Coach Derek Dooley, Welcome To Knoxville and the SEC

Coach Derek Dooley, welcome to Knoxville. This is your time now. You will find yourself coaching in the nation’s most powerful league, the Southeastern Conference, in the largest stadium in the South. We’re sorry that you had to come this way. We asked Will Muschamp first, but he was busy. 

For some reason, Skip Holtz was headed to South Florida. David Cutcliffe was ahead of you on the list, but he wanted a few things that we couldn’t do for him. So we asked you. And you said yes. By the way, the last coach had a kind of scorched earth policy on his leaving. He kind of gutted your inherited recruiting class. Sorry about that, too. Anyway, all that being said, welcome to town, and good luck.

College football is kind of a dirty business, isn’t it? All of Knoxville was counting on Lane Kiffin to hang around and at least see one of his recruiting classes through to graduation. It was not to be. He bolted and you got promoted. 

There are a lot of parents who sat in their living rooms with Coach Kiffin or one of his staff and listened to how he would develop them as players and young men. Some of them were even offered a chance to come to Southern Cal when he decided to leave. 

Those that took him up on that offer probably had some talent, so don’t even worry about them. Others were last year’s recruits and got stuck in limbo. Those guys are your responsibility now. Please don’t let them down. 

Hopefully someone is looking out for your former players at Louisiana Tech, the ones you promised to coach and lead. Maybe you sat in a few living rooms and made promises too. We’ll take the leap and assume your old team is in good hands. Let’s just go ahead and pay it forward for the University of Tennessee.

The reality of this situation is pretty tough. Like we already said, this is the SEC East. You’ll have to play in Athens and Gainesville. Every year you have a game with Alabama. I think that Crimson Tide team was pretty good last year. Sports talk radio is pretty big in this town, and the hosts aren’t always kind.

Vol fans were quick to forget Phil Fulmer’s SEC titles and the 1998 national title. Even when you have a street named after you, you’re still not forgiven for two losing seasons, even if a trip to the SEC title game happened between them. 

You may be given some grace in your first season, but don’t expect it to last. It isn’t personal, just realize that this town is used to success. Bruce Pearl is popular but Knoxville is a football town. Neyland Stadium is still the biggest stage in town.

You see Coach, Vol fans have this all planned out. Eventually Phil Fulmer will find his way into the athletic department, maybe even the director’s chair. There are whispers that a certain NFL quarterback who is pretty tight with Fulmer might one day wish to come back to Knoxville to coach. 

You may have heard of him, Peyton something-or-other. Now, this may or may not happen in the future, but Vol Nation wants a few wins in the meantime. That’s where you fit in for many of these fans. 

But there is a bright side. You hold all the cards now. You’ve beaten SEC schools before with a lightly regarded Louisiana Tech squad. You’ve won a national title as an assistant with Nick Saban at LSU. Maybe most importantly, you have more wins as a head coach than the last guy at Tennessee.

So maybe you’ve got more of a chance to stay than most of Rocky Top thinks right now. Just don’t think about that for too long. National Signing Day is right around the corner. It’s time to get to work. Hey, if you do really well they might name a street after you.