Tennessee football: New Vols AD Danny White hoping to poach Clemson’s Tony Elliott as new head coach

New Tennessee athletic director Danny White is looking seriously at Clemson’s Tony Elliott.

In order to reclaim a sunken Tennessee football program, new athletic director Danny White knows he has to pick the right head coach for the job. One man he is reportedly keen on is Clemson Tigers offensive coordinator Tony Elliott.

The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reports Elliott is one name very high up on White’s list of Volunteers head-coaching candidates. Clemson football fans have been lucky to not lose a ton of top assistants to other Power 5 jobs in recent years, but Elliott is one who could leave Dabo Swinney‘s team in the coming months. White has made several great hires in his athletic director career.

Would a Danny White/Tony Elliott pairing be what saves Tennessee football?

Tennessee was at rock bottom when news of former head coach Jeremy Pruitt’s firing broke. Coaching legend turned athletic director Phillip Fulmer’s press conference after the fact was painfully awkward. However, most of the college sports world agrees that prying White out of Central Florida was about as good of a hire that Tennessee athletics could ever hope to get.

White may inherit a grease fire on the gridiron, but he has the closest semblance of a sure thing coaching his men’s basketball program in Rick Barnes. Now, he can channel all his focus in getting the right coach to lead this once-proud football team. Elliott is a former Clemson wide receiver and has been on Dabo Swinney’s coaching staff since 2011, moving to offensive coordinator in 2015.

The appeal to the Tennessee job is being able to rebuild a blue-blooded program from the ground up. This will take time, as the Vols are nowhere close to challenging the Florida Gators or the Georgia Bulldogs for SEC East supremacy. With sanctions and a likely bowl ban coming in 2021 because of the Pruitt era fallout, the new Volunteers head coach must be about the process.

The most important thing any new Volunteers head coach must command from the university is patience and job security. Since Fulmer was fired as head coach in 2008, the only leader of the football program to last more than three years was Butch Jones. That tells you everything you need to know about how the last decade-plus has gone for Rocky Top. Maybe Elliott can fix that?

Overall, White and the Tennessee program are going to have to give Elliott an offer he simply cannot refuse for him to come there, much like the one Tennessee did to get White to leave UCF. With the deep pockets of the Haslam Brothers and Peyton Manning helping with the search, maybe together Tennessee can make another smart choice and hire the right guy for them?

Elliott may not leave Clemson for Tennessee, but he will be a Power 5 head coach here very soon.

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