Kiffin hires

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Gran Joining Vols’ Staff, Too

January 16th, 2009 1:18 pm ║ Posted By: MrSEC.com ║ Permalink ║ Tags: Auburn, Tennessee

According to ESPN.com’s Chris Low, former Auburn running backs coach and special teams coordinator Eddie Gran is joining the Tennessee staff.

Gran has met with Lane Kiffin on several occasions and has been rumored to be joining UT’s staff for a while.

Again, Gran has a reputation as a strong recruiter.

That, apparently, insures that last year’s running backs coach Stan Drayton will be on his way out of town… possibly to South Carolina.

Tennessee is still looking for a secondary coach and a receivers coach and one of those needs to be a minority.

Enter Frank Wilson, the former running backs coach and recruiting coordinator at Southern Miss.

Wilson was hired by Dan Mullen at Mississippi State back on December 30th. However, he was on Ed Orgeron’s staff at Ole Miss and Kiffin is rumored to be hot on his trail.

As long as Kiffin brings that big bag of cash he walks around with, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Wilson lured to Knoxville.

Is there a rule in NCAA you have to have a minority coach on staff? We get slammed for not hiring Turner yet Kiffin is getting no gruff it seems for coming to final two hires to get a minority coach.

[arnaldoabru 11]

Congrats to Tenn., Gran is a class act

[Frank 0]

Kiffin has tried to get a minority coach in Knoxville (i.e. Garner) but it just hasn't worked out. Although I believe that Lane will hire at least one black coach in the next 48 hours.

[sogaaufan 27]

You know, as I look at this staff Kiffin is putting together at Tenn, one thought came to mind. Outside of Gran, how good are these guys at player development? Orgeron got all the talent he needed at Ole Miss and look what he did with it. All you hear is how good a recruiter Lance is, but how great a COACH is he? It seems to me that getting recruits has never been an issue for Tennessee. Heck, if MNCs were won on signing day, Fulmer would still have a job. He always got highly rated classes, so I wonder how much more talent they could assemble there. It seems that they would be better off to go after one or two coaches who were "lights out" recruiters and then concentrate on guys who specialize in developing the talent. I don't see that as being a strength of this staff.

Right now, I see Tenn being what they have become over the last few years, a team full of five star underacheivers.

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You know, as I look at this staff Kiffin is putting together at Tenn, one thought came to mind. Outside of Gran, how good are these guys at player development? Orgeron got all the talent he needed at Ole Miss and look what he did with it. All you hear is how good a recruiter Lance is, but how great a COACH is he? It seems to me that getting recruits has never been an issue for Tennessee. Heck, if MNCs were won on signing day, Fulmer would still have a job. He always got highly rated classes, so I wonder how much more talent they could assemble there. It seems that they would be better off to go after one or two coaches who were "lights out" recruiters and then concentrate on guys who specialize in developing the talent. I don't see that as being a strength of this staff.

Right now, I see Tenn being what they have become over the last few years, a team full of five star underacheivers.

i agree completely.As I read it I thought the same . You can bring in as many stars as you want but cna you develop them is different. Its like they are in college basketball get a bunch of stars and just roll the ball out and hope the talent takes over.

[Tigermike 4,240]

Kiffen Comments..........

"It was imperative to not only find great recruiters but great recruiters that knew the conference," Kiffin said in a statement. "To be able to take South Carolina's recruiting coordinator, Mississippi State's recruiting coordinator, Alabama's best recruiter and Auburn's best recruiter over the past 10 years was a great accomplishment for us. Once again, I would like to thank (athletics director) Mike Hamilton, the athletic department and our donors for making this possible."

Just for the record, he didn't take Auburn's best recruiter. If memory serves me correctly the AU guy he is talking about was out of work. But in fairness to him, Eddie Gran was the only offensive coach I would have kept.

[Legionfield 0]

Kiffen Comments..........

"It was imperative to not only find great recruiters but great recruiters that knew the conference," Kiffin said in a statement. "To be able to take South Carolina's recruiting coordinator, Mississippi State's recruiting coordinator, Alabama's best recruiter and Auburn's best recruiter over the past 10 years was a great accomplishment for us. Once again, I would like to thank (athletics director) Mike Hamilton, the athletic department and our donors for making this possible."

Just for the record, he didn't take Auburn's best recruiter. If memory serves me correctly the AU guy he is talking about was out of work. But in fairness to him, Eddie Gran was the only offensive coach I would have kept.

Nor did he take Alabama's best recruiter. Saban is the best recruiter we have.......