Vanderbilt Football Coach Won't Hire an Assistant Until He Makes Sure They Have a Hot Wife

James Franklin, second year football coach at Vanderbilt, let some of the more unsavory parts of his hiring process slip Wednesday afternoon to a Tennessee sports radio station.

I've been saying it for a long time, I will not hire an assistant until I see his wife. If she looks the part and she's a D1 recruit, then you got a chance to get hired, Franklin said to Clay Travis of 104.5 FM The Zone. That's part of the deal. There's a very strong correlation between having the confidence, going up and talking to a women, and being quick on your feet and having some personality and confidence and being articulate and confident, than it is walking into a high school and recruiting a kid and selling him.

Franklin is in an uphill battle to secure recruits in an incredibly competitive SEC. He is further hampered Vanderbilt's tiny size and lack of program history when he attempts to recruit against conference mates like Florida or Alabama.

Franklin has to be unorthodox in his recruiting techniques to compete in that kind of an environment, but grading his potential hires by the attractiveness of their wives is extremely unorthodox.

Franklin was 6-7 last year with a 2-6 record in the SEC, but he was the first coach in Vanderbilt history to lead his team to a bowl game in their first season, so maybe there is a method to his madness. He was defeated in the Liberty Bowl by Cincinnati Bearcats 31-24.

Rivals.com ranks his 2012 recruiting class as the 29th best in the nation, and gives his 2013 class a very early rank of 20. So maybe his theories are working.

Franklin himself is married. He and his wife Fumi have two daughters, Ava and Addison.