How much more embarrassing could things get for Tennessee football? It’s bad enough when staff members, as has been commonplace for UT in the past, take a job with the same status at another Power Five school. Taking a lower status at a pro school or a higher status at a lesser school is more acceptable.
What’s worse than all of that, though, is when you take a job with the same status at a lesser school. That hasn’t happened yet, but even considering something like that is always humiliating to Rocky Top.
Well, according to Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports, Tennessee football tight ends coach Joe Osovet has interviewed with the University of Central Florida as a candidate to become the Knights’ wide receivers coach. Feldman revealed the news Saturday evening on Twitter.
#Tennessee TE coach Joe Osovet is in the mix for the vacant #UCF WR coaching job and has already interviewed for the job, per source.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) January 16, 2021
Yes, on-field assistant coaches under Jeremy Pruitt are now speaking with Group of Five schools about another on-field assistant job. You could maybe say that coaching receivers is more high-profile than coaching tight ends, but a promotion from an on-field position coach usually means becoming a coordinator or head coach. Osovet interviewed for neither of those things.
If he does indeed take a job at UCF, and it’s hard to imagine a pay increase with that, then how much more evidence will Tennessee football need to move on from Pruitt? That will be the peak of embarrassment on Rocky Top.
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Phillip Fulmer, Derek Dooley and Butch Jones all lost a significant amount of staff members, at least four each time, the year before they were fired. That’s always a sign of the wheels coming off of a program.
Losing Osovet to a Group of Five school would be the biggest piece of evidence yet that the same thing is about to happen to UT, especially after losing Will Friend to the South Carolina Gamecocks and then Auburn Tigers. Simply put, this is disastrous.
By the way, in terms of quality of coach, Osovet is a guy who could have climbed the ranks with the Vols. He is one of the most brilliant offensive minds, has deep ties to the junior college ranks and has a history of running cutting-edge offenses. This is the guy who invented the run-pass-option a decade before it became commonplace.
Simply put, he would be a huge loss. However, even if he was a mediocre staff member, the possibility of losing him to a Group of Five school in the same position is just too embarrassing. It should be humiliating to Pruitt.
UCF is probably the most elite of the Group of Five schools given its size, location and recent history. No program should be closer to earning Power Five status than that school, and it likely will produce more high-profile coaches.
Still, we have to come back to where it is now. Tennessee football should never be in the business of losing a coach to UCF in the same position. That couldn’t make it more clear that, either because of the investigation, poor recruiting, transfers or on-field failures, the wheels are coming off the program at UT.