So University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley wants a bigger staff, does he?
As if more coaches won’t just make the Volunteers better on the field, but better citizens off it. As if his nine position coaches and 15 other support staffers directly related to football – everyone from the strength and conditioning coach to graduate assistants for offense and defense to quality-control interns to Condredge Holloway (assistant athletic director for player relations) and Andre Lott (Vols for Life coordinator) – aren’t enough.
Dooley may accurately argue – as he did during an interview with ESPN at the Southeastern Conference’s spring meetings Tuesday: “If you look at scholarships, we’re 8.5 [players] to 1 [coach]. If you look at full squads, it’s 10.5 to 1. There’s not one sport in the country that has a higher ratio than football.”
Then again, as Mark Twain once said, there are lies, (darn) lies and statistics. Dooley’s numbers can also look like this: Throw in the other 15 staffers and you’ve got a ratio of roughly 4 to 1 for full squads.
If a coach, intern or Condredge Holloway can’t keep up with the behavior of four young men who theoretically need the UT program more than it needs them, Dooley either is recruiting the wrong kind of kid or the whole country’s headed for disaster a decade down the road.