Tennessee football: Five reasons Vols should stick with Jeremy Pruitt past 2019

3. How many times can you blame coaching? Buyouts are getting expensive.

If Tennessee football fires Jeremy Pruitt, at what point do the Vols blame themselves as a program rather than the coaching? After all, they will have fired two head coaches since 2010, both of whom were highly touted Nick Saban proteges, and in between they will have fired an offensive minded head coach who did lead them to their only two nine-win seasons the past decade.

By this point, the fans would have to be questioning if their program is the problem, not the hires. Why allow for that talking point when Jeremy Pruitt is just in his second year? The Vols have gone every route. They went for a coordinator, an administrator with connections, and a guy who had a history of winning championships at smaller levels.

Firing Pruitt would mean none had worked out, and it’s just not a move worth making. However, there’s another issue to that, and it involves all the buyouts. Because of all these firings, the Vols spent $11.5 million on buyouts of the football staff this past year, and they are continuing to spend money on those buyouts into the future.

Being on the hook for Jones and his staff and athletic director John Currie is bad enough. But this is the highest paid assistant staff in the nation. At what point do the Vols just throw in the towel with all of these buyouts that would come? They simply can’t afford it, and a great argument for sticking with them is riding out the contracts.