Is Derek Dooley running a football program, or a wannabe Fortune 500 company?

On Sunday afternoon, in his pre-spring practice press conference, Tennessee head football coach Derek Dooley said he wanted to emphasize his organization’s “core values.”

"One is just demonstrating winning edge values which was a big emphasis for us--kind of redefining our core values: what they stand for, things like discipline, toughness, effort and teamwork. Also secondly, demonstrating individual investment in being the best player and best team we can be. I was really proud of this football team over the last eight weeks. Everybody on the team--everybody on the team--showed significant opportunity in all those areas."

I’m shocked he didn’t encourage his staff and team to think outside of the box. You know… Identify those areas of low hanging fruit and focus on the key principles of good leadership and strong forward thinking.

Has Derek Dooley been reading winter workout reports or Malcolm Baldrige talking points?

Does he want to win football games or does he want to win points for critical aspects of management that contribute to performance excellence?

I’m not going to embed the nearly 30 minute long video because if you’re a football fan, it will make you sick to your stomach.

For God’s sake, he’s decided to develop an organizational chart. Not a depth chart, mind you. An organizational chart.

When Dooley was hired, I thought it was one of the best steps that the Tennessee football program could have made. The program made a name for itself from General Robert Neyland through Philip Fulmer as team that won by literally knocking the slobber out of opponents. Dooley is an alleged Nick Saban disciple and was widely thought to be a guy who could restore the toughness and discipline that Tennessee football seemed to had lost.

He’s a good guy, from good football genes. He’s supposed to have learned from the best and has a reputation as one of the high character guys in the coaching fraternity. He was supposed to take Tennessee to the next level.

You ain’t getting there with organization charts and meetings that talk about core values. This is football. It’s not death by PowerPoint©.

You don’t contend for the Southeastern Conference and National Championships by winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. When you put crystal hardware in the trophy case, then you can talk about your core values and how far outside the box you’re thinking.

But if you go 11-14 in your first two years as a head coach and celebrate wins against Vanderbilt as if you’d beaten someone like… Alabama… You need to start thinking about how many men you can afford to put in the box.

The Third Saturday in October Rivalry has been one of the SEC’s greatest. It’s one of those storied series that defines the conference and makes it premier broadcast on CBS one of the turn-to games of Saturday afternoons. In the SEC, Tennessee is second only to Alabama in conference championships and national championships. In fact, no team in the country has more wins against Alabama than Tennessee does. At seven games, no team in the country has beaten Alabama more times in a streak than Tennessee has.

Alabama fans have a special place in their colon for Tennessee, but at the same time we realize how important it is for Tennessee football to be Tennessee Football.

Tennessee as the 2012 winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for College Football might as well be a homecoming opponent for Mrs. State.

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Tennessee football is officially a dumpster fire

Late Sunday, Tennessee defensive coordinator defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox and linebackers coach Peter Sirmon told Volunteers head coach Derek Dooley that they were leaving Knoxville to take the same positions with the University of Washington.

The departure of Wilcox and Sirmon make the third and fourth assistant coaches to leave the program.

In the same report, Volquest.com’s John Brice explains that at least part of the reason why coaches are bolting from the program is that Athletic Director Dave Hart will not commit to multi-year contracts for the coaching staff.

Reading between those lines: Hart has little confidence in the current coaching staff and is likely to make a change should things not turn around dramatically on the field next season.

Last week, news surfaced that Dooley would refuse to allow freshman wide receiver DeAnthony Arnett’s request for a transfer if he sought to enroll at a BCS conference school in Michigan. Central Michigan is Ok. Western Michigan is Ok. Big Blue and Sparty are not. While there is reason to believe that we’re not hearing the whole story on the Arnett issue, it’s still a major PR blunder, especially in the eyes of recruits who sign national letters of intent just four weeks from now.

The conflagration grew even more serious when the program lost two recruits over the weekend, and comments from both prospects highlight an alarming level of turmoil in the Dooley regime.

Each of these stories have a pushback line associated with them. Wilcox and Sirmon are both west coast guys and were roommates at Oregon in the 1990’s. So their leaving for a Pac-12 job is no big deal. Multi-year assistant coaching contracts are rare and usually reserved for the best of the best, and UT hasn’t even been good the last two years. The whole story isn’t out about Arnett (this is likely true), and the two recruits that left were poor fits for the program. If any one of these sparks happened on their own, none of them would likely be a big deal. But put them all together and it looks like the Tennessee Volunteer football program is an all-out, two-alarm dumpster fire.

It’s not something we didn’t see coming, though.

Program insiders have whispered all season long that this thing was going to blow sooner rather than later.

Dooley is expected to hold a meeting with the media this morning. It is anybody’s guess what the topics will be, but if it doesn’t include an inane metaphor about putting out fires with bamboo it’ll be a spectacular fail.

