The cashier at the Gibbs Hall cafeteria dorm gave a face she didn't know a quizzical look.

"Hi, I'm David Cutcliffe, one of the new football coaches here," said the smiling man standing before her.

She looked at her list of University of Tennessee coaches and athletes, found his name and waved him toward the food line.

"You know, that sounded kind of funny," said a smiling Cutcliffe, who spent 17 of his 23-year coaching career at Tennessee. "Since I've been gone, most of the people in here have changed."

But at least in the case of Cutcliffe, 51, everything old is new again. After last year's 5-6 train wreck season for the Vols, who were preseason favorites to win the Southeastern Conference and instead suffered their first losing season since 1988, Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer dialed 911-CUTT to stimulate a stagnant offense.

Cutcliffe had five winning seasons in his six-year stay at Ole Miss, including a 4-1 bowl record and an SEC co-Western Division championship, before being fired after a 4-7 2004.

Cutcliffe, a year removed from being fired as head coach at Ole Miss — where he had five winning seasons in six years, a 4-1 bowl record and a SEC co-Western Division championship — answered the call in late November.

Now more than 35 pounds lighter after triple bypass heart surgery in March and a stringent exercise program, Cutcliffe hasn't been this healthy and this happy since his first tour of duty in Knoxville.

"I've gotten back in the groove pretty quick," Cutcliffe said. "The only problems I have are I keep walking in (assistant) Trooper Taylor's office, and then almost opening (strength coach) Johnny Long's locker in the coaches locker room. Trooper has my old office, and Johnny has my old locker."

Everything is orange again

When Cutcliffe and family returned to Knoxville late last summer, many close to the Tennessee program thought it was just a matter of time before he was back on the staff.

Then the Vols' offense slowly crumbled. Not all of it was necessarily the fault of Randy Sanders, who succeeded Cutcliffe as offensive coordinator at the end of the '98 regular season when UT won the national championship, but the Cutcliffe rumors grew louder.

The grumbles exploded when Sanders announced the week of the Notre Dame game that he had decided to step down as offensive coordinator. He was hired recently as quarterbacks coach at the University of Kentucky.

"I was just a spectator (at Tennessee games) like anyone else last season," Cutcliffe said. "I wasn't watching it like a coach and thinking what it would take to fix it. But I felt the frustrations the coaches felt. What went through my mind was Murphy's Law — if it could go wrong, it did go wrong. That was the one constant. They never had any good things happen to them keep happening."

What Cutcliffe saw live in games was confirmed once he was hired and started reviewing last year's game tapes.

"It was a player making a mistake here and a mistake there," Cutcliffe said. "That's all it takes in football."

Fulmer's critics say his move to reunite Cutcliffe with the Vols was a hire of convenience and comfort. Cutcliffe and his family had moved back to Knoxville in late summer, and his son, Chris, became a manager for the football program as a freshman.

The familiarity of such a hire seems to be a good thing because of the seamless transition.

"It has been wonderful," Fulmer said. "We picked up conversations like he had never been gone. And now, having been a head coach, he understands a lot of the problems I have."

But some Tennessee fans believe since Cutcliffe cut his teeth in the Tennessee system, they'll see what they've seen the past 30 years — a risk-free offense.

The last couple Tennessee seasons have been marked by the lack of a play-making quarterback, as well as receivers who don't run tough routes, running backs who tiptoe and an offensive line that moves too early too oftendoesn't move too early when someone hiccups, are a far cry from the high-scoring Vols of the mid-to-late 1990s.

It was Cutcliffe who called the plays for the high-scoring Vols, the SEC championship squads of '97 and '98. Since he left for his first head coaching job at Ole Miss, the Vols haven't won another SEC championship (losing in the title game to LSU in '01 and Auburn in '04) and are 3-4 in bowls.

"David knows us and knows what we're about," Fulmer said. "He'll do things he's capable of doing with his personnel. He also has some new ideas."

Continuing football education

Whether Cutcliffe will be allowed to interject anything radically different into the Vols' offense is a question.

Fulmer's philosophy through the years is two-fold: do what fits the personnel and don't do anything that doesn't give his team a chance to win late in tight games.

Bottom line on offense: Don't get us beat.

