Jeff Fisher in 2009
From ESPN, via Football Scoop, comes this news:
This morning ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg weighed in on this subject:“I’m told former Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher is a potential target for Vanderbilt. Fisher remains popular in Nashville, and new Vanderbilt athletic director Malcolm Turner wouldn’t hesitate to make a nontraditional hire.”
I want to be as assiduous as possible when analyzing this, so let me just say that this is the greatest thing that could happen in the history of the world.
It's no great secret that Vanderbilt football coach Derek Mason is on the chaise chaude, with the Commodores at a disappointing 2-5. Though one of the two wins was against then-ranked Missouri, the other was against Northern Illinois — and one of the five losses was against UNLV. Mason showed a considerable amount of passion in his post-game following the Mizzou win, and that's nice to see, but Vandy fans have grown accustomed to being in the mix for second- and third-tier bowls every year — and it's a longshot the 'Dores will be headed for such this season.
And sure, new athletic director Malcolm Turner could do the typical thing and hire one of a number of assistants from big programs (Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea, Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott, Ole Miss defensive coordinator and LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda were all mentioned by ESPN). It's a pattern Vandy followed in the past — Derek Mason was DC at Stanford before coming to West End, and James Franklin was an assistant before he moved to Vanderbilt so he could pump his résumé and take the Penn State job. Turner could also tap a head coach from a mid-major, like Tulane's riverboat gambler Willie Fritz or Navy's Ken Niumatalolo (who, famously, George Plaster all but insisted was getting the Vandy job when Franklin was hired). After all, this recent run of relative success began when Vandy hired Bobby Johnson away from Furman.
But if you do what you've always done, you get what you've always got: a trip to the Birmingham Bowl and a coach who is going to leave for somewhere else in three years. And that's why Turner should hire Fisher.
At 61, he's younger than you think. He spends a lot of time in the Midstate — he owns a big chunk of land and flips houses with his son when he's not out West fishing and being awesome on Twitter — so there's no pesky moving expenses for cost-conscious Vandy to shell out. He's almost certainly not going to bolt for another college program, though Fisher told Yahoo's Charlotte Wilder, in a wonderful interview, that he turned down an AAF job because he wants to coach in the NFL again.
And yes, he's heard the 7-9 and 8-8 jokes (if you @ him on Twitter with one, he'll fire back and it's usually pretty funny). And yes, he's tied with Dan Reeves for the most losses in NFL history. But you know what? He's also the 12th-winningest coach in NFL history (nobody ever mentions that).
At some point, Vanderbilt has to come to terms with who they are and where they fall in the hierarchy of the Southeastern Conference. Now, the 'Dores can simply resign to the fact that they'll constantly take flyers on youngish assistants without head-coaching experience or mid-major transplants, but that means resigning to the fact that either the coach won't be able to compete or he will be able to but will inevitably be hired away in three or four years.
Or, Malcolm Turner can hire a grizzled old hand like Fisher who still has the fire for coaching. North Carolina hired Mack Brown (a good Tennessee boy whose brother Watson once trod the sidelines at West End and is the losingest coach in college football history — synergy!), Frank Solich has been at Ohio more than twice as long as he was at Nebraska. Herm Edwards is down at Arizona State, and Les Miles is loving life at Kansas (as much as one can love life at Kansas). David Cutcliffe is at Duke. Et cetera and so on.
These are exactly the programs Vanderbilt should emulate. Middling Power Five programs, particularly those with exacting academic standards (like the aforementioned Duke and UNC) should be the comparables for Vanderbilt, and if nothing else, hiring Fisher will get people talking about Vandy football instead of groaning about it and wondering when baseball season starts.
Turner's already shown he's willing to go down an unconventional path in his coaching searches — bringing on Jerry Stackhouse to lead the men's hoops team wasn't exactly the kind of thing one expects from Vandy — and maybe hiring Fisher is his next swerve. Plus, you can't go 7-9 in a 12-game season.
