KNOXVILLE - There appears to be enough football left on Tennessee's schedule for fifth-year coach Butch Jones to have a chance, however slim, to save his job.
But if a coaching search is coming in Knoxville, it will arrive with the university's athletic department on firmer footing than it was five years ago when Derek Dooley was fired with a game remaining in the 2012 season.
Tennessee owed Dooley a guaranteed $5 million at a time when the athletic department had just posted a $4 million deficit for the 2011-12 fiscal year. Tennessee also owed Dooley's offensive coordinator, Jim Chaney, a guaranteed $600,000 and was responsible for paying any difference in salary for the rest of the assistants in their next jobs.
At that time, the university had been receiving $6 million a year from the athletic department. Jimmy Cheek, the school's chancellor at the time, announced two days after Dooley's firing that the annual $6 million contribution would be reinvested in the athletic department over the next three years, presumably to help pay Dooley's buyout.
Tennessee head coach Butch Jones prepares to lead his players onto the field against South Carolina at Neyland Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 14, in Knoxville, Tenn.Jones succeeded Dooley and is 33-24 at Tennessee. He has led the Vols to three straight bowl wins but has yet to win the SEC East.
Tennessee lost a 15-9 heartbreaker to South Carolina on Saturday at Neyland Stadium. The Volunteers (3-3, 0-3 Southeastern Conference) play at top-ranked Alabama on Saturday with Jones' job security becoming a hot topic.
Jones' contract runs through the 2020 season. A copy of it shows he would be owed $2.5 million for each year remaining on his deal if fired. The figure owed to Jones by Tennessee would have been about $8.4 million if he had been fired Sunday.
However, unlike with Dooley, if Jones were to get another coaching job elsewhere, Tennessee's financial obligation to him would be decreased "dollar-for-dollar" by his new income, according to his contract.
Former athletic director Dave Hart, who fired Dooley and hired Jones, is widely credited for helping correct the athletic department's financial woes. John Currie, who replaced Hart this year, is known as a skilled fundraiser.
"Two hallmarks of Tennessee Athletics will be fiscal responsibility and transparency," Currie wrote in a July letter posted to utsports.com outlining the department's 2018 budget.
If Currie decides the football program needs a change, it will be a new venture for him. Currie, who began his job at Tennessee on April 1, never hired or fired a football coach during more than eight years of work as the athletic director at Kansas State. Coaching legend Bill Snyder began his second tenure with the Wildcats several months before Currie was hired in 2009. Snyder, 78, is still the coach.
Currie has not publicly indicated his appetite to make a coaching change, but attendance is likely to become a factor in any decisions the university administration makes regarding Jones' future. An announced crowd of 98,104 attended the South Carolina game. Neyland Stadium's capacity is 102,455.
The next home game is Nov. 4 against Southern Mississippi.
Football ticket sales account for 21.7 percent of the athletic department's $134 million budget, according to an overview of the 2017-18 budget. Those tickets are the department's second-largest source of income behind SEC/NCAA distributions, a category that includes money from television-rights deals and comprises 29.9 percent of the department's budget. Gifts to the Tennessee Fund are the third-largest category at 21.2 percent
Outside of football, Currie has hired his share of coaches. Shortly after taking the Tennessee job, he parted ways with the men's tennis coach and the baseball coach and hired replacements.
When former Kansas State men's basketball coach Frank Martin left for South Carolina after the 2012 season, Currie announced the hiring of Bruce Weber within a week. Weber had been let go by Illinois several weeks before.
If Tennessee were to jettison Jones before the season's end, almost certainly a current staff member would be named interim head coach for the balance of the schedule.
Typically, active head coaches are reluctant to discuss other job possibilities during the regular season. When Tennessee hired Jones, the decision was announced six days after his Cincinnati team's final regular-season game and nearly three weeks after Dooley was fired with one game left in the Vols' 2012 season.
Tennessee unsuccessfully pursued a handful of candidates before offering Jones the position.
The Vols have lost 10 straight games in their rivalry series with Alabama. If they lose this week, they will have to close the regular season with consecutive wins against Kentucky, Southern Miss, Missouri, LSU and Vanderbilt to match the 8-4 regular-season records they posted in 2015 and 2016.
Contact David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com.
