Tennessee Vols Are In A Very Strange Position With Butch Jones

Every week a new publication says Tennessee Vols head coach Butch Jones is on the hot seat, but can the Volunteers really fire him?

If you pay attention to what college football media says, then Tennessee Vols head coach Butch Jones is on the hot seat in 2017.

But just how hot Jones’ seat is, however, isn’t clear to anyone at this point.

Jones is coming off back to back nine win seasons at Tennessee. This is the best stretch of Tennessee football since before 2005 (UT hasn’t had three straight winning seasons since before the 2005 season).

So why do folks want Jones fired?

Well Tennessee massively under performed last season. Sure, they beat Florida and Georgia, but they lost to a really bad South Carolina team off a bye and they lost to Vanderbilt.

The loss to Vanderbilt was Jones’ second in his four seasons on Rocky Top.

I understand why a lot of folks want Jones gone. He’s almost 50 years old and so far we haven’t seen anything that suggests he will ever be an elite coach. At 50 years old, you typically aren’t still figuring out who you are as a head coach, and that seems to be the case with Jones.

And look, I know there aren’t many elite head coaches out there. The list pretty much stops after Nick Saban and Urban Meyer (and maybe Jim Harbaugh — but that’s debatable).

But Jones isn’t even among the near elite head coaches, names like Jimbo Fisher and Dabo Swinney.

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The feeling is that while Jones has done a pretty decent job at Tennessee — certainly better than his two predecessors — he still isn’t the level of coach the Vols deserve. And he might never be.

But firing Jones if he wins eight or nine games this season probably isn’t the right move either.

That’s why the Vols are in a bad spot.

First off, it’s a bad look to fire a guy after four winning seasons when it’s been over a decade since the program has achieved that feat. That’s going to turn off a lot of potential head coaches (even though it shouldn’t).

And then if you do fire Jones, where do you go from there?

There’s no guarantee who you’re going to get to replace him. The Vols could end up in an even worse spot than before.

The obvious choice would be former Oregon Ducks head coach Chip Kelly. I think he has what it takes to be among the elite head coaches in college football. But landing him wouldn’t be easy and you’d want to make absolutely sure he was coming before you fired Jones. And again, that’s not exactly a good look, or fair to Jones.

Unfortunately, for now, it looks like Vol fans can only hope for two outcomes: Jones finally figuring it out and becoming a Swinney/Fisher, or Tennessee suffers a losing season in 2017 and the choice to fire him is easy.

I’m not a fan of that second option. There’s nothing in me that wants to see the Vols lose games.

But as of right now, those are the only two likely scenarios for Tennessee. Because I don’t think there’s any way Jones gets fired after a fourth consecutive winning season.

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