Tennessee football: Ranking 10 Vols coaches from other Power Five schools

Another one-year wonder with Tennessee football, Jim McDonald was a coach between eras. He replaced Bowden Wyatt, a former Vol who had been very successful early on but saw the game pass him by into the 1960s. And he preceded the emergence of the Vols into the 1960s.

McDonald, though, came from another Big Ten school, not the Michigan Wolverines. He instead played for their rivals, the Ohio State Buckeyes, from 1935 to 1937, and he was the No. 2 pick in the 1938 NFL Draft. So this guy was a star player.

After spending eight years as an assistant to Wyatt, he got his chance in 1963. Inheriting a team that had gone 4-6 in 1962, though, he didn’t show much improvement. The Vols went 5-5 that year and 3-5 in the SEC. To be fair, they got a rough draw with three of their five annual rivals, the Auburn Tigers, Ole Miss Rebels and Alabama Crimson Tide, finishing in the top 10.

One of their random draws, the Mississippi State Bulldogs, finished fourth behind those three schools in the SEC. Such a rough schedule keeps him above the other mediocre coaches. But he still didn’t have a successful tenure. Luckily for him, he had a legacy as an assistant and a future administrator that oversaw athletic success with the program.