Derek Dooley inherited a mess at the University of Tennessee when conference loudmouth Lane Kiffin bolted for the University of Southern California with no notice whatsoever.  Kiffin and his staff left a wake of issues stemming from infractions that would lead to penalties, a multitude of player defections and a rabid fan base demanding that someone remedy the program’s derailment immediately.

Tennessee found their man in Dooley, the lawyer turned coach with an attractive football pedigree.  The son of Georgia football legend Vince Dooley was a hot commodity at the time.  He was coming off an 8-5 season as the head coach at Louisiana Tech University where he led the Bulldogs to their first bowl win in over 30 years.  Nonetheless, it was an underwhelming hire for much of Tennessee’s fan base and Dooley would need to right the ship quickly if he were going to succeed at Tennessee.  He didn’t.

Despite showing progress at times, the Volunteers stumbled this year and decision makers at the university began circling the wagons early in the season.  In the end, they were too proud to tolerate an 0-7 conference record and the blowout loss to Vanderbilt yesterday sealed Dooley’s fate.  They will pay Dooley a $5 million buyout and start over.  Again.

Now Tennessee, with the ever fading memory of 1998’s national championship season, finds itself searching for a new coach along with conference foes Arkansas, Kentucky and possibly, if not probably, Auburn to take them back to the promise land.  In today’s world of here today, gone today college head coaches, it’s hard to understand the expectations of college football’s big time programs.  Only in rare cases, involving unique circumstances, unbelievable talent, or good old fashioned luck, can a football coach come in and win big immediately (see Texas A&M’s Kevin Sumlin).  Despite the rarity of such instances, that is exactly what every athletic director, fan base and board of trustees wants and expects.  Even if a coach finds himself in such a situation, it may not buy him much time (See Auburn’s Gene Chizik).

Gene Chizik was hired was hired in 2008 to replace Tommy Tuberville who had just finished 5-7 at Auburn.  At the time, it looked like a terrible hire and many still maintain that it was despite Chizik winning a national championship in his second season with the Tigers.  Chizik was 5-19 as a head coach at Iowa State at the time Auburn hired him.  Regardless of what you think of him as a coach or what you think of his controversial star quarterback Cam Newton, who only spent one season at the university, most would agree that a national championship should buy a high level job security for a head coach.  The fact that Auburn is even considering removing Chizik tells me that no one involved with the university is giving him any credit for the title.

Dooley was fired in less than three full seasons.  If Chizik is fired this year, it will have been less than two years since he won a national championship.   It seems that the process of building a championship program after inheriting a program in turmoil would take more than three years.  Or, in Chizik’s case, that it would buy you more than two seasons after reaching the top of the football world.  Unfortunately for whoever fills any current or future FBS conference head coaching vacancy, it appears time is a luxury they will not be allowed.