NCAAF teams
Travis Haney, ESPN Staff Writer 11y

Candidates for the Tennessee job

Insider College Football, Tennessee Volunteers

Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart, who has been on the ground in Knoxville for 13 months, sure thinks a lot of the Volunteers' coaching job. Did you hear him Sunday during the news conference in which he announced Derek Dooley's firing?

"This is a great place, a tremendous place. We have tradition. We have history. We have a brand that is still meaningful," Hart said in his preamble. "But we have a long way to go to get back to where we need to be. You can't put all of that on a coach; I don't care if his name is Vince Lombardi or Derek Dooley.

"We have an obligation as an administration to give our coaches the resources they need, the support they need, intrinsically and extrinsically, to get back to where we want to be. This will be a collective effort from a lot of people to have us take our rightful place in the Southeastern Conference and beyond."

That sums up where the boss thinks the job and program is. It's elevated speech, sure, but he's right in a lot of ways. Resources are the fuel for any coaching position, and Tennessee's coach has had -- and will have -- support from the administration. The facilities are sparkling, new and improving.

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