Jon Gruden’s interest in Tennessee football: Final piece to validate Grumors

Real reports of Jon Gruden’s interest in Tennessee football was the final piece of evidence needed to validate the rumors of him coaching the Volunteers.

For a while, now, we’ve talked about the legitimacy of Jon Gruden to Tennessee football. It started a month ago with us completely dismissing the rumors in a post. Then, it changed to the post we have above, giving a few reasons it could be real.

However, much of this was speculation. We had enough evidence to know the Vols had interest. And we had enough evidence that Gruden felt connected to the program.

What we did not have, though, were hard reports that Gruden was reciprocating interest. Well, that all changed on Monday.

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Longtime Tennessee football reporter John Brice posted Monday that Gruden was calling former Tennessee football players to see if they would be interested in becoming assistants for the Vols. Clay Travis helped affirm that in his Outkick diary on the Grumors, although lots of that is sarcasm.

Simply put, we have real reports of Gruden now entertaining the idea of joining the Vols. And that shoots up the possibility that he actually comes to Knoxville.

Monday’s report is the most substantial report to suggest that Gruden could be Tennessee football’s next head coach. The idea that he is showing interest, which multiple sources validated, is what makes this real.

Now, to be fair, he could be bluffing. But it doesn’t matter because it’s very clear for the first time that both parties are entertaining the idea.

Add in Gruden’s previous quotes about getting back into coaching and the lure of Tennessee football as a program, and this seems more and more real. In fact, it’s becoming almost a likelihood.

Clay Travis himself put the odds at 50/50 on his Periscope show, which is an insanely high probability if you know the history of the Grumors.

There’s another really interesting point to this. Last week, we talked about a report from last week that Gruden would be spending this past weekend in Tampa to talk about his future with his family.

Then, after waiting forever to finally fire Butch Jones, Currie finally made the move Sunday. Is there a connection with his decision to fire Jones and the family meeting Gruden was having?

Next: Week 11 SEC Power Rankings: Vols still in bottom three

That part is specifically speculative. What’s not speculative, however, is that it’s abundantly clear there’s enough smoke for fire. And that’s going to keep the Grumors rolling until the season ends.