KNOXVILLE - Ask Derek Dooley about expectations for his first University of Tennessee football team, and you won't get a response about wins and losses.
The Volunteers' new head coach will talk about intangibles. He'll talk about pride. He'll talk about character on and off the field. He'll talk about improvement throughout the season.
Dooley agrees with the notion that he'll ultimately be judged by wins and losses. Although this is a rebuilding season, it still is Tennessee.
Nevertheless, the son of legendary Georgia coach Vince Dooley doesn't talk about wins and losses. Others will, though.
The Times Free Press spoke with several national media members last week about expectations on the field for Dooley's first Vols.
Some, such as Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel, have predicted a 4-8 season. Others, such as Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel, said 7-5 was a reasonable expectation.
"If they're 3-1 in the nonconference and 4-4 in the SEC, I think they're very happy," said Wetzel, also an award-winning author and screenwriter. "If they're 4-4 in the SEC, that's really, really good."
Most see the Vols finishing 6-6 or 5-7.
"I think it's good at 6-6 and not so good at 5-7," said Bruce Feldman, an ESPN The Magazine senior writer and author of multiple college football books. "I think they have enough talent where there's no reason to think they would go 4-8, and I don't see them going 9-3.
"It's a whole new offensive line. I don't see Matt Simms playing much better than Jonathan Crompton last year. You don't have Eric Berry. You don't have Dan Williams. You don't hardly have any defensive tackles. I don't know how good you can be on defense in the SEC with maybe one legitimate SEC defensive tackle and then a couple of third-team guys in there. I'm just not seeing it.
"I'm tempted to say six wins, because they have some good players. If I was Vegas and the over/under 5.5, I'd probably go over. If the over/under was 6, I'd probably go under."
CBSSports.com national columnist Gregg Doyel said 6-6 "would be an improvement" for Dooley, who had a 17-21 record in three seasons at Louisiana Tech.
Doyel, who for the sake of disclosure noted he is a Florida graduate, said he didn't understand UT's decision to hire Dooley for several reasons.
"In some ways it makes sense, because Tennessee was such a mess under Lane Kiffin," Doyel said. "He had no respect for the NCAA rules and common courtesy. From all accounts, Derek Dooley is a good man and will definitely follow the rules, so it could be that Derek Dooley is kind of their transition coach. He's a guy who will build the right way. Lane Kiffin in one year just left behind cavity after cavity. Maybe Derek Dooley's job is to come in there and floss and brush teeth for three years, and then a real coach will come in after that.
"Dooley can prove me and anybody else who thinks this way wrong down the stretch, but there's not a darn thing on his resume that says he deserves this job aside from his last name being Dooley. And that doesn't mean he deserves the job, it just means he got the job.
"Shula, Dooley, Kiffin. That, to me, is the part that kills me. Of all the schools in country to hire a silver-spoon coach who is pretty much famous for one reason only - because his dad was really good - for Tennessee to do it a second time in a row is baffling."
When asked specifically to predict UT's record this season, Doyel said "probably five or six wins."
"In three years at Louisiana Tech, he was below .500 twice, and his worst team was his last one," Doyel said. "To think he's going to step into the SEC and finish even .500 ... I don't know. I guess 6-6 is a possibility if they can play Vanderbilt twice."
Bomani Jones, a North Carolinian who hosts "The Morning Jones" on Hardcore Sports Radio and Sirius/XM satellite radio, as well as writing for ESPN.com's Page 2 and frequently appearing on ESPN's "Outside the Lines," guessed the Vols would finish "somewhere around .500."
"I don't expect too much," Jones said. "Last year we saw a Tennessee team that clearly had talent, but we didn't realize how much talent until we saw the draft. Now the talent seems to be gone. I don't know their depth chart fantastically, but I can name some guys on just about every SEC roster that really jump out at me. If you were to ask me to do that now for Tennessee, I couldn't do that. I can do that for every roster in the SEC except Vanderbilt and Mississippi State, but they don't count. This is Tennessee we're talking about here.
"My expectation for them would be somewhere around .500. After some of those nonconference games and Kentucky and Vanderbilt - who they basically haven't lost to in my entire life - I don't know. I see something close to .500."
Wetzel covered Boise State's 45-35 win over Louisiana Tech last season and left impressed with Dooley, who also guided Tech to a 24-16 loss at SEC power LSU.
"In the WAC, when Boise gets up on you, you have no chance. They're 55-1 in the WAC," Wetzel said. "But Louisiana Tech just kept fighting back. The way they played was impressive. I wrote about Boise that night, but I just remember being really impressed with how well Louisiana Tech played. I thought that Louisiana Tech team was going to be really good in the coming years, and I remember thinking, 'When Boise comes back here in two years, they could definitely lose.'
"Until you get that signature season, a lot of times those mid-major coaches aren't deemed hot coaches. But if you were really paying attention that night, I think you had to say to yourself, 'This [Dooley] guy is really good.' And I was impressed that Tennessee saw that. I think they thought, 'This guy isn't there yet, but he's going to be a good SEC football coach, and we might as well grab him.'
"I think one more year with Dooley and Louisiana Tech is making a big move. I think they'd get to a bowl game, and everybody would be saying, 'This guy is the hot coach.' I just think Tennessee hired him ahead of time, which was fine."
Tim Couch, the former Kentucky quarterback and No. 1 overall NFL draft pick who now works as a Fox Sports analyst, said he thought the Vols would win "six or seven games."
"I think the SEC East is really wide open this year ... and I certainly think Tennessee can do some things if Matt Simms and some of those young guys play well," said Couch, who admitted he has followed the Vols since childhood and nearly signed with them in high school. "If they get some young guys stepping in there in some of those big spots, I think they can make a little noise."
But Couch also noted one of UT's biggest perceived problems: breaking in five new starters on the offensive line. Couch faced a similar situation his junior season at Kentucky, and he said that was one of the biggest reasons he bolted to the NFL one year early.
"It's certainly challenging," he said. "I didn't want to break in a whole new offensive line as a senior, and that's something Simms is going to have to go through; he has no choice. And that's really tough, when you combine a young quarterback with a young line."
Feldman said the nightmare scenario for UT and men's athletic director Mike Hamilton would be losing to some of the SEC's traditionally weaker programs.
"You don't want to see the ticker showing 'Ole Miss 48, Tennessee 13,' and you really don't want the ticker showing, 'Kentucky 41, Tennessee 20,'" Feldman said. "That would look bad. I think [Dooley] needs to win those Kentucky and Vandy types of games. I think they've got to win two of these three games - South Carolina, Kentucky and Ole Miss. To me, those are toss-up games. If they go 6-6 and don't get blown out in most of those losses, I think people would say, 'That's pretty good.' I don't think they necessarily need to be competitive with the top half of the league, but I think they need to somehow get six wins.
"I think if they go 5-7, people are going to look at it and say, 'We missed the postseason twice in three years. Mike Hamilton, what have you done to us?'"
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