Tennessee football: Vols are losers if they base coaching hire on potential staff

Assembling the best staff has been a topic of the Tennessee football coaching search. The Volunteers are losers if that’s how they choose their head coach.

When Tennessee football fired Phillip Fulmer in 2008, Mike Hamilton made the very questionable decision to bring in Lane Kiffin as head coach. It was odd to bring in a failed NFL coach who had no track record of success.

However, Hamilton was sold on the staff Kiffin could bring to Knoxville and shelled out money for that whole group. The result was a splash hire that energized fans for a year…before Kiffin bolted for USC.

Now, ironically, nine years later, Phillip Fulmer could potentially be making a hire based on the potential staff. Just read this Gridiron Now report from John Brice.

His coaching search has come down to three unproven assistants, one of whom was a complete disaster as a head coach. The other two could be good. But what was the selling point on all of them?

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If you listen to Vols fans on Twitter and read the article, it’s about the staff that could come to Knoxville.

Sorry, but that’s a terrible reason to hire somebody. And it’s the mark of a loser.

Head coaches aren’t successful because of the staff they can assemble. Head coaches are successful because they themselves are great!

Nick Saban has won five national championships. Those five titles have included four different offensive coordinators and two different defensive coordinators. He’s in the College Football Playoff again this year with coordinators on both sides of the ball different from all the other ones.

Why is he there? Because the Alabama Crimson Tide go as Nick Saban goes, not as his staff. What about other great coaches?

Urban Meyer won two national championships with the Florida Gators with Dan Mullen and Charlie Strong as his offensive and defensive coordinators.

Six years after his second title, he won one with the Ohio State Buckeyes using two new coordinators. Again, it never came down to staff.

Dabo Swinney lost Chad Morris, the brilliant offensive coordinator, after the 2014 season to the SMU Mustangs. All he did was go to three straight College Football Playoffs after that and win a national championship.

Getting a job because of the staff you can bring in is never a good idea. If you’re a good coach, those staff members will leave. Then what will you do?

This is the huge mistake the LSU Tigers made with Ed Orgeron. Does anybody believe that he’s going to be able to keep Matt Canada and Dave Aranda? Of course not!

When Tennessee football fired Butch Jones a few weeks ago, the Vols were tasked with finding a head coach based on his merits. It’s up to the coach to then determine who will be on the staff.

But the administration is not hiring assistant coaches. They are hiring a head coach.

If Phillip Fulmer thinks that Jeremy Pruitt or Mel Tucker would be a great coach in Knoxville, or if he inexplicably thinks that of Kevin Steele, then he should make that hire. However, if he’s hiring them because they could maybe bring in Tee Martin as offensive coordinator and also get another huge group of assistants, he is miserably failing in his first duty as athletic director.

The attempted Greg Schiano hire was terrible. A hire based on this decision would be worse. In between, when Tennessee football pursued Mike Gundy, Jeff Brohm and Mike Leach, nobody cared about the staff they would bring to Knoxville. They wanted those specific guys.

Next: Ranking coach candidates named with Fulmer as AD

That’s because winners care for it all and go for the best coach. Losers pick a coach for the staff he can bring. It’s the equivalent of NBA teams drafting to fill their needs instead of taking the best player available. If Tennessee football does this, they will remain the same loser program they have been for the last decade.