re: Why Do Tenn Fans Hate Dooley So Much?

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Especially when you convince yourself that he's the guy to turn your program back around.



There is the core of my question: how did y'all do that?

I mean, the only experience I have to compare it to is my own. Neither myself nor any Aggie I knew IRL ever thought Sherm could win championships. In fact we got way more out of him than I ever thought we would.


What was that nugget of info, that glimmer of fact, that circulated the Tenn board before his first and second season that y'all clung to?

Because I remember as a non-SEC fan thinking after the hire "I knew they got told no a lot, but 4 wins at Lousiana Tech? How did they even find this guy to interview him?"

The whole affair is strange. It is like a billionaire fricking a transvestite and not knowing it.

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I think a couple of things... We had been a model of stability from 1977-2008 (two coaches Majors and Fulmer). Thirty freaking years of stability and stability that produced very, very, good times. Fulmer had been forced out by Hammy under less than ideal circumstances - despite his slippage he was still the winningest active coach in CFB. The last transition from Majors to Fulmer had been smooth (not politically smooth but smooth for the program).

Kiffin's departure produced a shell-shocked rage because the night it happened one thing ran through our minds: recruiting. Tennessee fans, follow recruiting in a way that other fan bases don't, probably because it's our life blood and always has been. We knew, everyone from fans to media members, that we were fricked the instant that night happened because it happened mid-Jan. Those of us with a longer view even knew that one move would set us back years. You can't lose classes like this or destabilize the way everything was unfolding and not lose years in the SEC.

Yet at the same time we still had a lot going for us - we needed stability. When Dooley was hired people were not happy at all. A losing coach from Tech? How the hell was that happening? But we were told - Tennessee needs stability, give him a chance, his daddy's a legend, we couldn't get anyone better because of Kiffin, yadda yadda yadda. He'll stop the bleeding and rebuild things the right way.

We were willing to put up with a temporary loser on the field if all these looming sanctions we were told of from the Kiffin Era and all this stability we were told was going to happen under Dooley. Besides, the guy's a lawyer, dad's a coach, Saban recommended him, SEC blue-blood BS - he can't possibly frick up the simple things like recruiting and stability. But oh yes, yes, he could and did.

You have to remember how strong our program was before Dooley to truly understand how we were able to fool ourselves.

With Dooley:

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Tennessee recorded three consecutive losing seasons (2010, 2011 and 2012). Derek Dooley amassed the worst record of head coaches with more than two seasons in Tennessee history, and the worst overall since 1906. He also has the worst record of all Tennessee coaches in SEC play.

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He broke every record in a bad way. Even so, we were and are still one of the winningest programs in CFB history. We had never had this happen until Dooley happened so it was quite hard for us to imagine that even with a bad hire that had no business being there he'd actually manage to make Tennessee history.

We saw the decline happen, we saw poor coaching (players that didn't know what the frick they were doing), we watched one of the most talented offenses ever amassed absolutely wasted by piss poor coaching and Hamilton had signed a deal with no way out. If not for that Mizzou OT game, mentioned earlier - where we all saw Derek Dooley quit and he quit that very day - we thought we were stuck with him for another year. You can watch the Vandy game that followed the Mizzou game and see pretty much all you need to know about Dooley (actually watch the end of regulation w/Mizzou - where Dooley gives up even though we could've scored, watch Bray's reaction to being pulled off that field and the looks and words exchanged, THEN watch the Vandy game and you'll see Tennessee players taking their revenge on Dooley - that game was a frick you to Dooley and he got formally shitcanned after it but his job was gone the moment he pulled the plug on the Mizzou game). THEN watch the very end of UK game where Chaney is coaching - watch the celebration at the end of that game (we never once saw those players celebrate like that under Dooley).

But it all goes back to prior to Dooley not much of this could've been imagined. We had over 100 years on our side telling us he couldn't possibly frick up this bad. But he did and what he did internally was worse than what he did on the field. Dooley left us with a roster that you would expect from a program that had gotten Penn State style sanctions - only I think PSU is in better condition.