Support staff at SEC football programs rarely make big headlines.  Those are left to the men on the actual coaching staffs.

Except in the case of ex-Tennessee employee Steve Rubio.  The school announced yesterday that he is no longer employed by the university and no longer holds the title of director of player personnel.

Rubio was a Lane Kiffin hire in Knoxville.  He came to Tennessee from Central Florida where he had served as the Golden Knight’s director of player personnel.  After his arrival at Tennessee, UCF got spanked by the NCAA and coach George O’Leary — along with the NCAA — laid plenty of the blame at Rubio’s doorstep.

In October of 2009, Rubio — serving as a recruiting intern for the Vols — visited his old Florida high school along with Kiffin while UT’s head coach made a recruiting visit there.  That’s a no-no.  The NCAA investigated the matter.

Still, Rubio was eventually promoted to the position of director of player personnel and stayed on Tennessee’s staff after Derek Dooley’s arrival.  Now gone, the school won’t say if he left on his own or was asked to depart.

Cuonzo Martin is a disciplinarian.  Tennessee’s hottest offensive hand will be yanked to the bench if he’s slothful on the defensive end.  Like Norman Dale at Hickory High in “Hoosiers,” Martin put his team through a number of drills in preseason sans basketballs. 

After a slow start, the Volunteers have shown enough improvement in 2012 to upset Florida and UConn at Thompson-Boling Arena.  Picked or 11th in the SEC, Martin’s Vols are currently eighth in the league standings.  While no one in Knoxville is going to be throwing any parties over those types of numbers, but it does appear Martin’s discipline is having a bigger impact away from the court.

According to UT faculty representative Dan Murphy, the basketball team had one of its best academic semesters in “four or five years” last fall.


“I think Cuonzo Martin has really made it clear to the students that you go to class, you do your best.  You’re a student-athlete.  Being a student is part of what he expects from his athletes — and it shows.”


Martin isn’t being paid to raise GPAs, he’s being paid to win games.  But for those who believe discipline — in all areas of life — is key to winning games long-term, Martin’s approach in Knoxville bears watching. 

And looking at the numbers provided by The Knoxville News Sentinel in the article above, Derek Dooley might want to have Martin talk to his football team, too.

On Tuesday night, top-ranked Kentucky suffocated Tennessee 69-44 at Rupp Arena.  The Vols’ prized freshman, Jarnell Stokes, was held to just 4 points and 6 rebounds in 23 minutes of action.

Stokes’ took the beatdown to heart:


“It definitely made me more hungry.  I definitely wanted to win.  If anything, I want to win at Rupp Arena.  I plan on winning, before I leave, at Rupp Arena.  I’m saying that on the record right now.  It made me more hungry and made me dislike Kentucky more.”


Stokes picked Tennessee over Kentucky during the battle for his services, but many UK faithful believe he would’ve wound up in Lexington if the Cats had had a scholarship to offer.  That “dislike Kentucky more” quote doesn’t seem to jive with that theory.

As for Stokes’ goal of winning in Lexington… good luck, kid.  The Wildcats are a sizzing 474-60 all-time at Rupp.  Since the building opened in 1976, Tennessee has won there on just four occasions: ’77, ’79, ’99, and ’06.

Stokes may indeed dislike Kentucky, but his odds of beating the Cats on their home floor are long.

Atlanta running back Justin Taylor has inked scholarship papers with the Kentucky Wildcats.  Taylor made national news recently when Alabama’s Nick Saban told him that the school would no longer have room for him as an immediate signee, despite the fact that Bama had held Taylor’s commitment for nearly a year.

Taylor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution two weeks ago that Saban wanted him to grayshirt and become a part of the Tide’s 2013 class.  Taylor waffled back and forth before deciding to take the bird in hand UK was offering.

Taylor is recovering from a torn ACL he suffered last September.

Former Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton will go down in Volunteer history as a villain to many Big Orange fans.  He fired Phillip Fulmer and replaced him with Lane Kiffin.  He fired Bruce Pearl.

That’s dumb and dumber in many folks’ minds.  And some of those people let Hamilton know about it in a ridiculous manner — with threats.

Speaking to The Chattanooga Times Free Press, Hamilton said he “received several threats and it reached a point that I moved my family out of Knoxville for several days last spring and I was even assigned police protection.”

Surprising?  Not in the least.  Kiffin’s family claimed they received death threats on the way out of Knoxville as well.  Just this past week, San Francisco 49er Kyle Williams received death threats via Twitter after fumbling away his team’s shot at a Super Bowl.

