By Anthony Caruso III | Publisher
The Tennessee Volunteers have found their new head coach. Several weeks ago, the Volunteers athletic director decided to fire head coach Derek Dooley.
Now, Dave Hart has decided to hire Butch Jones away from Cincinnati as their new head coach.
Jones recently turned down the Colorado Buffaloes. He then slept on the offer by the Volunteers before eventually accepting it.
“I would like to thank Butch Jones for his time at the University of Cincinnati,” said Cincinnati athletic director Whit Babcock said. “With that said, we are excited about the future of this program and this job will be extremely attractive nationally. Our search will begin immediately.”
Jones will become the 24th head coach of the Volunteer program at a 2:30 pm conference at Neyland Stadium. He will receive a 6-year deal.
He has spent the past three seasons at Cincinnati, where he helped the Bearcats to two conference championships. He was 23-14 at Cincinnati after replacing Brian Kelly, who went to Notre Dame.
He was the Big East Coach of the Year in 2011. According to the school, his team is the only team to win their conference and their league’s team academic award.
In his career, he is 50-27 overall, including a 32-12 conference record. He has five bowl games on his resume and four league championships in six years as a collegiate head coach.
He will not coach Cincinnati in this year’s bowl game against Duke in the Belk Bowl on December 27th in Charlotte, North Carolina on ESPN. He also did not coach in the GMAC bowl at the end of the 2009 season when he left for Cincinnati.
In the three bowl games that he did coach in, he is 1-2. He won the Liberty Bowl in 2011 with Cincinnati, then lost back-to-back Motor City Bowls in 2007 and 2008 with Central Michigan.
He was also a head coach at Central Michigan from 2007 to 2009. At CMU, he went 27-13 including a 20-3 record within the Mid-American Conference.
Prior to his head coaching experience, he was the West Virginia wide receivers coach in 2005 and 2006. Then was at Central Michigan from 1999 to 2001 as running backs coach and then offensive coordinator from 2002 to 2004.
He also spent the 1998 season as the Central Michigan tight ends coach. He also was the Ferris State offensive coordinator job from 1995 to 1997.
He was a Wilkes offensive coordinator in 1992 to 1994 after spending the 1990 and 1991 seasons at Rutgers as a graduate assistant.
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