Tennessee distractions

Did Tennessee continue a recent hot streak of disastrous head coach hiring by employing Donnie Tyndall?  Maybe.  Here's the story:

Need to handle expenses for a player before you can put him on scholarship?

Here's how you do it: You instruct the player to get an apartment near campus, enroll in classes and max-out on student loans. Tell him to get as much student-loan money as he can. Buy a nice TV. Hook an Xbox One up to it. Live life. Enjoy. And don't worry about a thing because those student loans will be "handled" down the road, one way or another.

Five years later, a booster will pay the balance off.

Maybe wait 10, just to play it safe.

"That's absolutely the way you'd do it," one coach told me Thursday. But, I'm told, that's not the way Tyndall -- or somebody connected to the Southern Miss program he ran from April 2012 to April 2014 -- allegedly did it, point being the first-year Tennessee coach now has some kind of mess on his hands.

Did he or didn't he?  I have no clue.   But the Tyndall hire reeked a bit of desperation when it was made, and you have to wonder if UT didn't vet him quite as well as they insisted they did.

h/t Garry Parrish