Gary Patterson: Tennessee spurned him and began a decade of misery
Hiring Lane Kiffin instead of TCU's Patterson was Vols' first big mistake
A blueblood like Tennessee doesn’t just fall from college football’s grace overnight. It’s a process, one in which bad mistakes are complicated by worse mistakes.
But for Tennessee, which is still trying to claw its way back to relevancy in the SEC a decade and a half into its fall from grace, the first in a series of bad mistakes was passing up a guy named Gary Patterson for a brash, young West Coast coach named Lane Kiffin.
In 2008, Patterson — who is out at TCU this week after more than 20 years on the job — was still an up-and-comer. He was a relative unknown, despite guiding the Horned Frogs to several 10-win seasons in his 8-year tenure there.
Patterson had won 10 or more games five times in eight seasons at TCU when Tennessee made the decision to fire Phillip Fulmer, including 11 wins in 2008.. And Patterson wanted to coach at Tennessee. In fact, Patterson made it clear to Vols’ athletic director Mike Hamilton that he wanted to coach at Tennessee.
With his team riding a 10-2 record and a Top 10 national ranking into that year’s bowl season, Patterson’s stock was clearly rising. But he wasn’t the “sexy hire,” as they say on the messageboards. Tennessee fans didn’t want him, and Hamilton didn’t want him.
“They thought I was too much of a football coach,” Patterson later told The Atlantic. “They didn’t think I could handle the spotlight.”
There’s another thing they say on the messageboards, too. So-and-so would crawl to coach at such-and-such place. And, in 2008, Gary Patterson would have crawled to Knoxville to coach the Vols.
But Hamilton and Tennessee thumbed his nose at him, and Patterson never forgave them for it. That’s why, in subsequent coaching searches — when Patterson’s stock was really soaring and Tennessee was really desperate — Hamilton would have crawled to Fort Worth to bring Patterson back to Knoxville with him. And Patterson said, “No thanks.”
As Patterson exits TCU after 22 years on the job, it’s interesting to think about what might have been … what direction fate would have led Tennessee if the Vols had hired Patterson instead of Kiffin back in 2008.
If Patterson is right that Hamilton didn’t want him because he was too much of a coach and not enough of a pitchman, then Hamilton got exactly what he wanted. Kiffin was the anti-Patterson, in some ways. Clearly a sharp offensive mind, Kiffin wasn’t — and never has been — so much a coach as a carnival barker, someone who says all the right things and pushes all the right buttons and causes fans and opponents alike to froth at the mouth while he basks in the limelight.
But there’s another reason Hamilton didn’t go with Kiffin.
Hamilton, who was the Vols’ AD from 2003 through 2011, fancied himself a numbers guy, first and foremost. Fundraising was his game, and he was good at it. He was named the National Association of Athletic Development Directors’ Fundraiser of the Year in 1998, while he was still an assistant AD.
But a sturdy bottom line is about more than convincing mega-donors to fork over a few million dollars for this project or that. It’s also about managing the funds that are already in the coffers, and that’s where Hamilton saw himself most effective.
Hammy, as he was often called by fans, had a penchant for going after low-dollar, bargain-basement hires whenever he had a coaching vacancy. He did it in 2005 when he went after Milwaukee’s Bruce Pearl to replace Buzz Peterson, and he caught lightning in a bottle.
Pearl’s success — one of the best seasons in school history right away in 2005-2006, followed by signing one of the best recruiting classes in school history with a haul that included Duke Crews, Wayne Chism and Ramar Smith — bolstered Hamilton’s belief that he could find diamonds in the rough, coaches who could be successful at a fraction of the cost of a so-called “big name” coach.
The problem was that Hamilton never replicated the success he had with hiring Pearl. He didn’t do it when he hired Todd Raleigh to replace Rod Delmonico as the school’s baseball coach in 2007. Raleigh lasted just four seasons, and had a record of 108-113. And he certainly didn’t do it when he hired Kiffin to replace Fulmer.
Instead of hiring the guy who wanted to be at Tennessee, Hamilton gambled with a guy who really had no desire to be in Knoxville, but instead saw the Vols as a stepping stone. While Hamilton couldn’t have envisioned that the USC job would come open just a year later, Kiffin never embraced Tennessee’s traditions, and in some ways turned UT’s facilities into a shrine for his beloved USC — the job he’d bolt for after just one year on the job.
It was a gamble that failed. Spectacularly. The problem is that Tennessee had no need to gamble. Not in 2008, when the Vols were still one of college football’s biggest brands.
Tennessee couldn’t simply name its coach in 2008. Nick Saban wasn’t going to leave Alabama for Tennessee, and Urban Meyer wasn’t going to leave Florida for Tennessee. But Tennessee was still one of the top 10-to-12 jobs in all of college football, at that point.
And, in Patterson, Hamilton had a candidate who had built a strong program at TCU in spectacular fashion, and who wanted the Tennessee job … one who would’ve crawled to Knoxville for the job.
Hamilton, in Hamilton fashion, went for the bargain-basement hire. And the results were spectacularly disastrous.
Kiffin did more than bolt for his dream job at USC. He bolted for his dream job just one year into a rebuilding program, less than two weeks before National Signing Day — after pushing away both Tajh Boyd and Bryce Petty by telling them that they weren’t a fit for his system in Knoxville. Tennessee could’ve had its pick of a lot of coaches in 2008, and not just Patterson. But by January 2010, there weren’t many big-name, established coaches who were going to step into that mess under those circumstances. Not less than two weeks before National Signing Day, with the threat of an NCAA investigation looming; not with Kiffin and his wing-man, Ed Orgeron, encouraging early-signee recruits not to enroll in class.
In the hasty coaching search that followed, it’s easy to forget that Hamilton — who had not learned his lesson with Kiffin — did the same thing again. Former Vols offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe, the head coach at Duke who had been the mastermind behind much of Fulmer’s success at Tennessee, appeared set to become Kiffin’s successor. And then, for one reason or another, the Vols wound up with Derek Dooley, who was the son of an SEC coaching legend but who had a losing record at lowly Louisiana Tech.
That one-two punch of Kiffin and Dooley truly crippled the Tennessee program and the Vols brand, and UT still hasn’t found its way back. By the time Dooley was shown the door in 2012, it didn’t matter that there was a new AD in place. When Tennessee called on Patterson, Patterson wasn’t listening. Not after Tennessee rejected him in 2008. No thanks.
By that time, Patterson was a legend at TCU. Since Tennessee turned him down in 2008, his teams had gone 36-3 in three seasons. The 2012 and 2013 seasons were rebuilding years, but then TCU was back in 2014, finishing with a 12-1 record and on the precipice of the College Football Playoff.
If Tennessee had hired Gary Patterson instead of Lane Kiffin in 2008, Patterson would have set about the task of picking up where Fulmer had begun to stumble in 2008. He wouldn’t have left for another school. The Derek Dooley hire would’ve never happened, which means the Butch Jones hire would’ve never happened, which means Schiano Sunday would’ve never happened, which means “the coup” would’ve never happened, which means the Jeremy Pruitt hire would’ve never happened, which means the Vols wouldn’t currently be under the threat of major NCAA sanctions.
Thanks Mike Hamilton…the gift that keeps on giving.
Well said. Dr. J agrees.
IMHO, Hamilton was an agent sent by Florida to (Let's Go Brandon) my beloved Vols.