The million-dollar coaches in the billion-dollar league spent the first two days of SEC Media Days focused on all that's suddenly wrong with college football. And wouldn't you know it, when you least expect it, all that's right comes strolling through the door.
"This is the greatest thrill of my life," Robbie Caldwell says, "other than my child being born."
Finally, some sanity—in a spectacular display of humility and appreciation rarely seen in the coaching profession.
Nick Saban began SEC Media Days calling agents pimps. Urban Meyer spoke of the pressure of his job, and how it nearly drove him to quit. Mark Richt has won 90 games in nine seasons at Georgia, yet has been fielding questions about job security.
And here comes Robbie Caldwell, a 30-year career assistant who was lining the field for a Vanderbilt football camp when he was summoned to an all-staff meeting with Johnson. A couple hours later, he was cleaned up and being introduced as the man in charge.
"I can still walk places and nobody knows me," Caldwell said. "Last night at dinner, I was opening the door for people and they gave me a tip. I thought, hey, that's great. How can you get it any better than that?"
College football needed this. One of the decade's top teams (USC) is now on probation, and one of the sport's most storied programs (Michigan) is staring down probation. USC turned in Reggie Bush's Heisman Trophy, and Texas nearly seceded from the Big 12 to start a mass reshuffling of a sport built on tradition.
Meanwhile, here is Caldwell, who grew up in a broken home in Pageland, S.C.—"population of about 1,500 including cats and dogs"—playing sports because he didn't want to pour concrete or be a pipe fitter or work on that turkey farm where he did everything from inseminating turkeys to clearing away dead ones.
"That's a fact, man," Caldwell said. "Best job I ever had."
Now he has arguably the hardest job in college football. He's an interim coach at a school with a long history of losing in the biggest, baddest conference in the game. He's still working off his former contract—about $200,000 annually, and about $4 million less than Saban—and likely will be out of a job by December.
He's country hard and soulfully engaging, and will run things at Vandy on his terms. And when it's over—no matter how it ends—he'll be elated for the opportunity. No pimps or agents, no probation or problems.
Just the greatest thrill of his life.
"I wish I knew the name of the restaurant here where we ate last night," Caldwell said. "Golly, it was fantastic. By the way, I ate quail. I kept my heritage there."
Of course he did.
From: http://www.sportingnews.com/
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