In this ranking, the Tennessee football Volunteers came right in at No. 15.
With national championship expectations despite over 20 years of no championship, 18 years with no top 10 finish and only two top 25 finishes over the past 12 years, Tennessee football is still declared an appealing job. Perhaps it’s because of how Jeremy Pruitt is building the program.
Anyway, in a ranking of the top 25 Power Five jobs, the Vols came in at No. 15, just behind the Miami Hurricanes and just ahead of the Michigan Wolverines and Texas A&M Aggies. Other SEC teams ahead of them included the Auburn Tigers, Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs, Alabama Crimson Tide and LSU Tigers.
According to 247Sports writer Brad Crawford, factors included in these rankings were program prestige, location, facilities, money and recruiting potential. As Crawford noted, the ranking was based on what job an elite coach would want to take if he could take any job.
Although money has been an issue in recent years due to buyouts, that and facilities do favor Tennessee football. Prestige also helped the Vols, as they are a top 10 team all time in winning percentage and total wins.
However, location and recruiting potential have consistently been up for debate. The state of Tennessee itself is not a strong recruiting state relative to other elite SEC schools, and the Vols have to compete with those SEC schools, most notably Florida, Georgia and Alabama. That’s a major disadvantage.
At the same time, Knoxville is in the center of the New South, which is consistently getting bigger in population. That includes Atlanta, which is three hours south of UT, Nashville, which is three hours west of UT, and Charlotte, which is just over three hours east of UT.
Beyond that, the Vols do have the Memphis area, which is in-state and the best recruiting ground for them. The only issue is that the city is six hours away, so recruiting Memphis can almost be as difficult as recruiting the DMV.
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On the other side, though there is the Research Triangle in North Carolina, which includes the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill and is three hours east of UT. Provided none of the ACC schools get talent there, and Mack Brown is making it harder, Jeremy Pruitt can pick from that group. Then the Vols border Alabama and Mississippi, two other fertile recruiting grounds.
Taking all this into account, though, it’s debatable where Tennessee football’s place is in the new age of college football. The Vols clearly have top 10 expectations when it comes to program prestige, but these recruiting issues call into question whether or not they can live up to them.
That’s probably why the program is ranked No. 15 and not higher. However, the big reason it’s not lower is resources. Simply put, the Vols are a program that will have to rely on great coaching hires and staying ahead of the curve on certain things to remain elite.
Given the fact that Crawford noted his rankings are based on where a Hall-of-Fame coach would want to go, though, it makes sense to put Tennessee football in the top 15. Again, if the coach is great, the program can be great. It just doesn’t have the infrastructure to be great regardless of who is running it the way LSU or Georgia does.