“And I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, ‘Come and see.’ And I saw, and behold a pale scowl, and the face it sat upon was Gruden, and hope followed with him.”
I might be quoting that wrong.
A dream was made real early this month when Jon Gruden, former head coach of the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers came to the campus of the University of Tennessee. Only the dream was arriving two years too late. Somebody else had already co-opted that dream, Butch Jones, and he was doing pretty damn good with it.
To understand the insanity that gripped the state of Tennessee after the disastrous cancer of Derek Dooley was exorcised from the Volunteer football program is to understand the University of Tennessee fanbase.
Recently Fox Sports’ Clay Travis comprised a list of the dumbest fanbases in America and he ranked Tennessee at No. 10. But the truth is, that is far too good a ranking for the Tennessee fanbase in which I coexist with every single day. In college football the UT fanbase is, easily, the fourth dumbest, behind only Florida State (No. 3), Penn State (No. 2) and Alabama (No. 1). Travis, to his credit, also picked Alabama as his dumbest fanbase, showing that regardless of everything else we can disagree on, we can all come together and share one opinion; Alabama is the absolute worst.
I say this out of love. I too am a University of Tennessee fan. When you grow up here (I live in East Tennessee, an hour away from the UT campus), you have to be. I didn’t go to UT, I went to its NCAA Division II cousin Carson-Newman and can freely love and root for both teams without guilt, as they can never play against each other. Of course, Carson-Newman has won five national titles, played for the NAIA or DII national title nine times and is a consistently ranked in the Top 25, had only one losing season in the last 32 years and his coached by the only remaining active legend in the sport, Ken Sparks, whose 325 wins at C-N (and still going) is good enough for No. 7 all time, right ahead of Paul “Bear” Bryant and Glenn “Pop” Warner. But, you know, Tennessee is good too.
Once Dooley was tarred, feathered and ran out of town on a rail, his office blessed by a priest and sage burned throughout Neyland Stadium, the search for a new coach to replace “Drooling” Dooley, turned to the great pie in the sky, the guy associated with every conceivable coaching vacancy in the NFL, and probably NBA and NHL too. All eyes fell immediately on Jon Gruden.
QB Camp: Titans Edition? Jon Gruden could replace Ken Whisenhunt in Tennessee in 2016.
WATCH: http://t.co/z2YJ1WaDzC pic.twitter.com/GPucsQ4jpI
— Stadium (@Stadium) May 22, 2015
Now, Tennessee fans had a legitimate reason to think they had a shot at Gruden. He’d coached as a graduate assistant at Tennessee from 1986-87, it’s where he met his wife Cindy (who was a UT cheerleader). She’s from Tennessee. Her family still lives here. There’s a connection.
But Tennessee fans took that realistic sliver of a chance and turned it into an obsession that had insane rumors swirling around the state, especially on talk radio, even after Gruden publicly stated he didn’t want the job.
People called in with reports as crazy as Gruden had already enrolled his kids in a Knoxville private school. I guess his kids were as shocked as anybody, then, when Gruden gave his emphatic “no.”
It wasn’t until Butch Jones was hired away from the University of Cincinnati that the Gruden chorus silenced. After a couple of successful seasons, a bowl win and some incredible recruiting classes, Jones is now set at Tennessee, and even had to fight off rumors of his own that he might be wooed away by big money from another program this last offseason.
The coast was finally clear. Jon Gruden could safely visit the Tennessee football so three weeks ago he did it, visiting and speaking with team 119, the first potential Southeastern Conference East contender in nearly a decade.
Former Super Bowl champion coach Jon Gruden back on Rocky Top, addresses Team 119: (FREE) http://t.co/j5vdNaoCBz pic.twitter.com/i7fRxDGqqZ
— GoVols247 (@GoVols247) June 7, 2015
“Being a physical team and earning people’s respect on and off the field is huge,” Gruden told the team that Sunday. “Guys are taking advantage of these facilities and becoming self-sufficient. You have to be able to learn on your own and become a team and welcome newcomers. You have to formulate the nucleus of your team without coaches around and you need leadership and the right kind of guys to make that happen.”
Jones has brought those players in. Certainly Gruden could have too, but with Jones, the Vols have stability. He doesn’t want any other job. This is his dream job, made real.
“He (Jones) desperately wants to win, he wants to bring it back to Tennessee,” Gruden said. “I get emotional thinking about it. He’s a fiery guy that inherited a tough situation, but when you look around and see what he’s been able to do, it’s got to be exciting.”
Especially to the guy that turned down the job and broke so many hearts in the process.
