- Mark SchlabachESPN Senior Writer
Florida, Ole Miss and Tennessee hired new ones.
Or so we believed.
The coaching carousel is supposed to offer a silver lining after a forgettable season, with the introduction of a new coach and the promise of a new beginning meant to assuage disappointed fan bases.
EDITOR'S PICKS
- Florida swings for the fences, ends up with safe pick in Dan MullenFlorida didn't land Chip Kelly or Scott Frost. Can new coach Dan Mullen, a familiar face who has done more with less at Mississippi State, return the Gators to the heights they aspire to reach?
- Heated rivalries, coaching chaos and more: The CFB weekend that had it allTake one part entertaining Egg Bowl, one part high-stakes Iron Bowl, add in a healthy dose of coaching chaos and you have yourself an unforgettable Thanksgiving weekend of college football. The only problem was finding time to watch it all.
- Sources: Amid protests, Vols won't hire SchianoAfter public outcry and campus protests -- including government officials protesting on Twitter -- Tennessee will no longer hire Greg Schiano as the Volunteers' next football coach, sources tell ESPN's Chris Low.
Tennessee managed to use the opportunity to enrage its already disgruntled fan base. On what might have been the craziest day in the history of the coaching carousel, the Volunteers, who recently completed their first winless SEC campaign in school history, somehow fired their new coach before he was even hired.
Two weeks after the Volunteers fired Butch Jones, they added even more fuel to the dumpster fire he left behind. After missing out on Mississippi State's Dan Mullen, who was introduced as Florida's new coach on Sunday, the Volunteers signed a memorandum of understanding to hire Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano. During Schiano's last stint as a college head coach, he led Rutgers, one of the worst programs in the nation, to six winning seasons from 2001 to '11. He had a miserable two-year stint as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and returned to the college game in 2016 to join Urban Meyer's staff.
When word leaked that the Volunteers were going to hire Schiano on Sunday, Tennessee fans launched a social media campaign to try to stop it. Criticizing a coaching hire isn't anything new, but Tennessee fans went nuclear. About 100 people gathered on the UT campus to protest the hiring, with some of them citing Schiano's alleged connection to the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State. Schiano, who worked as Penn State's defensive backs coach from 1991 to '95, denied knowing that Sandusky, the Nittany Lions' longtime defensive coordinator, was sexually abusing children.
