Tennessee football: Vols may have to go more national for 2021 class

For the first time in five years, Tennessee football secured a top 10 recruiting class in 2020. The Volunteers may have to go national to do that again.

Rankings change, and for most people they get better over time. It’s also true that Tennessee football has had to go more national than most teams throughout its history when trying to secure top 10 recruiting classes.

Still, if Jeremy Pruitt is going to do that this year like he just did, he’s going to have to go more national. The Vols secured seven four-stars on Rivals from the state of Tennessee in their 2020 class, including three linebackers out of Whitehaven High School in Memphis.

Currently, there are only seven in-state four-stars on Rivals available for Tennessee football to pursue in 2021 altogether. Eight players from the state overall four-stars, and one of them, Jake Briningstool, a tight end out of Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tenn., has already committed to the Clemson Tigers.

As a result, the road to a top 10 class will be a bit tricker for the Vols in 2021 than it was in 2020. They will simply have to stretch further beyond the state and go national. Even just Georgia and Alabama ties won’t cut it.

This is where Jeremy Pruitt’s new staff hires come into play. He finally has connections into Louisiana, New York, Colorado, California and even a deep junior college pipeline. The pressure is now on UT to make sure they keep stretching across the nation while expanding their footprint in Georgia and Alabama.

Oh, and they do have to wall off the state. That’s not going to be easy due to the fact that the Memphis Tigers, even if they have lost Mike Norvell, are a force to be reckoned with. It was key for the Vols to re-establish dominance against the Vanderbilt Commodores, but a smaller talent pool and more competition makes building an elite class off in-state talent nearly impossible.

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Beyond all of that, though, they actually just have to start winning. Tennessee football was recruiting at a high level across the country in the 1990s specifically because of its ability to win at a high level. The Vols were the winningest team from 1995 to 1998, and Phillip Fulmer was cashing in on that even beforehand.

Staff credibility and area talent and all those other things are big, but as Pruitt enters his third year, it’s time for him to start winning at a high level. We saw the recruiting momentum he had at the end of this past year, and there’s no way to separate that out from the six-game winning streak the Vols had to close out the year.

With so much talent back and a recent top 10 class, the key for Tennessee football is to start winning at a high level again. It’s the only way, at this point, they can continue their momentum. And they now have the team to be able to do it.

If they get to 10 wins this year and manage a top 15 finish, the dominoes will start to fall for the program. That combined with the new staff connections is going to be how they can be a consistent recruiting giant on a national scale despite their in-state issues.