Tennessee ponders if Butch Jones is right coaching fit

• Wounded Volunteers could find their right fit in Cincinnati's Butch Jones.
• Jones has kept Central Michigan and Cincinnati afloat after coaching changes.
• Jones' name was also tied to the Colorado coaching search.

As Tennessee's search for a football coach devolved into a scavenger hunt, Dave Hart grabbed this clue:

He has proven he can pick up right where Brian Kelly left off.

With that, Hart turned his attention to Cincinnati and the job Butch Jones has done in the three seasons since Kelly left for Notre Dame.

Apparently, that's what Vol Ball has come to. If Jones officially is announced as Tennessee's coach as expected, we will find out if he can cut it without the benefit of having Kelly first lay a foundation for success.

Maybe it would be a good hire. Look, it's got to be better than the last two. Doesn't it? Doesn't it?

I don't know. Personally, I'd prefer to have someone who has proven he can build — or perhaps rebuild — a program instead of just maintaining one.

That's the dig on Jones. In 2007, he succeeded Kelly at Central Michigan and went 27-10 over the next three seasons. When Kelly left Cincinnati for his dream job at Notre Dame, Jones stepped in and has gone 23-14 over the last three years, including 10-3 and 9-3 records in the last two seasons.

In the parlance of Bill Parcells, we know Jones can cook dinner. We just don't know if he can buy the groceries.

Any coaching hire is a leap of faith but this one is more so than most. There's an undeniable sense of desperation here. UT got turned down twice on Wednesday (by Mike Gundy and Charlie Strong) and had a third candidate (Larry Fedora) tell his team on Thursday that he was staying put.

Then Jones withdrew his name from consideration for the vacancy at Colorado, perhaps because he had been made aware of Volunteers' interest. Congratulations, Tennessee. You have a more appealing coaching job than Colorado, where the Buffaloes have gone 25-61 over the last seven years.

If it indeed is Jones, at least the Volunteers hired someone that has proven he can beat Vanderbilt. Jones' 2011 Cincinnati team topped the Commodores in the Liberty Bowl 31-24.

I guess that's a start.

But Jones also lost to Derek Dooley. His 2011 Bearcats got hammered at Tennessee 45-23. That and the season-opening win over North Carolina State this year qualified as the closest things to a signature victory on Dooley's watch.

In other words, I think it's safe to say Dooley isn't leaving as good a situation for Jones as Kelly did at Central Michigan and Cincinnati.

Over the last couple of weeks, Tennessee athletics director Dave Hart has conducted a clinic on how not to conduct a coaching search. His dogged determination to handle things himself without engaging a search firm made the Volunteers a national punch line.

Going out on your own might have worked a couple of decades ago. That's the last time Hart hired a football coach (Steve Logan at East Carolina in 1992). These days, you're wise to spend a few thousand dollars for a consultant to serve as a headhunter and/or clearinghouse.

An outside firm can work behind the scenes to gauge the interest of candidates, determining who is serious about the job and who is just using your vacancy to squeeze a better deal out of his current school.

By the time you get around to the interview process, you should have a small pool of candidates, each of whom would cut off a body part to get the job. At that point, each candidate should be trying to convince you to hire him. They do the groveling, not you.

If you run a coaching search the right way, you never get turned down. There is plausible deniability. If Strong decides to stay at Louisville, you can turn around and say with all sincerity that the job was never offered.

Instead, Tennessee was shot down — very publicly — by the football coach at a basketball school in a basketball state that is leaving one basketball conference for another basketball conference. It's embarrassing.

Speaking of a flawed search strategy, what gives with having Chancellor Jimmy Cheek participate in the interview process? Are you kidding me? Even Cheek's supporters — and they're getting harder and harder to find around the Tennessee campus — will tell you he is uncomfortable and ineffective in such settings. No wonder Strong got the heebie-jeebies.

Really, now, how could Hart be so unprepared? Dating back to the second-half collapse at the Tennessee-Florida game on Sept. 15, he had to know Dooley was not going to make it. After going 0-for-October, it was just a matter of when to call the press conference.

During that stretch of bad football, Hart should have been doing his homework, or at least having a search firm do his homework. By the time he informed Dooley of his ouster, Hart should have had a list of a half-dozen or so names of people that wanted the job.

Instead, he started throwing darts.

Looks like one landed in Cincinnati.

Climer writes for The Tennessean in Nashville.