also, Tennessee could get a head start on looking for head coaches and hire someone—whether openly or secretly—during the season with no worries about impropriety.

Bringing back Fulmer or Cutcliffe meanwhile would in fact give the Volunteers a viable, short-term solution at head coach. Now, neither guy is a long-term solution. Cutcliffe proved that he was unable to build a contender at Ole Miss, and is 56. Fulmer for his part is 59, and is the same guy who couldn't compete with the top guys in the SEC anymore and Tennessee fired him.

However, either would help Tennessee make something out of this recruiting class, limit the number of transfers, calm the controversy and generally stabilize things and recover the program, at least for two to four years.

The issue, however, is what happens after the two to four years. Again, Tennessee fans are not going to delude themselves about how Cutcliffe or Fulmer will build this powerhouse program or stay with the program for the long haul, and neither are elite recruits. That's where the key comes in: Hire a head coach in waiting.

It can be a guy who everyone knows is a future head coach but isn't ready to be one yet in the SEC. This guy could use this time to learn the tricks of the trade from a veteran, successful college head coach and when the time is right, step right in.

A perfect candidate: Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart. At 34 and having only been a coordinator for a few years, he is clearly too young to run an SEC program. However, becoming the head coach in waiting at Tennessee and defensive coordinator until then is a better deal than what Alabama offers. Saban is very unlikely to accept a head-coach-in-waiting arrangement. Further, Saban is as likely to leave Alabama in 2020 as he is in 2010. If it's the former, it is too long for Smart to wait, if it is the latter Smart won't be ready to take over, and Alabama will have to hire a new coach who may not even retain Smart.

Now Smart is just one example. There are a lot of outstanding assistants —whether in college or the NFL—and small college coaches out there who would gladly accept such an arrangement, and finding one that is right for Tennessee would be an achievable task.

You may ask: What's in it for Cutcliffe or Fulmer? If it is Cutcliffe, it is based on the idea that he could accomplish more in four years at Tennessee than he can in a decade at Duke. At Tennessee, he can certainly win an SEC title in four years and develop another No. 1 NFL draft pick at QB. But at Duke, the most that he can shoot for is the Music City Bowl, and he has no chance at parlaying his Duke job into something better.

As far as Fulmer goes, he gets to replace the ignominy of getting fired last year with going out under better circumstances and hopefully a winner. Fulmer acknowledged that his effort waned after winning the title and must certainly know that it harmed his standing with the Tennessee community. In his second shot he would get back at it to do right by the Volunteer program and leave it in better shape than it was when he left the first time.

Now there are people who are dead set against bringing Cutcliffe or Fulmer back under the logic that the program needs a clean break from the past to be competitive in the future. Such people would, however, be mostly mollified if the head coach in waiting is an outsider, and the case can be made that this newcomer would need to adjust to the unique challenges of running the only traditional power, east of Oklahoma, that doesn't have a large, in-state talent base, and doing so in an SEC that has several traditional powers that do. It would also bridge and unite the traditionalists with those who want change instead of forcing one side to accept being beaten by the other.

With the situation that Tennessee finds itself in right now due to its own making, this is the best way to move forward. One hopes that it is the path that Tennessee chooses.