Ex Raiders HC Jon Gruden reveals reasons that compelled him to almost take the Vols job: "My wife cheered at Tennessee"
One of the most active figures in football coaching rumors has been former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl XXXVII win. At the time, he was only 45, and every open football job was tied to Gruden. On ESPN's "Pardon My Take," Gruden explained his interest in the Tennessee job.
"My wife cheered at Tennessee," Gruden said. "I love Tennessee. I was a graduate coach there, and I did talk to the Athletic Director, and I don't look up to anybody more than I look up to Peyton Manning and Kenny Chesney.
"Those are two of my favorite Tennessee guys. And I was very interested in doing it. At that time I was having so much fun on Monday Night Football with Mike Tirico I couldn't take any other jobs ... [but] I almost did consider pulling the trigger there."
Jon Gruden's history with Tennessee
As Jon Gruden noted, he coached at Tennessee previously. In fact, Gruden's first coaching job as a student assistant was with the Vols in 1986-1987. Walt Harris had been a coordinator at Tennessee and he later hired Gruden for another job at the University of the Pacific as Gruden climbed the coaching ranks.
After a handful of years bouncing around the NFL, Gruden took the Oakland Raiders head coaching job in 1998. He moved to Tampa Bay after 2001 and won the Super Bowl in his first season with the Bucs. After a pair of 9-7 seasons in 2007 and 2008, Gruden was gone from Tampa. He returned to the NFL briefly with Las Vegas from 2018 to 2021 but failed to find success again.
Connecting the dots for the details of Gruden and Tennessee's flirtation is a little more challenging. Obviously, the year in question couldn't have been before 2008, Gruden's last year of his first NFL run. More specifically, Gruden worked with Mike Tirico on MNF from 2011 to 2014, so that is the range that makes sense with the rest of the story.
Tennessee fired Derek Dooley after the 2012 season, following a 16-21 record in three seasons with the Vols. Tennessee was stuck with Dooley after the one-and-done tenure of Lane Kiffin ended with him jetting to USC after a 7-6 year in 2009.
The Vols eventually settled on Butch Jones, who coached from 2013 to 2017, but certainly didn't find the success Josh Heupel found in Knoxville. It's doubtlessly a fascinating topic for Vol fans to ponder how the program would have gone with Gruden at the helm instead.
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