Scott's journey to OC years in the making

It was fitting that Larry Scott was standing in an airport awaiting a recruiting flight when his phone buzzed with the official announcement that he was Tennessee's new offensive coordinator.

For Scott, the promotion is a career flight 40 years in the making. It why Scott's first call was to his mother, who Scott said was screaming with joy. Even Scott had a little yell when he sat down to meet the media.

“It feels good,” Scott said. “You spend your whole career working hard, being diligent, trying to be out in front of everything. You try and learn as much as you can everywhere you go taking every experience as a learning opportunity so that one day this type of opportunity presents itself. I'm super excited. My family is super excited.”

When Mike DeBord indicated to head coach Butch Jones that he was going to retire before ultimately taking the offensive coordinator job at Indiana, Jones started diving into names across the country names like Applewhite, Helfrich and others. Through all of his exploring, Jones kept coming back to the guy running his tight ends room.

"We spoke to a lot of very quality candidates," Jones said. "Our goal was to gather as much information as possible in a timely manner but also go through a detailed process, which we did. We feel strongly about our offensive staff and that Larry Scott is the best fit moving forward to lead the unit.

"Larry played an important role in the success we had offensively last year and was heavily involved in all aspects of our game plan, both during the week and on game day. We felt it was vital to maintain our continuity on offense and keep building on what we have established the past four seasons.”

Scott's promotion keeps continuity but also presents unknowns. The Florida native has done virtually every thing on offense and has been an interim head coach at a power 5 school. What he hasn't done is call plays. Scott's quarterback coach and friend Mike Canales said the worry isn't warranted.

“Whether it's your first time calling plays or your 20th year calling plays, the bottom line is you are in a room with four or five guys and you are creating a plan,” Canales said. “You are going to call certain plays in certain situations and everyone will have a little flavor to it. But you have been in that room and if something were to happen and you had the paper over to the next guy, he's going to call it pretty much the same way as the guy who's going to call it for the first time. You put yourself in those situations throughout the week.

“It's not like it's something new for him. It's something you believe in. You go in that room you come out with a plan. Whether it's your first year calling it or your 32nd year calling it, it doesn't matter it's still the same thing. He will do a great job.”

How Scott calls plays, how his staff make up is going to be are all things that only time will tell. But Scott make it clear that it won't be his offense that he's running this fall.

“One of the first things we want to make sure everyone understands is that this is Tennessee's offense. We are going to take the personnel that we have, we are going to evaluate it top to bottom. We are always going to look at what our strengths are and we are always going to play to those strengths. We are always going to make sure are putting ourselves on a week to week basis with the opportunity to win. Some of it may look a little different. Some of it may look the same. That's all to be determined over time. We are going to build it from the bottom up.”

Much like Scott's career that started in the high school ranks and today finds him Tennessee's new offensive coordinator.