Imagine you're the father of Tennessee quarterback Erik Ainge.

A year ago, your son was a rising star. He was a true freshman starting quarterback on a nationally ranked team. He was being compared to Peyton Manning.

A year later, your same son is a struggling sophomore quarterback on a losing team. He has lost the starting job, regained it, lost it, etc.

You might be thinking: "What happened to my son?" Or, "What did they do to my son?"

Sorry, I don't have the answers. But I do have a recommendation: Call Archie Manning.

Since there's no formal support group for fathers of quarterbacks, Manning is the best alternative. And in this case, I can't think of a close second.

Archie's sons, Peyton and Eli, are both star quarterbacks in the NFL. David Cutcliffe, who helped put them there, officially became Ainge's quarterback coach Monday evening.

Never mind how innovative Cutcliffe is in his play-calling as UT's offensive coordinator next season. If he can get this one player back on track, the calls won't be as important.

"It's a challenge to Cut," Archie said Monday afternoon by phone. "But I know one of them will work hard at it. And I think Erik will, too."

Archie met Ainge at the Manning's quarterback camp last summer. He liked what he saw.

"Erik just really fit in well with everyone else," said Manning, a former NFL all-pro quarterback and one of the greatest quarterbacks in SEC history. "What I saw of him, I was very impressed. I thought he was kind of set for a good sophomore year."

So did almost everyone else.

"When I saw him play on TV, I saw him gradually lose his confidence," Manning said. "He made some mistakes. Some players didn't make plays. And at the end of the year, you saw a quarterback with no confidence."

A coach alone can't restore a quarterback's confidence. But if he can help the player achieve success, perhaps the confidence will follow.

Manning doesn't minimize what Cutcliffe did for Peyton and Eli. He doesn't believe they would have become great players no matter who coached them.

"The gene thing is not that big," he said with a laugh. "They had pretty good ability but played at a small program in high school. Cut (as Peyton's position coach at UT and as Eli's head coach at Ole Miss) did the most to develop the skills they're using right now.

"He did the majority of their training. It goes further than throwing motion. It's all the little things, like ball protection, that he taught them."

A year later, Archie still laments Cutcliffe's firing at Ole Miss, where Cutcliffe had five winning seasons and was fired after one losing one.

"At a lot of programs, you're looking for a fit," Manning said. "Sometimes, when it doesn't work out, it's not because the school was lousy or the coach was lousy. It was just because they didn't fit.

"But Ole Miss who it is, David who he is: This was a fit. He would have stayed here 20 years."

Cutcliffe is a comfortable fit for UT. In fact, this is as much a homecoming as a hiring. He already has served as head coach Phillip Fulmer's offensive coordinator. He has helped the Vols win a national championship and helped develop a number of successful quarterbacks.

And he has helped convince fathers that their quarterbacking sons were in good hands.

"You can be the daddy and let Cut do the coaching," Archie said. "Just take a good seat, watch it and enjoy it."