His days begin before the sun is up. Same as it ever was.

But after a good, sweaty workout is done, David Cutcliffe doesn't have to shower and race to the office. There is no early staff meeting to devise a game plan to attack Auburn or Arkansas.

There will be no sophomore linebackers called on the carpet for admonishment on class attendance today.

In mid-afternoon, when years of routine tell him it's time to slip into a sweat suit, grab a whistle and head to the practice field, he realizes he must find some other destination.

At dinnertime, he finds himself at the oddest place -- the dinner table with his wife and children.

"My wife (Karen) and I have been married 21 years,'' Cutcliffe said. "She said, 'I knew I loved you but I'm glad I found out I like you.' ''

For the first football season in his adult life, David Cutcliffe is not a football coach. At least, technically he's not.

More accurate, Cutcliffe is (temporarily) an unemployed football coach. And Saturday, it's going to be doubly awkward when his two old teams meet at Neyland Stadium.

"I'll go to the game and be a fan like everybody else,'' Cutcliffe said.

A strange assignment, that. He was an assistant coach at Tennessee from1982-98, the last six years as offensive coordinator. He left for his first head-coaching job, at Ole Miss.

In six years, Cutcliffe put together a track record that would be the envy of any Ole Miss coach since the great Johnny Vaught.

His winning percentage of .603 is the best since Vaught retired for good in 1973. He was 45-29.

He was 4-1 in bowl games, including victories over Oklahoma and Nebraska. He was 4-2 against Mississippi State in the in-state war known as the Egg Bowl.

His 2003 team went 10-3, shared the SEC West title and beat Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl. No Rebels team had won any sort of SEC title since 1963. The last Ole Miss team to win a New Year's Day bowl was the 1969 outfit led by Archie Manning.

Cutcliffe's teams were 25-23 in SEC play. They won at Florida, at Auburn, at LSU.

Looking at it on paper from a desk in Tennessee, it's difficult to understand why Cutcliffe isn't the Ole Miss coach today.

The Rebels slumped to 4-7 in 2004, the year after Eli Manning departed. The defense struggled. The athletic director didn't approve of Cutcliffe's plan to get things back on track.

And so he was cut loose.

"I'm past the point of hard feelings,'' Cutcliffe said. "I wasn't mistreated. It just didn't work out.

"But I'm proud of what we accomplished there. I think it's a work in progress to become a head coach. Six years doesn't make me any kind of guru. I was learning on a daily basis.''

One blow led to another.

New Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis hired Cutcliffe to coach quarterbacks. In March, however, Cutcliffe underwent triple-bypass heart surgery. Then there were complications.

By early June, Cutcliffe realized he wasn't well enough to give his best to the Irish.

"It was really tough,'' he said. "Nobody but my wife knows how I anguished over that.''

He resigned his new post and moved his family from Oxford, Miss., back to Knoxville.

What seemed to be misfortune might be blessing in disguise.

Cutcliffe, who just turned 51, has recently started feeling terrific physically. Every day he's around Karen and the kids is a celebration.

He does some radio work and tapes a TV show for CSS from a home studio. He gets to watch more football than he ever has.

And he's breaking down videotape, taking notes, chatting up other coaches on the phone.

In short, he's boning up for that next shot at head coaching, if he's fortunate enough to get it.

"I'm so lucky to have this time,'' he said. "How many times in life do you fall into a situation where you have four or five months to reflect on what you'd do different?''

Contrary to popular belief, Cutcliffe said he doesn't reflect on what Phillip Fulmer or Randy Sanders, his successor, should being doing differently at the moment.

They're among his best friends, but he said he keeps a respectful distance.

"I had my struggles here,'' he said. "There were many Sundays when people wanted to run me off.

"It makes me smile to see John Chavis or Randy or Phillip but it's been more of a social thing. That's the way I've kept it.''

So Saturday, he'll be in someone's private box, looking down, a view he knows well from his many days and nights wearing a headset in the press-box coaching booth.

On one sideline, he'll see some of his closest friends coaching up a storm.

On the other, he'll see the players he recruited and in whose lives he became enmeshed.

And he'll feel like a fish out of water in this strange autumn.