Yesterday, it appeared that former Ole Miss and Auburn defensive line coach, Terry Price, would be hired as the defensive line coach and last night, news broke that former Miami defensive coordinator John Lovett would be hired as the secondary coach (see the LAJ's Don Williams, CoachingSearch.com and FootballScoop). Last year, Lovett was the special teams coach for the Hartford Colonials in the UFL and was most recently the defensive coordinator at Miami the year before last and was fired when Miami head coach Randy Shannon was fired.
This is the surprising part, in 1995 Lovett was the secondary coach the last four years that Tuberville was at Ole Miss (Lovett had worked his way up the coaching ladder prior to that) and followed Tuberville to Auburn and was eventually named as Auburn's defensive coordinator, but was fired by Tuberville following the 2001 season. Lovett then bounced around to Clemson, where he was the defensive coordinator, then to Bowling Green also as the defensive coordinator and then was hired as a special teams coordinator and defensive assistant in North Carolina before landing as the defensive coordinator in Miami.
When Shannon was fired, Al Golden cleaned house and Lovett was one of the casualties. Lovett actually had very good defenses while at Miami, but I would also guess that he had some nice talent. That's not a knock. What may make me happy more than anything else is the fact that Butch Davis at North Carolina thought that Lovett was worth being on his staff and although this may be completely irrational, I think that Davis knows what he's doing in terms of coaches and putting out a terrific defense (sans John Blake). You can read this Miami Herald article about Lovett leaving Miami and the comments in the article are inane, as a lot of internet comments can be, and mention that the reason Lovett has such good statistics is because opposing offenses didn't pass, the talent at Miami, etc.
I still think it's going to be tough on DC Chad Glasgow to not have any input in the coaching hires and thought that it would be better for Glasgow to have another position coach be a disciple of the 4-2-5 defense, but these are obviously Tuberville's guys. Tuberville is probably thinking, as I wrote yesterday, that if he's going to go down, he's going to go down with the guys that he's known for 20 years. There is something comforting about familiarity and for Tuberville this is most likely no different.
The only position left to fill is the offensive line coach and if the first two hires are any indication, you can expect some former position coach for Tuberville to be named as the offensive line coach. You can follow both of the college football rumor sites linked above or you an follow DTN's Texas Tech Twitter list.