Tennessee Football hires Tee Martin

Tee Martin’s coming home.

Martin’s return to Rocky Top is yet another wave of refreshing news for Vols fans. As with the Chaney news a few days ago, there are a lot of reasons to like this hire: He brings even more championship experience and reminds us of better days, he’s an up-and-coming offensive mind and superb recruiter, and his addition to the staff further fuels the momentum gathering in Knoxville.

All the feels

Of course, Tee Martin is associated with many of our most fond memories.

Those were the days, huh?

Coaching acumen

But there is no way in Hades that Jeremy Pruitt is making any hire for the sake of nostalgia. No-sir-eee. (Sorry — had to do it.)

Since his time at Tennessee, Tee Martin has made a name for himself in the coaching ranks as an up-and-comer. After his playing days were over, Martin started coaching in 2006 at Morehouse. If you can tell me where Morehouse is without asking Google, Alexa, or some other computer infiltrating our homes so they can destroy humanity ten years from now, then you’re doing better than me.

After Morehouse, Martin coached high school ball for a couple of years and then started climbing the college ladder, starting with a gig coaching quarterbacks at New Mexico in 2009 and then a two-year stint at Kentucky coaching wide receivers. He was also passing game coordinator for the Wildcats in 2011.

Martin then went out west to coach wide receivers for the USC Trojans. In 2014, he was promoted to passing game coordinator and then served as offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach from 2016 to 2018. USC struggled this past season, and Martin was relieved of his play-calling duties midway through the season. Not sure what happened there, but failure is practically inevitable somewhere along the way for football coaches.

Martin’s name has been batted around the past few weeks as a viable candidate for some high-level positions, including offensive coordinator at Miami, but the Vols, Jeremy Pruitt, and Phillip Fulmer have lured him back to Rocky Top, presumably with a pitch that they are building something special and need another special person like Martin to make it happen.

Recruiting acumen

Much of Martin’s quick rise through the coaching ranks is largely attributable to his reputation as an elite recruiter. He finished second in 247Sports’ coach recruiting rankings in 2014 and 2015, and he finished first in 2016. During those three years, Martin signed 22 4-star players and 11 5-stars. Only three of those 5-star guys were wide receivers, too, so it’s not a position thing with Martin. He just knows how to talk to elite athletes and get them to commit.

For more on Martin’s impact on Tennessee recruiting, check out this post from DylanVol.

The rush of momentum

It’s almost as easy to get us Tennessee football fans to believe in the next season as it is to get small children to believe in Santa Claus. Wanting to believe makes it easy to believe.

On the other hand, ten consecutive years of disappointment has a way of reducing your want-to. Today, it’s almost as difficult to get Tennessee fans to continue to believe as it is to get 18-year-olds to believe the fat man’s coming down the chimney. Too much disappointment can petrify the softest of hearts.

But you know what? The recent tide of good news has been relentless in chipping away at this old man’s hard heart. Alabama’s defense looked lost in the national championship game without Jeremy Pruitt. Georgia’s football team sulked its way to an embarrassing loss in its bowl game and then lost both of its coordinators, one of them to us. The Vols now have on their sideline the defensive coordinator and the offensive coordinator that went head-to-head in last year’s national championship game. Woo.

The basketball team is rolling, beating Georgia by nearly 50 points and Missouri by nearly 25, and turning a one-possession slugfest against hated rival Florida into an entry on the resume that the new NET rankings will view as a blowout due to the 10-point cap on margin of victory. Woo again.

Football hired Jim Chaney. Woo. Jauan Jennings is foregoing an NFL opportunity to return for his final season. Yee-haw. And now, we’ve hired Tee Martin, who’s not only beloved on Rocky Top but also respected by high school coaches and players all over the south — including the all-important states of Alabama and Georgia — and the west coast to boot. Ahem. Woo.

We fans have become gradually more jaded over the past ten years, and with everything’s that gone wrong, that’s understandable.

But good people just keep coming back to Rocky Top. They must believe in what’s happening here.

And that is a trend genuinely worthy of renewed hope.