Here are the 2020 Tennessee football Volunteers and other Southeastern Conference head coaches.
Despite the improvement Tennessee football head coach Jeremy Pruitt made in his second year, he’s still got tons of competition in the coaching rankings. The SEC is as loaded as it’s ever been when it comes to leaders of programs.
There are four new head coaches, one of whom is a first-time head coach, and two of the greatest personalities in the nation heading to the two Mississippi schools. Even the shortened season couldn’t top that storyline.
This past year, the league added another coach to its legion of national championship head coaches, making for three head coaches who have won the coveted title currently in the league. There are four who have won SEC titles. Pruitt may one day join that club with Tennessee football.
Now, this level of prestige is nowhere near where it was in 2008, when five of just 12 head coaches in the SEC had won national titles, another had an undefeated season, and seven coaches overall had won the league title. However, it’s coming back.
Remember, just four years ago, every team but the Alabama Crimson Tide was 8-4 or worse, and only one national championship winning coach was in the conference by the end of that year. Simply put, things are coming back for the league.
So what does this all mean for Pruitt and the rest of the coaches? Well, in this post, we’re going to do our annual ranking of SEC coaches heading into the year. We usually do this during SEC Media Days, but since those were canceled this year, we pushed it back.
Our criteria takes into account overall accomplishments but also the success enjoyed relative to the school the coach is at. We will also factor in recency and give more credence to accomplishments actually in the league.
Obviously, things will be different this year with all the teams playing just a 10-game league-only schedule. It’ll give some coaches a unique chance to prove themselves, or be exposed. So let’s go ahead and dive in. This is our ranking of all 14 SEC coaches, including Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt, heading into the 2020 season.