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But Tommy Tuberville isn't really about that life. For better or worse he takes shots. In his two plus years in Clifton he has taken a big shot on Eddie Gran, and he took another big shot on Hank Hughes. He hit big with Gran*, and he missed big with Hughes. All indications are that he is going to take another big swing by promoting Steve Clinkscale to Co-Defensive Coordinator and play caller.
* No, your argument that Eddie Gran is an incompetent moron and the worst thing to happen to UC since Dave Currey is not valid. Take it to twitter.
This move will not sit well with some Bearcats who wanted UC to go out and hire some big name candidate, a Will Muschamp or a Gene Chizik perhaps? Those names were non starters from the beginning, as were the ludicrous suggestions that Tubs should take a swing at DIck LeBeau.*
*That's not a joke, a thread on a popular message board had about 20 responses to the idea. I mean what could possibly go wrong with hiring a 77 year old man to coach kids who could conceivably be the same age as one of his grand children.
If you haven't noticed it in my writing by now, I really hate these kind of UC fans, because their expectations are not ground in any reality that I am aware of. They also completely ignore valid contextual factors and just generally live within the confines of their own personal head space. Basically they live in limbo from Inception; raw infinite subconscious with which they can create anything they want from scratch. To those of us who live in the real world (or is it) these fans are the Marion Cotillard character, a huge bitch that we all need to deal with collectively so that they she doesn't end up killing us all.*
*Really sorry for ruining Inception for you caveman from 2009, but that's not really my fault with a 5 year old movie now is it
The argument against Clinkscale is basically that he doesn't deserve this job because some other unforeseen and unknowable veteran of many years with a sterling reputation and resume would have totally taken the job if only Tommy Tuberville would have offered it. It is, in essence, an argument against the process Tuberville used to land on Clink as his guy. It was a process that was completely and utterly closed off from the public, no word got out from the UC camp about potential candidates. There were no rumors, there was no noise at all* and the first thing we hear is that an internal hire is likely.
* You get the feeling that Tuberville is really enjoying his ability to completely shut off the flow of information to local reporters here in Cincinnati. There were some reporters in town who knew who was under consideration, but he managed to successfully swear them to secrecy. That's an ability he didn't really have in Lubbock, and he certainly did not have it at Auburn.
Obviously I don't subscribe to most of the argument's against Clinkscale, I am not going to go out on a limb now to say that he will be a categorical success or an abysmal failure. Anyone staking out ground on either of those positions now is just trolling to troll. The only position you can take now to remain on solid logical footing is to simply say that we shall see, because we will. I have heard from two different people who know Clinkscale and both of them mentioned how astute his football mind is. I trust both of those people on that, and that thought gives me some comfort. But I simply don't know what a Clink called defense will look like.
I do think it matters that Tuberville is choosing to go in house with his hire. That obviously helps immensely from a continuity standard. Given how young UC is likely to be next year at linebacker and again at corner back having a familiar face, coaching a familiar scheme is an all around positive. The most positive thing of all is that Tuberville seems comfortable handing his defense over to a first time coordinator. That worked well with Gran (refer to the first footnote if you disagree), and here's to it working out with Clink too.