The Tennessee hire of Josh Heupel was quicker than some figured it would be, and not quite the “home run” move some thought the Vols could make, even with the pending NCAA sanctions looming.

SEC Network host Paul Finebaum put it bluntly on Monday during his regular appearance on “The Roundtable” WJOX-FM 94.5 in Birmingham, Alabama when he said the Vols and new Athletics Director Danny White didn’t reach their potential.

“It’s not the best they could have done,” he said. “It’s a convenient path. I firmly believe the new athletic director swung and missed a couple of times. Instead of having a protracted search that reminded people of the last time Tennessee went down this road, he looked at his phone and hit the shortcut button and there was Josh Heupel. (White) knew he could hire him. He knew he was good enough. He knew he was relatively clean, which is important. And he brought him in. These things always seem better as time goes on and fans begin to adapt. But unfortunately here, the program is not in good shape, understatement of the century. Josh Heupel didn’t win the press conference. In fact, we barely heard him at the press conference. And Tennessee is not in a lot better shape than they were a couple weeks ago when they were firing Jeremy Pruitt.”

One clear sign of a dynamic hire, in Finebaum’s mind, is how the closest rivals react to it. Former Ole Miss and current Liberty coach Hugh Freeze was kept from getting this job because of his history of NCAA penalties with the Rebels.

“The NCAA issue is what kept Hugh Freeze getting this job,” Finebaum explained. “He would have been a fantastic hire. I think the fan base today would have been screaming their lungs out ‘Rocky Top.’ Fans around the SEC would not have been happy to see it because they know what he’s capable of it. We used to joke about this with every Alabama hire back in the day, how does your fan base sleep at night knowing that you have so-and-so as your head coach. I think Georgia fans and Florida fans and Bama fans, fans have all like had about a 12-hour sleep on Wednesday night after seeing Josh Heupel as the new coach.”

Finebaum doesn’t believe in a so-called “bridge coach” being hired to setup greater seasons for the program with the next head coach. He said hiring and firing is the most important job of an athletics director. Finebaum said the urgency to hire a coach was not as extreme as the last Tennessee hiring cycle when it settled on Pruitt.

“It wasn’t as if Tennessee was going to win recruiting National Signing Day anyway,” he said. “They were already behind, they had already lost a few players, and if the search had dragged on for two or three more days, it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference.”

Danny White ultimately chose between keeping interim coach Kevin Steele, and finding his own new coach.