A report out of Knoxville on Saturday night indicates that new Tennessee athletic director Phillip Fulmer is wasting no time trying to put sanity back into the school’s search for a new football coach.
Grant Ramey, of 247Sports, is saying Fulmer has reached out to Les Miles, the former coach at LSU about the Tennessee job.
Apparently, Fulmer has contacted former Vol national champion quarterback Tee Martin, who has said he would be willing to come back to Knoxville as offensive coordinator/associate head coach.
If true, this is the most positive news for Tennessee’s search since Butch Jones was fired on Nov. 12, a day after ehe Vols were thumped 50-17 at Missouri.
It has been a strange seven-day stretch for the university that ended Friday with AD John Currie being suspended with pay and Fulmer inserted into that all-important position.
Currie had botched the entire process and was called back from a trip to Los Angeles in which he may or may not have come close to getting an agreement with Washington State coach Mike Leach to become Tennessee’s new head coach.
The next morning Currie was called on the carpet by Beverly Davenport, the university chancellor, and promptly bumped out of the job. The school is now studying whether it can fire Curie with cause.
Miles, 64, was fired by LSU last year and previously expressed an interest earlier this month about the Tennessee job, among others.
Miles has a 141-55 record in 16 seasons at LSU and Oklahoma State, including two SEC titles and the 2007 BCS national championship with the Tigers. Four years after winning the 2007 national title, Miles had the Tigers back in the title game, losing to SEC rival Alabama.
He currently works as a college football analyst at Fox Sports.
Martin, the offensive coordinator at Southern Cal, helped the Trojans beat Stanford on Friday for the Pac-12 championship.
Currie never tried to contact Martin, but Fulmer within his first two days on the job.
Martin, who guided Tennessee to the 1998 title one year after Peyton Manning finished a brilliant career with the Vols and started a hall of fame career with the Indianapolis Colts.
The personable and highly respected Martin broke into coaching at New Mexico State and had two years at Kentucky. He has been at USC since, starting as a wide receivers coach on in 2012-13 on Lane Kiffin’s staff.
As the offensive coordinator, the Trojans have averaged almost 35 points per game the past two seasons.
Ironically, Martin turned down Jones’ attempt to bring him back to Tennessee in 2012. Martin’s son, Amari Rogers, is now a freshman at Clemson.
Other publications across the country have picked up Ramey’s report.
(Contact Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and on Twitter @larryfleming44)