Tennessee football: Five potential concerns over Shelton Felton as Vols OLB coach

2. Doesn’t expand recruiting map for Vols

We mentioned earlier the one incident that could potentially make Shelton Felton a recruiting concern for Tennessee football. Well, beyond that, he doesn’t really expand the recruiting map either, and that could be a major problem for the Vols as they try to go national under Jeremy Pruitt. They have to do that and always will. Even now, in-state talent is just not enough.

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However, all of Felton’s connections are in places where the Vols have already built deep pipelines. His whole high school career was coaching in the state of Georgia, and he played college in the state of Alabama. Meanwhile, his deepest college ties are in the state of Tennessee. Rocky Top has enough coaches who have built pipelines in all of those areas.

Now, there is the point that he spent a year with the Akron Zips in Ohio. However, it’s really hard to believe he built any connections up there while being part of a staff that went 0-12. Even if Akron improves under Tom Arth in the future, it will now have been without the help of Felton, so there’s going to be little to tout about his tenure in the state of Ohio.

One positive from this is that Felton can help shore up the Vols’ firewall. They want to lock off the state and have as many deep ties into Georgia and Alabama as possible, and Felton certainly helps with that. But what they could really use is more connections to different parts of the country, and Felton simply does not bring that to UT.