Cutcliffe understands that theory, and he even coached that way to a point at Ole Miss. But last spring, summer and fall, as he rehabilitated from heart surgery, he locked himself in his film room at home and studied hours of college and pro game tapes sent by various coaching buddies around the nation. He also went to some NFL games to see his former UT quarterback student Peyton Manning with Indianapolis, in a Sunday afternoon luxury he never had his entire college coaching career.

The film sessions helped Cutcliffe grow as a coach, and were therapeutic in reviewing the tumultuous events of the preceding months.

Although he won't divulge details of why Ole Miss fired him, it's well known that Rebels' athletic director Pete Boone wanted Cutcliffe to fire several assistants after the 4-7 '04 season. Boone also wanted a plan from Cutcliffe on how he was going to get the program back on track.

Three days of talks between Boone and Cutcliffe resulted in an impasse, and Cutcliffe's departure.

"I was kind of wiped out," Cutcliffe said. "My wife said I sat in one chair, talked on the phone and didn't do much else.

"Everything that I had collected over the years at Ole Miss was in boxes in my garage. It seemed funny that I had no place to be."

Then, new Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis called Cutcliffe and hired him as quarterbacks coach.

He was on the job about 2 months when he returned to Oxford to visit his family which hadn't moved yet to South Bend. The visit turned into triple bypass heart surgery on March 9, and eventually led to his resignation on June 1.

"A lot of smart people told me to sit back and wait right after I left Ole Miss," Cutcliffe said. "In retrospect, that probably would have been the wisest thing.

"Yet when you get your ego crushed and your feelings hurt, you want to be wanted. Notre Dame was a beautiful place with great people.

"But I didn't physically feel good the whole time I was there. It started the season before (at Ole Miss). I'd exercise, get some pains in my arms and fatigue a little quicker. I was more tired than I normally was, but I was too busy trying to win games than to pay attention to it.

"The hardest part was making that decision to resign at Notre Dame. But I knew there was no way I could do what I like to do at the pace I want to do it."

Karen Cutcliffe recalled her husband's resignation phone call to Weis as being "a very tough decision." But the ensuing months provided her for the first time in her 21-year marriage the chance to spend some time with him Though eventually she thought he would return to the sideline, she'll always remember last spring, summer and football season with fondness.

It was the first time in her 21-year marriage to David that she was able spend an inordinate amount of time with him.

Instead of David rushing off to the office for a coaches' meeting or a booster club speech or a recruiting trip, they were able to watch their children participate in the things they loved — baseball for Chris where his Oxford High team won the state championship ("It meant so much for my dad to be there," Chris said), and cheerleading for Katie.

Once the move was made to Knoxville, the Cutcliffes slipped into a comfortable daily rhythm, taking 5-year old Emily to kindergarten, and stopping to sip a leisurely cup of coffee.

But there were still some adjustments, like when the Cutcliffes attended their first Tennessee game last season, sitting in athletic director Mike Hamilton's box.

"There were about 30 seconds left in the first half when David looked at me and Mike, and said, 'So what do you do at halftime?'" Karen said with a laugh. "I said, 'Well, you go use the bathroom, get some popcorn and a Coke, and you come back and sit down.' He said, 'OK."

Back in the fire

Cutcliffe won't have that problem this season. His first order of business when spring practice starts March 2 is jumpstarting the once-promising career of quarterback Erik Ainge.

Ainge was brilliant as a true freshman in '04 before he sustained a season-ending shoulder injury against Notre Dame in game nine. But last year as a sophomore, he looked lost, struggling through a horrible season in which he see-sawed in and out of the starting lineup with Rick Clausen. Ainge threw for just 737 yards (.455 completion percentage), 5 TDs and 7 interceptions, compared with his freshman season of 1,452 yards (55.1 percent), 17 TDs and 9 interceptions.

"Erik never got in any kind of rhythm, he never got comfortable," said Cutcliffe after watching every game tape from last season. "He was either in a hurry, or ended up out of balance throwing the ball. He would throw a good ball on occasion, but he never had a consistent throwing motion.

"So we're going to start from scratch and see what happens. Erik has a lot of talent. What I do know is he has plenty of arm strength and his feet are good enough."

In between recruiting and staff meetings, Cutcliffe has started meetings with Ainge and the other quarterbacks.

Ainge has been all ears, looking forward to working with a perfectionist such as Cutcliffe. Even though he formed a close relationship with Sanders, Ainge can't wait to start spring practice with someone who has his automatic respect, because of Cutcliffe's successful track record.

