Will Sal Sunseri Be Tennessee's Next Defensive Coordinator?

I am simply saying that gameplanning an entire Defense is much different than a one group of players. And yes I am going to trust Dooley’s opinion on HIS hire. I just fear that Dooley is more worried about the “wow” factor that everyone has been crying about on the radio and I just don’t think that should be important. My question is whether Sunseri is Dooley going for option B because he thinks this will appease fans because AL just won their 2nd Nat Title under Saban, and he was there for both.

Is that really the reality?

but all we have is discussion and speculation until then. and this one doesn’t give me warm fuzzies

Is it because Dave Hart is here now? When has Tennessee ever done that? Yes, we have an enormous athletic budget, but when have we gone out and used it to attract coaches?

We went cheap with the Mike Hamilton hire, and that has put us in the position we are in right now as an athletics program. We’ve historically gone cheap with hires. Yes, we have nice facilities and a big budget. And those are definitely selling points, as is our membership in the best conference in America.

But this idea that people will climb over each other to come here because “we’re Tennessee” simply isn’t true anymore. I think a lot of the angst of our fans when we take these gambles on hiring coaches comes from their perception that we are above that, that we’re better than that. That’s unfortunately simply not the case anymore.

He can walk in as a head coach on day one and have it turned around in no time. It has to be true; I heard multiple callers on our beloved local radio say that.

Fulmer produced his share, but we got fed up with Fulmer, blew the whole thing up, and started over.

Dooley hasn’t had time to produce any “up and coming” assistants yet, and the ones that are up and coming are leaving for sub-lateral jobs…

I watched his Florida defenses. They were right up there with Hal Mumme’s Kentucky defenses… luckily the SEC was TERRIBLE at the time. Seriously, Ray Goff’s Georgia teams were the 4th best team after UT/Bama/UF by ten miles.

I’d say it would be a step up.

He …wasn’t happy.

My personal favorite is the person on the stream complaining this is boring.

That UT had the Athletic Department’s plane blocked from FlightAware. Takes so much of the fun away.

We need to keep a Knoxville air traffic controller on retainer here.

;-)

It’s hard to stomach, but once they jump over, they are Vols.

Hate Alabama every day(and twice on Saturday).

But anyone who was able to get far enough to get a major coaching job is going to be enough of a businessman to worry about the quality of their work and turn off the part of their brain that demands the destruction of all their rivals.

Besides, how fun would it be to actually take a rivals’ folk hero and make them a loyal Vol?

but it was in response to “will bring the Bama blueprint for stopping SEC offenses. Love it”

but sticking with the 4-2-5 or a 4-3 for now.

He coached under Everett Withers for a few years at Louisville, and he runs a 4-3… so he has some experience in it.

there is also the question of whether not not, we as fans, should be willing to accept 7 and 8 win seasons in so called “good years”

Certainly there is less patience in general these days and I am sure it plays some role, but I think more of it has to do with Johnny having some things going for him that Dooley obviously doesn’t. He was already a Tennessee football legend before he ever coached a game. Plus he had won a national championship the year before he got here.

If Dooley had been a star player here and then he had gone on to win a national championship before coming here, I think you’d see quite a bit more patience from the fans. The major complaint most seem to have about him is that he hasn’t proven that he can do the job at this level (or at any level). That argument goes away entirely if Dooley had won a BCS championship in 2009.

Looking at it another way, if Peyton Manning were to retire, decide that he does want to go into coaching, go to a school in a BCS conference and win a national championship, then get offered and accept the job here, I think fans would be willing to put up with a few 5-win seasons before they started calling for his head. Dooley doesn’t have that luxury, nor does he deserve it at this point.

10-2 in 2005, 6-6 regular season in 2006, fired.

Changes occur all the time in a program, especially a successful one and this should not be an excuse for 7-5. Coaches will always re-hire coaches with similar philosophies unless there has been a trainwreck of a season and Dooley isn’t going to have that luxury until after he has had several successful seasons. And with this in mind there should not be any drastic changes in the program and if a coordinator or position coach leaves it will be just like the other teams; plug in the next guy and march on.

The USA and Haiti faced off in a playoff during the WC 1978 qualifiers in Port au-Prince…
and proceeded to play to 4 scoreless draws in a row. They were unable to get a result after playing a full 90 every other day for over a week. I can’t find out what happened after that, but rather than ever getting a result they simply quit playing.

Good: international stars playing in the US!
Bad: all the developmental eggs. When the thing went belly-up, that basically killed development for a while. MLS has helped a lot with development at the professional level, but I’d argue they’re almost too careful with international-quality US players.