Ask a Tennessee fan: Why the hell have the Vols always wanted Jon Gruden so badly?

I love a good GRUMOR as much as the next guy. For the uninitiated, that’s basically any shred of information that even tangentially connects the Vols to former Tampa Bay Bucs coach Jon Gruden.

Jon Gruden, a noted Super Bowl champion, has long been Tennessee’s fever dream of a head coach. But the question I have about the years-long Gruden saga is: why him?

Tennessee’s very public courting of Gruden seems like chasing forbidden fruit. This carrot at the end of the stick will bring the program back to relevance. But when you look into it just a touch deeper than the obvious, Tennessee’s problem is the rest of the SEC’s problem.

Let’s be clear. This is the tangible link between Jon Gruden and Tennessee:

He was also a graduate assistant there 30 years and 11 jobs ago.

And at a press conference after Butch Jones’ firing, athletic director John Currie was specifically asked about Gruden, because of course he was.

(Currie declined to talk about specific candidates.)

The end of his tenure in Tampa back in 2008 became the catalyst for all the GRUMORS, since that season was Phillip Fulmer’s last in charge as well. Tennessee hired Lane Kiffin, who moonlighted for almost a year before leaving, then had three years of terrible football under Derek Dooley.

There’s an argument that Gruden won that title with Tony Dungy’s players, but I digress. Gruden has hoisted a Lombardi Trophy, and it is an achievement that deserves kudos.

Terry Lambert, the editor of SB Nation’s Tennessee blog, Rocky Top Talk (which maintains an extensive timeline of years and years of GRUMORS), gave me some interesting details from inside the Vols’ fan base.

“Alabama, Tennessee’s biggest rival, returned to powerhouse status with one single home run hire,” Lambert told me. “Tennessee has gotten it wrong three straight times. Fans are craving that ‘Saban moment’ hire. A lot of fans believe Jon Gruden is Tennessee’s Saban.

“The Gruden-UT connections are obvious. Fans know that Tennessee has the money and boosters to make it happen. They just want to see the school swing for the fences, for once.”

That’s a symptom of the Alabama disease infecting most of the SEC. It was particularly poignant at LSU, which basically fired Les Miles because he couldn’t get over the Alabama hump. It led Florida and Georgia to hire former Saban assistants as head coaches. The Gators have done it twice, with disastrous results each time. The Bulldogs apparently landed the right one in Kirby Smart.

“Yes,” Lambert said. “Look, he’s never [been a head coach] in college. He’s never recruited. He’s been out of the coaching game for a decade. I get all of that.

“But does anyone really think that Jon Gruden would struggle to pull talent to Knoxville? I think he’d kill it in that area. I’d guess he’d assemble a pretty potent staff, too. When you stack all of these candidates up, nobody really moves the needle for me like Gruden does.”

That’s what Gruden’s actually said, multiple times.

“Too many rules, man. I mean I like to work. I don’t like to be working 15 hours a week with players. The recruiting, Facebook, texting, e-mails – all that stuff. Yeah, I’d probably have you in real deep, deep trouble if I was your college coach.”

Look, I get that as a head coach you aren’t tasked with doing as much recruiting as your assistants, but this is a big issue, if sincere. Talent isn’t as readily available in the state as it is elsewhere in the conference. It is basically the SEC’s Nebraska.

And Jones’ improved recruiting is already slipping. Five-star OT Cade Mays, who happens to be a Knoxville native and UT legacy, decommitted on Tuesday.

He’s been publicly teasing them, for one thing, showing up at a game (while in the area for work anyway) and taking selfies with former players.

Reddit came in hot with a new example of the kind of “Gruden real estate” rumor that’s been an internet staple for years:

Friend’s Uncle is a real estate agent who is tight with the agent the Gruden’s use. They’ve been looking for a while for area home bc Cindy knows her parents are getting older, and she wants somewhere to go to be close to them. Yes they also own Jeff County land. There is some intel that properties they looked at are too expensive for a college JR to live in, and an offer may be in the works.

Alums like Paul Finebaum and Albert Haynesworth also got the rumor mills churning.

Amid all the chatter, betting markets started pointing Gruden’s way as well.

At the time of this writing, there were no less than six Jon Gruden threads on the first page of Tennessee’s 247Sports forums. The headings include:

Have the GRUMORS reached such a fever pitch in a success-starved fan base that any big name will do at this point?

“Both Butch and Dooley were reportedly the fourth or fifth option at the time,” Lambert said. “Tennessee got turned down by the likes of Charlie Strong, Kyle Wittingham, Troy Calhoun, and David Cutcliffe. That shouldn’t be the case this time around.”

This is kinda like what happens when a dog catches its tail.

“All of this kind of feels like the Jim Harbaugh situation with Michigan to me. There seems to be a segment of the media saying that Gruden would never even consider Tennessee, yet the fans have stayed firm in their belief all along,” Lambert said. “If it happens, Vol Twitter will be absolutely unbearable for anyone that isn’t a Tennessee fan.

“If people thought the hype was bad in 2015 and 2016, just wait to see what it looks like with Gruden running the show.”