"Just in the few months coach Cut has been around here, he's already had an impact on me and several other players," Ainge said. "It's not just football, it's really more about character stuff that he emphasizes to us.

"He always says what he means and means what he says. I might think I've played well in a game, and he'll be the one to tell me, 'No, you didn't, look at this and this.' He doesn't sugarcoat anything, and I can take that, because I grew up the son of coach. Having someone say exactly what they think will help all of us."

One reason Fulmer brought back Cutcliffe is he's a meticulous teacher.

"David is real attention-to-detail guy, he's efficient," Fulmer said. "He won't put the cart before the horse."

Until Cutcliffe's unexpected last season at Ole Miss, he had developed a string of playmaking quarterbacks, the two most famous being the Mannings. First, Tennessee all-American Peyton (taken No. 1 overall in the '98 NFL draft), then younger brother Eli at Ole Miss, who was drafted No. 1 in the '04 draft.

There are those who scoff at the notion that Cutcliffe could improve the natural talents of the Mannings, sons of former Ole Miss quarterback legend Archie Manning. But Archie willingly gives credit to Cutcliffe for developing his sons.

"Peyton and Eli were good high school players, but they took huge steps when David coached them," Archie said. "People think I coached my kids all the time. All I did was answer questions when they asked me. David taught them everything.

"He examined their mechanics, little things like footwork, ball and shoulder position. Without a doubt, he's the one who taught them how to pre-read and read on the drop. He did things my coaches never did with me, like have his quarterbacks throw at least once a week with balls that had been wet down.

Archie, who wasn't happy when Cutcliffe was fired, said Fulmer made the right move in getting Cutcliffe back on the Vols' sideline.

"While I wish David would have had the chance to coach at least one year at Notre Dame under Charlie Weis, I think Phillip made the perfect hire," Archie said. "With David, he's got someone with six years of head coaching experience that isn't afraid to tell Phillip what he thinks."

Cutcliffe returns with an eagerness But will Fulmer listen? What is different about Cutcliffe, in his return to the Vols, is his eagerness to update an offense that looks like it has been stuck in a time capsule and opened every year in August.

"The (Tennessee) system has been tweaked over the last 20 or so years," Cutcliffe said. "But I want to make it better. "The hours of watching tapes like from LSU, Auburn, Florida, Southern Cal, Notre Dame, the Colts, the Steelers, the Bengals, the Patriots ... all that watching has sparked a lot of thoughts."

Cutcliffe promises the Vols' offense will be "an outstanding play-action team" that will be more multiple in formations.

"We're going to be a more aggressive team than we ever have been, whether it's running or throwing," Cutcliffe said. "That's the goal.

"It's why I'm anxious to get into meetings. I want to put all this together and develop a new playbook, then go out and practice it."

Peaceful, easy feeling

Just after Cutcliffe was fired for the first time in his career, there was some natural bitterness about his unexpected departure at Ole Miss.

But, now, he remembers his time spent at Ole Miss with fondness, with "good memories of our players, of the relationships we built, of the progress we made in the program,"

When Cutcliffe resigned at Notre Dame without coaching a game, he was disappointed.

Yet months later he understands such a quick move to South Bend without his family put such stress on him that his heart told him something was wrong.

So these days when Cutcliffe looks around, he sees blue skies and sunshine, even if the weather is cloudy and grey.

With the Cutcliffes living in the same area of Knoxville they lived before, wife Karen is giddy to be back in the town where she's spent most of her married life, and where she is surrounded by family and friends.

"You can't imagine what it means to me to see David happy again," Karen said. "He feels good, he looks good, and he's back to his old self."

Chris is content that anytime he needs to see his father, he can just pop upstairs in the Neyland-Thompson football practice complex to his office. Like just the other day when David had returned from a recruiting trip, two hours later Chris was watching tape with his father.

"I want to be a coach some day, and who better to learn from than someone I think is one of the best offensive coordinators in the country," Chris said.

Cutcliffe, who has a two-year deal paying about $300,000 annually, said he still wants to be a head coach again one day. He's learned a lot in what he believes has been a "rewarding" emotional rollercoaster ride over the last 13 months.

"How many people have ever had the chance to stop, and think about what you've done well and what you can do better, to reflect what's important to you, to have extra time with your family?" Cutcliffe said with genuine wonder. "I'm in a better frame of mind than I've been in years.

"You know that old saying that things happen for a reason? I'm more convinced of that than ever. I've been unbelievably blessed."