Where is Dooley? Fear not Ye Vols' Fans, He is No Kiffin

The Vols fans anxiety is probably more to do with the last guy than this one. Most football coaches become office fixtures between the end of recruiting and the beginning of spring. Kiffin started his day with the same old question, "How do I get on ESPN today?" His recurring answer was that of, "Ridicule a more successful coach." It surprisingly worked, who would have guessed that. This might have worked for Dooley if he had felt compelled to inform the media in Bristol, Conn., that he was the brains behind Nick Saban's national championship at LSU or that Urban Meyer couldn't match Xs and Os with Ron Zook. Although Dooley has been on the job just over a month, he apparently has concluded that antagonizing Saban or Meyer won't help him win a championship. Instead, he seems that he will take a more conventional approach in attempting to revive UT football. That indeed is hard work. So maybe you should rejoice in Dooley's few public appearances. Perhaps he's hunkered down to the enormous task of trying to win more games than he loses in 2010. There's enough work to be done in the offensive line alone to turn a coach into a recluse. We don't have to tell you Dooley is a hard worker. He coached under Saban for seven years. Some assistants don't last seven weeks under Saban, but seven years? That speaks for Dooley's work ethic and stamina. When you work for Saban, you learn to multi-task to the extent that you can welcome a newborn into your family and make an afternoon football practice on the same day. Our intuition tells us, that if you work that long for Saban, you also develop an affinity for his coaching model, which features an all-controlling head coach. Exerting that much control takes time, particularly when you are so new on the UT job that you can't distinguish Kingston Pike from Tazewell Pike, much less identify five SEC-caliber offensive linemen. In the meantime, maybe UT should place a "men at work" sign in front of the football office. Vols' more restless fans might appreciate that.

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