An exceptionally good article on Saturday Down South, providing a detailed account of how Bama landed Saban. It's worth a read for the casual fan, but more importantly, on The Hill. You do not, in fact, land a high-value coach in the course of a single phone call (as Hamilton and Currie, his then right-hand man, once attempted to do with a high-profile coach, or five). From the article: Find a Trusted Go-Between Find YOUR Guy Due Diligence / Do Work Make Your Timing It Pays to be Lucky Be All Aboard & ALL IN Patience is a Virtue It's ALL About Recruiting
Guarantee the nephew doesn't get a call if a similar association existed with a high caliber candidate for a UT job. Nobody here would stoop to trying to use a non-AD person to help out.
Well, it's been alleged that history proves you true, and that Tennessee failed to exercise more than a few deeply personal connections to at least one high-profile candidate, in the last several years...when Fulmer was fired, following Kiffin's departure, after Dooley's firing, etc. If both rumors are true and history is any indicator or future results, then I'm sure we'll fail to do the same when Jones inevitably gets ran. But as (bad) luck would have it, this new AD likely makes any worry of botching the hiring of a high-profile coach as a completely moot point, as we're not likely to be sufficiently close enough to that tier of coach to begin with.