In the age of the internet, everyone is anonymous.  That cloaked status encourages decent people to behave like children and imbalanced people to behave like criminals.  If booze makes folks feel 10 feet tall and bullet proof, the anonymity of the internet allows some to view themselves as the biggest, baddest asses in the world.

Well, at least the ass part is true.

Hamilton — who’s now working as the president of a Nashville-based charity — says he has no regrets about the way he did his job, including the hires of Kiffin and Pearl.  “Lane was the right person for the job at that time.  I hate how things worked out in the end, but there was no way of seeing that when we made that hire.”

“I know every move I made while I was at UT was made with the best interest of the university in mind.  I have confidence in the decision to hire Lane, and Bruce had an unbelievable run.  Again, I hate how things ended with those two examples.  I’m like anyone else and there are times when you reflect on decisions and what you might have done differently.  In any area of your life, all you can do is your best every day, and some days I felt better about my decisions than others.”

In this writer’s view, Hamilton deserves heat from Tennessee fans because ultimately the buck stopped at his desk.  But in terms of his individual decisions, he wasn’t the clown he’s often been made out to be.

He fired Phillip Fulmer, but Fulmer had had two losing seasons in his last four and hadn’t won an SEC title in a decade at the time of his dismissal.

Had Hamilton hired a good replacement, no one would be claiming today that Tennessee should have held on to its legendary ex-coach.  Interestingly, Hamilton did — it seems — hire a darn good coach.  Kiffin and crew have done an excellent job at Southern Cal so far (though they’re about to feel the brunt of recruiting restrictions and NCAA penalties).

Hamilton’s mistake with Kiffin was not weighing the possibility that Pete Carroll might leave Southern Cal and the Trojans might come after the ex-Carroll aide.  (In truth, though, who at the time would have foreseen all that?)  But that’s exactly what happened and Kiffin left Tennessee high and dry.  And that burned the Vol football house to the ground.  Two years of attrition and a coaching change right before signing day aren’t appealing to prospective coaches.

Will Muschamp turned down millions to replace Kiffin.  Only the likes of Derek Dooley would take such a job.  So while Hamilton is pilloried for “finding” Dooley, in reality, his candidate pool was going to be awfully shallow simply due to circumstances.

As for Pearl, the ex-coach took Tennessee basketball to unseen heights, but he blew his career apart with a lie to NCAA investigators and a phone call to a prospect’s father in an attempt to keep the person quiet about a barbecue.  The idea that Hamilton is to blame for Pearl’s downfall is laughable.  Ditto the notion that UT could’ve kept Pearl and his staff.  Hard to do that when the coach lands a three-year show cause penalty and recruiting ban.

Hamilton oversaw a comedy of errors, yes, but fate and the actions of other people played a large role in his demise.  Had Kiffin not abandoned him after a year and had Pearl not found it necessary to cover up what would have been a secondary violation, Hamilton might still be Tennessee’s athletic director overseeing a pair of healthy programs.

Of course, just for suggesting that, I’ll probably get a couple of death threats.

A day after seeing his Tennessee team pounded 65-47 at Vanderbilt, Cuonzo Martin spoke to a Knoxville booster club on Wednesday.  Asked for a bright spot from the previous night’s whooping, Martin delivered:


“When the bus starting rolling out of there.  That was the bright spot.”


For now, Martin is trying to build a program out of the spare parts left behind by a coach who brought the NCAA down on his own head.  But Martin’s not complaining.

“One day,” he said, “this team will be the last team standing.  I really feel that.  I don’t say that jokingly, I don’t say it, like, ‘Oh, man, give him another year on his contract.’  I say it because I truly believe it.”

Of course, a lot of coaches truly believe that when they take over a new job.

Looks like we could have dropped another coach’s name into our “patience” post from earlier today.  And this one’s smack dab in his very first season.

Tennessee’s Cuonzo Martin — like Darrin Horn at South Carolina and Mark Fox at Georgia — is trying to rebuild a program.  Like Horn and Fox he’s trying to do so with a schedule that features two games per year against Kentucky, Florida and Vanderbilt. 

Not easy.

Last night, Martin’s Vols got clubbed by cross-state rival Vandy 65-47.  It was the latest down in a series of up-and-down efforts from UT.  At home, they’ve knocked off Florida, UConn and battled valiantly against top-ranked Kentucky over the past three weeks.  On the road, they’re oh-for-the-season. 

Tennessee’s coach is asking for a little perspective:


“You have to be patient.  They are getting better and making progress.  I don’t get caught up in the final score.  We played a physical, experienced team tonight.”


Ya know how to get fans riled up?  Have a coach say after an 18-point loss that he doesn’t get caught up in the final score.

As was the case with Fox and Horn, Martin took over a program with a number of issues — few scorers, no true point guard, little experience, in Martin’s case.  All deserve time to fix the woes of their programs.

