Jeremy Pruitt: Great hire, but opposite of what Tennessee football fans wanted
Tennessee football made a great hire in turning to Jeremy Pruitt as its next head coach. But he is the exact opposite of what Volunteers fans wanted.
Related Story: 5 positives to hiring Jeremy Pruitt as head coach
Butch Jones spent years rubbing Tennessee football fans the wrong way with his annoying cliches to shield his shortcomings. The talk was so bad that national sports analyst Colin Cowherd trashed him by calling him a gym teacher.
Clay Travis, a lifelong Vols fan, called Jones a “high school gym teacher” who somehow stumbled up the coaching latter to a huge salary. He also demanded that Tennessee football use its large athletic budget to make a huge splash hire to replace Jones.
Well, instead, Tennessee football found somebody who literally taught gym. In fact, Jeremy Pruitt didn’t even teach high school gym. He taught PE for Kindergarten to third grade students.
So the Vols replaced a glorified gym teacher with an actual former PE teacher.
Let’s be honest Tennessee football fans. Jeremy Pruitt is not what you had in mind when John Currie fired Butch Jones nearly a month ago.
At that point, Jon Gruden was at the top of the list for Vols fans. But even if Gruden wasn’t going to get the hire, the message was clear. Vols fans wanted a splash hire.
They didn’t want a guy who could sell his experience as a coordinator and his potential staff like they had in Lane Kiffin. They didn’t want a guy who could only sell his connections to the SEC and experience recruiting and working for Nick Saban like they had in Derek Dooley. And they certainly didn’t want a guy who came across as a glorified gym teacher the way Butch Jones did.
So who did they get? An actual former PE teacher working as a coordinator who could sell his potential staff, worked for Nick Saban, and gained a reputation as a great recruiter.
Pruitt literally checks all the boxes that became the basis for hiring each of the previous three Tennessee football coaches.
On top of all that, he also raises the red flag Kiffin raised. Remember, Kiffin’s heart was always with the USC Trojans. Well, does anybody believe Pruitt’s heart isn’t with the Alabama Crimson Tide? Of course not.
Now, to be fair, Pruitt checks all the positive boxes the previous coaches checked, whereas the other hires just had one or two. Kiffin had no experience working in the SEC or for Saban at the time. Dooley had no coordinator experience. Jones’s best year as a coach was one 11-win season at Central Michigan.
And don’t get me wrong, Pruitt is a great hire. I want to stress that. He certainly vindicates the move by Vols fans to nix the Greg Schiano deal and maybe even the Dave Doeren deal.
But we can’t deny the irony of how similar he is to everything Vols fans didn’t want in their next head coach.
If they couldn’t get Gruden, fans hoped for a splash hire in the form of a guy like Chip Kelly, Dan Mullen, Lane Kiffin or Bobby Petrino.
Kelly and Mullen chose other places. It looks like Petrino’s baggage still holds him back, as would Kiffin’s in Knoxville.
But there were two other potential splash hires in Jeff Brohm and Mike Leach, both of which fell through because of the fiasco that John Currie created. That’s when Phillip Fulmer came in.
Fulmer understands the scope of the SEC and what Tennessee football needs. He also knows that the Vols don’t need to make a splash hire or get an exciting offensive mind as head coach to win. Tennessee football can recruit with anybody, so a line of scrimmage coach who will develop toughness and win with Jimmy’s and Joe’s over X’s and O’s is the perfect fit.
Next: Jeremy Pruitt gives Vols fans last laugh
That’s exactly what he got in Pruitt. Fulmer pulled off a miracle by managing to unite Vols fans behind a great hire. That hire, however, just happened to check all the red flags that came with the previous three Tennessee football coaches. How’s that for a bit of irony?