Duke Hires Tennessee's Cutcliffe as New Football Coach

"Here is what you do. You surround yourself with great people in anything you do. And you try to put yourself in a great situation and stay around great places and it just hit me from every direction that I was in the right place at the right time," Cutcliffe said during Saturday's news conference.

Cutcliffe, the former Mississippi coach who spent the past two seasons as Tennessee's offensive coordinator, was hired by Duke on Friday night.

"This is our philosophy of coaching – [be] a communicator – [be] a teacher. In doing that, I wrote, 'do what you mean and mean what you say and then back it up,'" Cutcliffe said. "You got to be a tough decision maker to do this job. There are a lot of tough decisions that have to be made. I have done that my whole career even when I wasn't a head coach."

The Blue Devils spent nearly three weeks looking for a coach with experience in the Bowl Subdivision and a knack for designing potent offenses – and as the search progressed, Cutcliffe emerged as a natural fit. The man known by his players as "Coach Cut" developed Peyton Manning during his first stint with the Volunteers, then coached Eli Manning at Ole Miss.

Now the 53-year-old coach will embrace the challenge of building the Blue Devils into winners after the team lost all but just 22 games during the past 13 seasons.

The Blue Devils have endured three losing streaks of 15 or more games during the past 13 seasons, have lost at least 10 games in three straight seasons and fired Ted Roof last month after a 1-11 finish and a 6-45 overall mark during four-plus seasons.

In 2006, Cutcliffe rejoined Fulmer, his longtime friend and mentor, at Tennessee, and designing the Vols' offense for the past two seasons while hoping for another chance at a head coaching job.