KNOXVILLE – Jeremy Pruitt said he’s a big believer in knowing what you’re going to get when filling out a football roster.
“One of the big things for me in recruiting is relationships,” Pruitt said Wednesday.
That’s why college football’s first-ever early signing period presented a conundrum for Tennessee’s new football coach after he was hired Dec. 7.
Pruitt had less than two weeks to build relationships with 14 high school seniors who signed with the Volunteers from Dec. 20 to Dec. 22. All the while, he was preparing to coordinate Alabama’s defense in the College Football Playoff.
“There’s some of the guys that we recruited, some of them we knew for nine days,” Pruitt said. “So they might have passed the evaluation part as far as what they are as football players, but sometimes it’s hard to get to know everybody in nine days and get all the information.”