Tennessee is an all-time football program. Yes, we all remember all too well an all-time rotten year – UT lost eight games for the first time ever in 2017 – as Alabama and Georgia have ascended to national places of prominence.
That last fact cannot be overstated – especially around these parts – for a fan base that is eternally proud in a sport that is eternally happy to needle its rivals.
So enter Jeremy Pruitt. He checks a lot of anti-Butch Jones boxes, and that’s a good thing. He has a championship pedigree, and that too is a good thing. He speaks like, acts like and looks like a football coach, and for the last few years of chasing hot or legendary names or the Butch experiment of wanting to win the press conference, Tennessee is in desperate need of one.
“My goal is to help put a football team on the field that they can be proud of by the way they play with their toughness, their effort, the way they play together,” Pruitt said at his first SEC Media Days event. “They play smart. No matter what’s on the scoreboard, when they leave the stadium, they say you know what, that’s our team. That’s what I want to give to our fan base.”
Amen and pass the pompoms.