Just a few years ago, Jeremy Pruitt was in college football heaven. He had a head coaching gig in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the premier conference in the sport, and he carried the exciting task of rebuilding the program at the University of Tennessee.
That dream job came crashing to the ground in 2021, but this week, Pruitt has a new job — as a physical education teacher at Plainview High School in Rainsville, Ala. You can’t fault the man for doing what he has to do to put food on the table and pay the bills, but how did he go from a plum head coaching job to working at his alma mater, where his dad happens to be the football coach?
Pruitt has built an impressive resume in college football. He began his coaching career as a student assistant at the University of Alabama, and he later served as an assistant coach under his father at two high schools. He eventually worked his way up the ranks to the coaching staff at Alabama, where he helped coach the 2009 National Championship team and won the award for National Recruiter of the Year in 2012.
Florida State University hired Pruitt as defensive coordinator in 2013, and there he notched another National Championship into his belt. The next season, he moved to the University of Georgia, where he coached for two seasons and reportedly clashed with head coach Mark Richt, who is notoriously easygoing.
In 2016, Pruitt went back to Alabama as defensive coordinator, replacing Kirby Smart, who replaced Richt as head coach at Georgia (where the rest is history). Pruitt won yet another National Championship there.
Two years later, the Tennessee Volunteers came calling, and they hired Pruitt as their head coach. Former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray told a radio host that he wondered if Pruitt had the right temperament to be a head coach — Murray was also the source of the reports of clashes between Pruitt and Richt.
At Tennessee, Pruitt discovered that returning a once-golden program to glory wasn’t as easy as it seemed. He and his staff also racked up a mind-blowing number of NCAA violations. Tennessee wound up firing Pruitt in early 2021 because of the recruiting violations he and his staff committed — which were so bad that the school refused to buy out his contract.
“Tennessee committed 18 Level I infractions, mostly surrounding illegal payments to players and a scheme where unofficial visits for recruits and their families were paid for, which is not allowed, per the NCAA,” reports The Athletic. “Tennessee’s recruiting staff concealed the activities from their compliance staff. The total amount of money in the violations was about $60,000.” The report also points out that Pruitt recruited during a period at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when no school was allowed to recruit.
Earlier this month, the NCAA Committee on Infractions released its report that determined that Pruitt and his staff committed 200 violations, 18 of which were among the worst level of infractions. The NCAA responded with harsh penalties; even though Tennessee avoided a postseason ban, the school had to vacate 11 wins from Pruitt’s tenure and pay an $8 million fine.
Pruitt himself received a six-year show-cause order from the NCAA, which subjects any school that hires him for a coaching position to penalties. Other coaches and staffers received show-cause orders as well. But what might be most concerning is that Pruitt established a culture that was so toxic that staffers were afraid to report violations.
Bethany Gunn, who was recruiting director under Pruitt (and who herself received a show-cause order), said that she didn’t report violations because she “feared retaliation, serious backlash, and even blackmail,” according to The Athletic.
All of this leads us to today, in which Pruitt is now a high school PE coach. It’s a long fall from grace, and, while I don’t wish any ill will on him, I do hope and pray that the humiliation of the past two-and-a-half years will make him a better man and a better coach. Who knows? In a few years, I might be writing his redemption story.
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