Tennessee football: P.J. Fleck wouldn’t be Butch Jones 2.0 for Vols

Minnesota football head coach P.J. Fleck has been vetted for the Tennessee football job.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers have a fantastic head coach in P.J. Fleck, but according to Football Scoop, he is a serious candidate to replace Jeremy Pruitt as the Tennessee Volunteers head coach. Fleck, along with Clemson Tigers offensive coordinator Tony Elliott and SMU Mustangs head coach Sonny Dykes, are coaches new athletic director Danny White could end up hiring this offseason.

Tennessee football fans may be skeptical over hiring a coach whose personal mantra of “Row the Boat” closely resembles the cliched-riddled tenure of former Vols head coach Butch Jones. However, Fleck actually believes what he preaches and will not devolve into whatever Jones became at the end of the 2017 college football season. If the Vols hire Fleck, it wouldn’t be a repeat of the Jones era.

P.J. Fleck has built two winners out of seemingly nothing

Fleck may not be a play-caller, but he is the perfect CEO type to take a bottom-feeding program and turn it into a winner. The former Northern Illinois and San Francisco 49ers wide receiver first came to national prominence by leading the Western Michigan Broncos to a New Year’s Six bowl. He has since made Minnesota one of the more intriguing programs in the Big Ten West.

See, Jones largely road Brian Kelly’s coattails to a Power 5 job. He replaced the current Notre Dame head coach at Central Michigan in 2007 and at Cincinnati in 2010. But when he was tasked of replacing an ineffective Derek Dooley, Jones could never beat Alabama, Florida and Georgia consistently enough to get the Vols to Atlanta. He was fired after five seasons in 2017.

Leaving the Midwest for the Southeastern footprint will be the biggest challenge for Fleck. He does not have the recruiting base to contend right away at a job like Tennessee. However, Fleck has the process-laden approach to win over a recruit, one living room at a time. He would inherit more talent in Knoxville than he ever had in Kalamazoo or currently in Minneapolis. It could work.

Ultimately, the only panacea Fleck could provide the Tennessee program is winning. He may preach the same “Row the Boat” gospel if he is hired, but that will quickly fall on deaf ears like “Brick by Brick” did under Jones. No amount of “Five-Star Hearts” or “Leadership Reps” can make a “Champion of Life” out of someone who is in a sinking canoe somewhere in the Tennessee River.

Authenticity and undeniable success has Fleck as a better candidate than Jones ever was.

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