Had someone had told you in 2002 that Baylor coach Kevin Steele would go on to become the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers two decades later, you would have been better off putting down $25,000 that TCU would win a Rose Bowl.
Kevin Steele, one of the least successful head coaches at a school that for decades had the market on least successful coaches, is now the interim head coach of an SEC team that is one of the few to have won a national title in the modern era of college football.
After what essentially amounts to Tennessee deliberately finding NCAA violations to fire head coach Jeremy Pruitt with cause, this voiding the $12.6 million buyout, the Vols hired Steele.
Tennessee, you’ve basically become this era’s version of what Baylor was in the ‘90s. So consider this to be your warning.
To assess what Steele was like to play for, I sought out his former Baylor players.
“He was clueless,” said Brandon Thompson, a tight end and letter winner from 1997 to 2000. His last two seasons in Waco were Steele’s first two as head coach.
“He rarely coached us up and just did a bunch of talking,” said Thompson, who currently lives near Keller. “At a team meeting, he once put on all his rings to try and show us how his system worked. Not really sure how he’s still coaching.”
Because that’s how college coaching works. If you can get in the room, make the right friends, you can stick and make a small fortune.
Before returning to his alma mater as the head coach in Knoxville, Steele served as the defensive coordinator at Auburn under the recently fired Gus Malzahn.
Steele was making $2.5 million as a coordinator, and was on the list of candidates to replace Malzahn.
When I asked Thompson what he thought of his old coach at Baylor becoming the new coach at Auburn he said, “They better not Google ‘Baylor Football from 1999-’02.’”
Apparently Auburn did. And apparently Tennessee did not.
When Steele was hired by Baylor in 1999, it was not the Baylor football program that exists today.
In fairness to Steele, Baylor may have been the worst job in major college football. Few, if any, coaches were going to win at Baylor then.
The Big 12 was relatively new, and Baylor had not even tried to catch up. Old Floyd Casey Stadium was still “up and running.” Steele had nothing to sell.
However, from the start, he exactly didn’t help.
In Steele’s Baylor debut, the Bears lost, 30-29, at Boston College when the kicker missed a game-tying point after attempt in overtime.
Not his fault.
In his home Baylor debut, on Sept. 11, 1999, Steele’s entire tenure at Baylor would become toast with one of the most infamous decisions in the history of not only Baylor, but the entire sport.
With 28 seconds remaining in the game, Baylor led a bad UNLV team 24-21 and had just gained a first down at the Rebels’ 8.
Take a knee, celebrate Steele’s first win.
Instead, Steele wanted to “run it up.” Tailback Darrell Bush took the handoff, and as he was just feet from the goal line, the ball popped out.
The ball bounced into the end zone, where UNLV cornerback Kevin Thomas picked it up, and returned it 100 yards for the game-winning touchdown.
After the game, Steele owned the mistake. He said he was trying to change a culture at Baylor, but instead he wound up maintaining it.
Thompson said Steele’s saying was to “cut the head off the snake.” He was not sure what it meant then, or now.
On Nov. 2, 2002, Baylor fired Steele with three games remaining in the season.
He was ready to leave immediately, but after talking to former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne, Steele remained on for the rest of the way out of loyalty to his players.
He was 9-36 in his four years in Waco.
Since then, he bounced around the assistant ranks and joined the Nick Saban Rehab Center for Fired Coaches when he became Nick’s defensive coordinator at Alabama in 2007.
Steele is now an SEC guy with an SEC background. Tennessee was wise to find a candidate who is familiar with the middle-finger attitude programs in that league often display towards the rules.
One decision, and one horrible record at a school, 20 years ago should not define a coach, or his potential.
He worked the system, and now he will get a chance that other coaches would throw their mother out of an airplane to have.
The primary reason Steele, 62, got this job was because he agreed to an easily flushed, two-year, $900,000 contract. Auburn still is on the hook for his $4 million buyout.
Tennessee in 2021, like Baylor in 1999, is such a mess that everything about the program needs a reboot. Steele will become the seventh man to coach a Vols football game since 2009.
But maybe Kevin Steele as the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers will work out.
