Just three months after Tennessee had an eight-game winning streak, ranked in the top 15 and leading the SEC Georgia powerhouse at the Athens break, the Vols are looking for a new football coach after they allegedly split Jeremy Pruitt on Monday.
Pete Thamel reported the shooting on Monday morning, citing sources.
Pruitt, the former defensive coordinator in the state of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, was 16-19 years old in three seasons in Tennessee, his term culminating weeks after a frustrating season amid a compliance investigation into the program’s recruitment practices. After starting the season 2-0, the Vols lost six consecutive games and the loss to the Aggies dropped Tennessee to 3-7 in 2020.
Tennessee’s six-game losing streak, the longest on the show since 1988, featured all double-digit losses with the Vols losing to rivals Alabama (48-17), Georgia (44-21) and Florida (31-19) ) and losing as favorites against Kentucky at home and on the road in Arkansas.
Pruitt was hired at the end of a turbulent search for a coach after Tennessee lost to the SEC in 2017, and after a 5-7 debut season in 2018, he made the Vols go in the right direction by overcoming unexpected defeats to the state of Georgia and BYU to open the 2019 season with seven wins in eight games for an 8-5 result.
Since the defeat to Texas A&M, Pruitt’s future has been thrown into limbo amid an internal compliance investigation into alleged recruitment violations. Pruitt had positions in the offensive line and in the positions of defensive line coach, but he filled a vacancy in his team with Kevin Steele, who was announced last week as a defensive assistant coach. Meanwhile, current players, possible incoming transfers – Tennessee signed Virginia Tech quarterback transfer Hendon Hooker on January 8 and added an appointment from Auburn Edge Rusher Big Kat Bryant on Saturday – and future recruits are wondering what the situation would be like.
The uncertainty, now complete, dragged on for several weeks until mid-January.
Tennessee hired lawyers Kyle Skillman and Michael Glazier with Bond, Schoeneck & King to assist in the investigation with some sources who believe the University is looking for a potential way to pay Pruitt for a reduced acquisition or no acquisition if it is found in the investigation enough to trigger a termination by clause of its contact .
The streak of six consecutive victories to end the 2019 campaign led to the athletic director Phillip Fulmer giving Pruitt a contract extension and increase earlier this year. The two-year extension and $ 400,000 increase, which Pruitt postponed to 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic, was underway in the spring, but was not finalized and announced until two days before the season opened against South Carolina in September. The move extended Pruitt’s business until the 2025 season and raised his annual salary to $ 4.2 million.
The purchase of Pruitt, which equals 60% of his remaining salary, is in the range of $ 12-13 million, and his contract has no compensation language, which means that what Tennessee owes to his now former coach it won’t change if he gets a new job.
The Tennessee Department of Compliance investigation launched to investigate the program’s recruitment practices began in November. According to an ESPN report last month, part of the investigation, which includes interviews with current players, recruits, assistant coaches and others in the football and athletics department program, includes recruiting Tennessee for a five-star offensive tackle. Amarius Mims, which signed with Georgia earlier this month. Leading rusher Eric Gray was excluded from the Texas A&M game as part of the survey.
Tennessee’s decision on Pruitt came not long after the Vols signed 19 players during the initial signing period. The Vols currently occupy the 15th overall position and sixth place in the SEC in the recruitment ranking of the 247Sports team for 2021. Pruitt and his team signed the 13th class in 2019 and the top 10 in 2020.
Pruitt’s management featured some highlights, such as the turnaround of the top 25 opponents Auburn and Kentucky during their first season and the 2019 turnaround that featured victories against the state of Mississippi, South Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt before a victory exciting against Indiana at the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl two days before 2020. The 2018 win at Auburn broke an 11-game losing streak and Kentucky’s win was against a 10-win team. 2019 Vols had a SEC winning record for the second time since its last appearance in the SEC Championship Game in 2007.
Instead of enjoying last year’s strong end, the Volts stuttered during the 2020 season, played amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The weak quarterback game torpedoed the attack, a much-vaunted offensive line fell short of expectations and the wide receivers struggled to replace two veterans who took a lot of production with them to the NFL. Defensively, there was a regression from last season and the abrupt departure of the defensive line coach in October Jimmy Brumbaugh after just eight months and four games at work.
Pruitt’s resignation comes after Fulmer, a former Volleyball coach in the Hall of Fame, issued public support from his handpicked coach twice last month, first asking for patience for a coach whose program was negatively impacted by the pandemic and citing the slow start Tennessee’s tenure at the end Johnny Majors in the early 1980s and later saying that he was looking forward to the Liberty Bowl, from which Tennessee withdrew because Pruitt and almost two dozen other program members tested positive for Covid-19, being a “primer” for Pruitt and his program going to spring practice in 2021.
Tennessee is now in the market for its fifth different coach since Fulmer’s resignation after the 2008 season, with Pruitt joining Lane Kiffin, Derek Dooley and Butch Jones in being unable to establish sustained success for the oppressed Vols.