But if Martin is telling people they have to have patience midway through his first year — when his team was already picked to finish 11th in a 12-team conference — it further reveals just how little patience there is to be found around SEC programs these days.

After a hard fought win over Tennessee on Saturday, Kentucky’s John Calipari said the Vols are an NCAA Tournament-caliber team.  With his team’s defense improving and the recent addition of freshman hotshot Jarnell Stokes, Cuonzo Martin doesn’t disagree:


“Like I told our guys from Florida (an upset win) up until now, you say (we’re) one of the 65 or 68 teams, I would say, yes.  But you have to put a lot of work to cover some ground.  I would definitely say from teh time we started league play up until now, when you pick 65 or 33, 35 (at-large) teams, I would say, yes.”


Unfortunately, Martin’s team took some time to gel and to start believing in the coach’s defense-first mantra.  The Vols are just 8-9 overall with some pretty bad losses on the ol’ resume (Austin Peay at home, for example).

To reach the NCAA tourney, UT would likely need to upset Connecticut this week and then grab 11 SEC wins to reach the 20-win plateau.  Good defense or not, that seems like too much ground for Martin’s squad to make up.

When Justin Wilcox announced he was leaving Tennessee for Washington, the first name connected to UT’s open defensive coordinator position was that of Kevin Steele.  (And no, we don’t count Randy Shannon, because messageboards and Twitter connect him to every job in America that comes open.)

Steele is a Tennessee graduate and he has coached in Knoxville in the past.  Derek Dooley tried to hire him away from Clemson when he first arrived at UT in 2010, to no avail.

The two talked about the current opening in Knoxville last week, but it was believed Steele passed on the opportunity to return home.  He may have a different take on that now.

According to reports from Clemson websites — like TigerIllustrated.com, the Rivals site covering Clemson — Steele has been fired by Dabo Swinney.  This after Swinney initially said he would make no staff changes this offseason.

If the report is true, then Steele could join Sal Sunseri (Alabama), Buddy Green (Navy) and Pat Narduzzi (Michigan State) as candidates at UT.

Steele’s defenses ranked 20th, 19th and 71st (this year) during his Clemson tenure.  He joined the Tigers in 2009 after leaving Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama.

Earlier this morning we told you that Tennessee offensive line coach Harry Hiestand was pretty far along in talks with Notre Dame to become that’s school’s new O-line coach.  Now it’s being reported that Hiestand has finalized his move to South Bend.

According to Jimmy Hyams of WNML-AM/FM in Knoxville:


“UT OL coach Harry Hiestand takes a similar job at Notre Dame.  Vols now have 4 vacancies.”


None of this is good for Derek Dooley, of course.  The perception is that rats are jumping from the sinking ship he currently captains.  Hiestand is the fourth assistant this offseason to leave Tennessee for what amounts to a lateral move.  Another assistant simply retired.

The Volunteers’ recruiting class has already been affected by the turmoil.  Even worse for Vol fans, the turnover now could create a mess for Tennessee if Dooley fails to keep his job at the end of 2012.

A quick flashback — When Lane Kiffin arrived in Knoxville in 2009, he brought with him a so-called “super staff” of assistants who required high salaries and multi-year contracts.  When he left in January of 2010, he took only two of those aides with him to Southern Cal immediately — Ed Orgeron and his father, Monte Kiffin.

When the Volunteer administration set out to find a new coach, not only did they have to convince a new guy to take over a program that would suffer the attrition caused by two coaching changes in two years, but the new coach might also be stuck with many of Kiffin’s leftover assistants.  (Paying off Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee did not want to buy out multiple Kiffin aides, too.)

It turns out, Dooley was the only man who felt comfortable walking into the buzzsaw situation at Tennessee without knowing up front that he’d be able to build a full staff of his own people.  Eventually, Kiffin did come back and take a number of his coaches with him and only assistants Jim Chaney and Lance Thompson became holdovers.

Fast forward to UT’s current mess.  To land a quality staff for Dooley, the Vols will likely have to hand out some multi-year contracts.  Example: new running backs coach Jay Graham was already given a three-year deal to leave South Carolina.

If UT hires a solid staff with multi-year contracts and Dooley craps out next year, Tennessee will either have to buy out a lot of assistants or once again search for a new head coach who’ll be willing to step in and work with some other guy’s hires.

Top of the line candidates will want to have control of their coaching staff.

So if new AD Dave Hart okays multi-year deals in order to help Dooley land good assistants this time around, he’d better hope the third-year coach can show improvement in 2012.  Or else he may be stuck bringing in another Dooley-level hire next offseason.