As one of the last three schools in D-IA to fill a head-coaching vacancy as the 2009-10 coaching carousel ground to a halt, Tennessee and their new hire, ex-Louisiana Tech coach/AD Derek Dooley, found themselves in a less-than-enviable position: having to salvage both the psyches of a group of players who'd just been unceremoniously ditched by their previous coach and a recruiting class that, up to that point, had been touted as potentially one of the nation's best.
We may not know for a while how Dooley fared on the first task, but it looks like he did surprisingly well on the second: When the smoke cleared on National Signing Day, Dooley had closed on a class that still ranked among the top 10 in the country. And despite Kiffin's attempts to lure many of those recruits to his new digs at USC, receiver Markeith "Go Trogans" Ambles was the only one who actually followed Kiffin to Los Angeles. QB Tyler Bray, OL Ja'Wuan James, and five-star wideout Da'Rick Rogers all elected to maintain course for Knoxville.