As Jeremy Pruitt enters his second season with Tennessee football, here is where the Volunteers head coach ranks among other SEC coaches for 2019.
The week of SEC Media Days signifies the beginning of the preseason for college football. And that makes Tennessee football fans looking forward to 2019 as excited as anybody in the conference and throughout the nation.
This is a rare year in which all 14 SEC coaches returned to their respective schools. Although that may not be the case this year or next year, it shows the stability that has come to the programs after years of bad hires for many of them.
As all of those coaches try to make their case for their team’s development, Tennessee football head coach Jeremy Pruitt was among those selling the state of the Vols. But what it all means remains to be seen.
At this point, all we can do is look at what Pruitt has done, which is the same for all the coaches in the SEC. And that’s what this post is going to be about. Here, we’re going to do our regular preseason ranking of the SEC coaches.
Our criteria looks at what they’ve done and how many years they have been on the job, but it also looks at where they accomplished things. For instance, 8-4 at Vanderbilt is always more impressive than 10-2 at Alabama.
We’re also not basing this solely off of what they have accomplished at the school they’re at right now. It’s based on everything they’ve done as a head coach anywhere. Again, this is an analysis of how all the head coaches in the league stack up against each other.
You don’t win games with a strong press conference at SEC Media Days. It takes success on the field, and all of the coaches in the league now have a track record there in some way. So what they say this week is less relevant than anything.
But it is a starting point. And Pruitt really has sold Tennessee football’s leap forward as a program entering his second year. With nothing tangible to go on, though, let’s take a look at where he ranks along with the other 13 coaches in the SEC heading into the 2019 season.