He might have had to go the coordinator route. Although MacIntyre probably would have been in play. As bad as Butch was, it honestly could have been a lot worse.
I couldn’t more strongly disagree. I would have gladly taken another dumpster fire of a coach after Dooley, because he’d have been here for another three years, maximum. Or I could have taken a middling coach, but who could recruit decently, and maybe mess around and win 8-9 games once every 4 years. He’d have lasted 5 years, max, and the pool of replacement coaches would have been much better, because the cupboard would have been somewhat better stocked with talent. Or I could have taken an average coach but who was a complete asshole - because he’d have worn out his welcome in 3 years. What we got was a terrible coach, who couldn’t evaluate talent, who recruited only star rankings, who couldn’t develop the talent he did get, and who worked the boosters, admin and fans, alike with a dazzling array of utter bullshit, buying himself two extra years, and which he used to drive the entire program further into the abyss. Butch was the worst of all possible worlds.
Also, and at the risk of further disrupting y’all printing those Gator Bowl Championship shirts, it sounds like Tennessee will be without Brandon Kennedy at center vs IU. Not that the center touches the ball on every play, needs to be well-experienced in his timing with the QB, knows how to set assignments on the line for all plays / checks, leads in the one area of the field that any power running game requires and protects the same from the defenses as it’s their fastest and most direct path to the backfield, or is otherwise important. Much like it similarly didn’t matter that Tennessee was missing Bituli and Bryce Thompson versus Georgia State.
with Ryan Johnson gone, if the center goes down, we may play the true freshman out of Nashville who has been redshirting all year and didn't play center in HS, so that should go pretty well