Tennessee football: Jeremy Pruitt better deliver for Vols on conditioning

By Caleb Calhoun | Jun 19, 2018

KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 15: A view of the outside of Neyland Stadium before a game between the Florida Gators and Tennessee Volunteers on September 15, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images) /

Tennessee football has a newly renovated weight room and a new strength coach. Will those things help the Volunteers avoid what happened the last two years?

Many things undid Butch Jones as head coach for Tennessee football. One of the most prominent things fans blamed was his conditioning. After two years of numerous injuries depleting the Vols, everybody put the issue more on him than bad luck.

But we can’t forget that he did hire Rock Gullickson back in 2017. And Gullickson came highly acclaimed. So was it all on the strength coach? Was it the way the team practiced? Was it bad luck?

Whatever it was, Jeremy Pruitt now has more pressure on him. He replaced Gullickson with Craig Fitzgerald. He constantly talked about practicing differently during the spring, implying conditioning was a major issue.

And now we know, thanks to a story by the Knoxville News Sentinel, that the school spent over $600,000 renovating the weight room. The renovations may have been needed. But combine them and the hype they’re receiving with Pruitt’s comments and his decision to bring in Fitzgerald, and the message is clear. There are major expectations on Tennessee football remaining healthy this year.

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Pruitt does not have to win 10 games his first season to earn respect from Vols fans. Everybody knows he has an uphill battle to try to win games.

However, he does have to keep the team healthier. With all the changes that have been made, this year will reveal whether or not Jones was hit with bad luck or he truly did a poor job of conditioning the program.

As a result, if the Vols start dropping like flies and are depleted by mid-season, there will be a problem. It’s no secret that an untimely rash of injuries kept Tennessee football from being 11-1 in 2016. At that point, it just seemed like a fluke.

When 2017 hit, though, fans were right to question Jones’s conditioning of the players. But with Gullickson at the helm, there could have been other factors at play too. After all, Gullickson just doesn’t get bad in a year.

Of course, many staff members looked worse under Jones than ever before. Just ask Bob Shoop about that.

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Still, it’s hard to believe all of this fell on Jones and not bad luck. That’s why conditioning is such a big offseason story for the Vols this year. If they stay healthy, Pruitt will get a lot of respect for getting the team back in shape. If the injury bug bites again, well, maybe it’s time to question the food that’s served to the students on Rocky Top.

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