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It's a question you really had to ask yourself after Duke hired Tennessee's offensive coordinator to replace Ted Roof as head coach of the Blue Devils.

Surely, the conventional thinking goes, Cutcliffe must have a few warts if he was available for Duke to scoop up and was willing to take the job.

The wart, in this case, was that Cutcliffe was fired after six season at Ole Miss, back in December, 2004. So he must be damaged goods, right?

Except that Cutcliffe went 44-29 in six seasons at Oxford, won four bowl games, had five winning seasons and was, by most measures, the second-most successful coach in school history. The No. 1 guy on that list had the stadium named after him.

This naturally leads to this question - why was Cutcliffe fired by Ole Miss?

To get that answer I did a little digging in the newspaper archives, to see what the papers that covered the Ole Miss program were reporting.

The reason I'd always heard the most was that Cutcliffe couldn't cut it as a recruiter. That's why Ed Orgeron, Southern Cal's top recruiter, was brought in as the replacement. But when I checked the Scout and Rivals rankings from 2002-2004, the last three recruiting classes Cutcliffe brought in, I didn't see much evidence for this charge.

2002 - Scout No. 26, Rivals No. 33
2003 - Scout No. 33, Rivals No. 39
2004 - Scout No. 39, Rivals No. 24.

Granted these aren't earth-shattering numbers, but remember, this is Ole Miss. Not Florida, not Alabama, not Tennessee. (By the way, according to a Nov. 26, 2005 article in the Knoxville Sentinel-News, when Cutcliffe was in his first tenure as a Vols's assistant, he was the primary recruiter for defensive end Leonard Little, running back Jay Graham and defensive lineman Shane Burton. Some pretty good names).

So maybe it wasn't recruiting. Another complaint about Cutcliffe was that he didn't show enough emotion - that he was too business-like. Another reason for adding Orgeron, a Ragin' Cajun if there ever was one. This seems like a bit of a dubious reason to can a coach. N.C. State, for example, traded fiesty Chuck Amato for buttoned-down Tom O'Brien. Most everyone in Wolfpack land seems okay with that switch.

Plus, according to Joedy McCready of the AP - who covered Cutcliffe during his Ole Miss days and now will cover him at Duke, Cutcliffe's personality apparently underwent a huge shift after his heart surgery in 2005.

The most likely explanation I stumbled upon was a power struggle with the athletics director, Pete Boone. Bear in mind that Boone was not the A.D. when Cutcliffe was hired. That's always a bad start to the AD-coach relationship.

According to the reports at the time, after Cutcliffe's first losing season at Ole Miss, Boone wanted him to submit a written report detailing what changes he would make to get things turned around. Cutcliffe didn't want to make any changes. He just wanted his players and coaches to do better at what they were already doing. The two butted heads for several days before finally Boone cut Cutcliffe loose.

It was often speculated that Boone wanted Cutcliffe to fire some of his staff and that Cutcliffe refused. I was never able to find a story that had solid confirmation of this, but I did find this interesting comment from a column in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger a few days after Cutcliffe's dismissal.

"Should he get another head coaching position, his display of loyalty will ensure the hiring of a great staff in a heartbeat."

So to recap:

Cutcliffe was canned from Ole Miss because he couldn't recruit. This appears to be a shaky argument at best.

Cutcliffe was canned because he didn't show enough outward emotion. This is a pretty weak grounds for firing and anyway, it appears to no longer be true.

Cutcliffe was fired because he refused to let his A.D. micromanage his program. The most likely explanation and hardly one you can hold against Cutcliffe.

So there doesn't appear to be a good explanation for the original question. Fortunately for Duke, it didn't need that answer. It just needed a coach.