Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

This time a year ago, Dave Clawson was getting ready for his fourth season as the head coach at Richmond. A few months earlier, he'd been a candidate for the Boston College head coaching job, but lost out to Jeff Jagodzinski.

Still, Clawson made enough of an impression on Boston College Athletic Director Gene DeFilippo that he recommended Clawson to Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer this past winter when Fulmer was looking for a replacement for offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe, who is now the head coach for Duke. DeFilippo and Fulmer go back to their days as graduate assistants at Tennessee.

Fulmer liked Clawson immediately. He liked his offensive philosophy, liked his cerebral nature and liked the fact that he wasn't afraid to disagree with Fulmer, the dean of SEC coaches.

So when the Vols kick off the season on Sept. 1 against UCLA in the Rose Bowl, they'll do so with the first offensive coordinator to come from outside the Tennessee family in nearly two decades. Clawson brings his version of the West Coast offense to Knoxville, where the fans are pumped about having some new blood in the program. To his credit, Clawson jokes that he hasn't had to punt yet, nor has he gone three-and-out.

Here's the first of a two-part Q&A with Clawson, one of 12 new offensive or defensive coordinators in the SEC this season.

What kind of adjustment has it been recruiting in the SEC?

Dave Clawson: Recruiting is recruiting. You're trying to sell your school and program and develop relationships with coaches and players. That part is no different. The part of it that's different is that most of the players we're recruiting now might have 20 offers. When I was at Richmond, we might have to battle William & Mary, James Madison and Delaware.

So recruiting in the SEC isn't any dirtier or more negative?

DC: You get that at every level. The recruiting battles we had at Richmond were fierce, and there was always an element of negativity out there. To say you work any harder at it here is not right. We worked at it hard there, too. Obviously, you're going against bigger schools, and more schools are involved.

Who have been some of your biggest influences in terms of shaping your offensive beliefs?

DC: I learned this offense 16 years ago from a guy named Hank Small, who was the coach at Lehigh, then the offensive coordinator at Wake Forest and now the athletic director at Charleston Southern. The roots of his offense can be traced back to Sid Gillman. In 1987, I went out and visited with Norm Chow, who was then at BYU with Lavell Edwards. It's ironic that we open up with UCLA, where Norm Chow is now the offensive coordinator. I've tried to visit with some NFL team just about every year. I went to the Giants a lot when Sean Payton was there. I visited with the Lions when Steve Mariucci was there. A friend of mine, (current Citadel head coach) Kevin Higgins, was the quarterbacks coach there. I've tried to learn as much about the West Coast offense from as many different people as possible.

There seems to be a strong NFL influence there. How did that come about?

DC: In the NFL, they don't have to recruit. They spend all of their time on football. They're locked up in a laboratory studying stuff. Any time you have access to people spending all of their time studying the game ... that can only help. I've borrowed and studied as much as I could from NFL guys. It might be one play-action pass or an adjustment on a protection or a little change in a run scheme. The key is taking stuff that fits what you do. If it helps with the personnel you have that particular year, then you roll with it and it might just be one or two new ideas a year.

What's the biggest misconception about the West Coast offense?

DC: I wouldn't even say what we're going to run at Tennessee is the West Coast offense. We're an offense that will utilize West Coast principles in the passing game and spacing concepts. But there's not one version of the West Coast offense. We're not a pure West Coast team. I think when most people think about the West Coast offense, they think about split backs and the Bill Walsh system. This thing can go in a lot of different directions. That's part of the reason it's stood the test of time. It allows you to do a lot of different things, and flexibility is important in college football. You keep adding different personnel every few years, and this system allows you to adapt to the personnel you have.

What was your perception of Phillip Fulmer from afar, and is it any different now that you're working for him?

DC: I'd only had one brief conversation with Coach Fulmer, and that was about four years ago when I hired one of his GA's (Marcus Satterfield). I'd always had great respect for the consistency of the program under Coach Fulmer. But the things about him that stand out now that I work for him would never come across on the TV screen, just how personable he is and how much he truly cares about the kids in the program. You'd never get that off the TV screen or from reading about him.

I'll have the second part of my chat with Clawson up later Monday. We'll talk more in detail about the 2008 Tennessee offense and what fans can expect.