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Troubling news from Knoxville

Partisan Tennessee Radio Talk Show Host Tony Basilio posted a troubling report regarding the state of the Volunteer football program last night (it’s hard to find the screed, but scroll down). Basilio is a 1990 graduate of the university and hosts a daily 11:00 – 1:00 broadcast covering Tennessee athletics on WVLZ-AM 1180.

He claims to have been told by several program insiders that the program has been melting down from the inside out all season long, and that there are deep divisions among both the team and the staff.

The worst of it is that head coach Derek Dooley, upon hearing reports of some of the behavior, shrugged it off and took no action.

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I’ve spent several hours on the phone compiling a pretty good picture of what’s going on inside the football program at this point in time. What I’ve been granted [is] an insider’s glance to a program that is wrought with dissension. I’m talking player against player, coach against coach and player against training staff. This is more than just typical rivalries over offense versus defense in the coaching ranks or even personality conflicts. This goes much deeper. On the player side it’s not just a classic division over age, playing time or side of the football. UT football is a serious mess on and off the field.

One longtime member of the athletic department with inner knowledge of the football program told me the following on Monday evening. ‘I don’t know where to start. There are so many issues over here that need addressing besides talent on the football field. Dooley has his hands full. I’ve never seen a level of turmoil around anything the way it is here right now.’

Many were wondering what the outgoing seniors were talking about when they were mentioning younger guys concerned with their own agendas. Well, two guys they were definitely referring to are Tyler Bray and Da Rick Rogers.

Try this on for size: During the week of the Vandy game, Bray was asked in front of several upperclassmen by a member of the training staff if he completed a cursory workout exercise to which Bray shot back in the earshot of all ‘No. Not really. And I’m not going to do it. Why should I? Besides we’re only going to a shitty bowl game anyway.’ Sources tell me that the upperclassmen who heard this exchange were so incensed that they went to Derek Dooley who shrugged it off and did nothing about it. Another source told me that ‘Dooley shrugs several things off including the way Rogers back talks to everybody he possibly can.’

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First of all, there is no consensus among Tennessee fans whether Basilio has any credibility as a solid source of information. He’s been described by some as a shameless hack who’ll do or say anything for ratings and pageviews. But he’s been described by others as someone who calls it like he sees it, whether Vol fans like what they hear and read or not. Take the information for what it’s worth.

Typically however, stories like this are never totally true or totally false. Something is clearly going wrong in Knoxville. Whether you believe it’s an all out dumpster fire or a handbags at five paces kerfuffle among divas, you have to suspect that there’s a conflict.

A very young, very inexperienced football roster gets a lot of blame for Tennessee’s disappointing 5-7 season. Matters seem to have come to a boil following the disastrous and embarrassing 10-7 loss to Kentucky. Tennessee hadn’t lost to Kentucky since 1984. That loss’ impact has apparently magnified divisions inside the program at the same time that it has eroded public support for Dooley.

There’s more than just the word of a radio personality serving as evidence of discord. During his post-game interview with the media after Saturday’s loss, senior tailback Tauren Poole had this to say:

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“… no one wanted to be out there. We're all trying to encourage people because people were out of it. When it's like that, you're not going to be able to execute, I don't care where you're at.

“It's an embarrassment. It's really embarrassing to say the least. It sucks for this football team. We can't change anything."

“I told them last week, when this is your last, you want it. You want it all. You want to go for it all. You want to play for it all, you want to play every down like it's your last. When you've got another year, you're not going to play like that. It's obvious that that's what happened today. I'm not blaming anybody. I would never do that to this football team. It looked like no one wanted to be out there, no one wanted to play football."

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Elsewhere in that interview, the questioner notes that senior linebacker Austin Johnson had  said that he felt some players were playing for their own stats Saturday rather than the team, and Poole agreed with that assessment. When you have outgoing seniors publicly stating that they felt underclassmen aren’t doing enough to help the team, you have a serious leadership problem on your squad.

Adding fuel to the fire: VolQuest.com reported that veteran WR coach Charlie Baggett was leaving the staff, in what reports termed “retirement.” Baggett was one of Dooley’s star hires and no one doubted his coaching credentials. Baggett’s separation from the Vol staff—at age 57—doesn’t sound like a dismissal.

Most college football fans in the southeast genuinely like Derek Dooley. But the same could be said of Mike Shula during his tenure at Alabama from 2003 – 2006. During Shula’s tenure, there were numerous reports of team and staff dissension. Some were substantiated, others were not, but there were clear signals that the head coach was losing control of the program.

Most coaches in the SEC fraternity genuinely like and respect Dooley, but again… the same could be said of Shula. Likeability and good character are important in a good football coach, but so is the ability to seize control of the program, clear the barrel of the bad apples, and show everyone that he is the head MFIC.

Mike Shula wasn’t good at that, and if the troubling reports from Knoxville are reasonably accurate, maybe Derek Dooley isn’t, either.

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