The announcement of Dave Hart’s forthcoming retirement made me think back to what we thought of Mike Hamilton when he stepped down. At the time we noted how eventful his tenure was, so much so that neither the firing of a national championship coach nor the hiring of his one-year fly-by-night replacement could solely define it.
But what we also now know five years later is his legacy was incomplete. Hamilton was tied to Derek Dooley, who in the summer of 2011 had an “aw, shucks” quality about him after so much unusual heartbreak in his first year.