Nobody Wants To Take The Tennessee Football Job

Jack Mac11/30/2017 5:30 PM

I can’t remember a crazier coaching search than what is going on in Tennessee. Maybe it’s because we are in 2017 and everything that’s anything is reported on, but the search we have seen from Tennessee has taken more turns than Josh McCown’s NFL career.

Remember #GRUMORs? Doesn’t that feel like a century ago? Turns out the hight of #GRUMORs were just two weeks ago. Since the death of every single #GRUMOR, Tennessee lost to Vanderbilt (lol), incited a riot by hiring Greg Schiano, and been rejected by it seems like every FBS coach.

Chip Kelly? NOPE!

Dan Mullen? NOPE!

The “wait, maybe our job is not as good as we thought it was” debacle for most Tennessee fans started with David Cutcliffe:

Imagine going back to 1997 and telling someone that in two decades a coach will be rejecting a Tennessee head coaching job because they’d prefer to stay at Duke. I think it’d be easier to explain to them Bitcoin than picking Duke over Tennessee.

Tennessee then decided to be the guy at the bar who goes to hit on a 9 after he starts his night off by getting rejected by a 6:

To make things worse it seems that Mike Gundy flirted with Tennessee to accomplish something unrelated to them, a classic move that happens to the guy who hits on girls way out of his league:

ESPN-Gundy’s developing interest in Tennessee was heightened by another setback in his relationship with Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder, according to sources. Gundy had met with Holder and other Oklahoma State officials in recent days over a list of items Gundy believed would help recruiting efforts. Sources said talks between Holder and Gundy did not go well.

One sticking point has been Gundy’s desire to put banners commemorating Oklahoma State’s past bowl appearances in the indoor practice facility.

If being used as a prop to make another AD jealous, Tennessee’s coaching search went from disaster to depressing on Wednesday:

Yes, it appears a coach at Purdue said “nah, I’ll stay here, prob better anyways” to Tennessee. The same football program that was regarded as a top-15 job at one point! That is in the SEC! It has coaches from Purdue telling them no!

Tennessee is finally getting a hint about their place in the coaching market, so they have moved on to….wait for it…the man who was on the hot seat at NC State this year, Dave Doeren:

We’ll see what happens with Doeren, but it is looking more and more like Tennessee will be without a coach at the end of Thursday. It looks like Tennessee fans will be happy with that, though:

I don’t think anyone knows what is going to happen after the Doeren rejection. Will Tennessee somehow find themselves a dime before the last call or will they fall back on their longtime hookup, Brady Hoke?

UPDATE (12:48 PM): Dave Doeren has rejected Tennessee