Dale Pruitt, the father of University of Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt, is the new head coach at Dade County High School. / Staff photo by Stephen HargisWhen Tennessee throttled 11th-ranked Kentucky 24-7 last November inside Neyland Stadium, the stage was set for the Volunteers to notch a bowl game in Jeremy Pruitt’s debut season as a college football head coach.
The Vols had evened their record at 5-5 and needed a win over visiting Missouri or at Vanderbilt to claim their spot in the postseason, but Pruitt’s closest confidant didn’t like what he was seeing.
“I thought they ran out of gas in those last two ballgames,” said Dale Pruitt, Jeremy’s father. “I was at their practices the week of the last ballgame. I went home after that, and my wife asked me what I thought. I told her that I thought we were in trouble because we were beat up.
“The Monday practice was better than the Wednesday practice, and that’s never good. It takes big, big bodies to play in the SEC, and you better have a bunch of them.”
Those concerns obviously were exposed when Tennessee lost 50-17 to Mizzou and 38-13 at Vandy to conclude a 5-7 year.
In roughly three months, Dale Pruitt will begin his first season as Dade County High School’s head coach and his second as a friend, adviser, sounding board or whatever Tennessee’s coach wants him to be. Dale’s profound impact on his son was evident when Jeremy was introduced at Tennessee in December 2017.
“I knew at a very young age that this is what I wanted to do,” Jeremy said. “I wanted to be like my dad.”
The elder Pruitt actually has two sons who have followed in his footsteps, with Luke Pruitt set to begin his second year coaching Pisgah (Alabama) High School, which is roughly 30 minutes from Dade County.
“I tried to talk both Jeremy and Luke out of coaching,” Dale Pruitt said. “I told them, ‘If you can do anything else, do it,’ but they’re not a whole lot smarter than I am. They chose this direction, and maybe it’s a good thing, because I’m not sure if you put them together that they could change the oil in a car or any of that kind of stuff.
“My dad once told me, ‘You better be a good football coach, because you’ll starve to death if you try and do anything else.’ That’s kind of their situation, too.”
Jeremy is hardly starving after earning more than $3.8 million during his first season in Knoxville, but money does not determine any kind of pecking order during phone conversations about the game that has consumed them for decades.
“We talk football every time we’re around each other,” Dale said. “I get a little help from Jeremy and Luke, because the game is changing more right now than it has in the 40 years that I’ve been a part of it. You used to have everybody in the box, and it was all downhill with two backs. Now it’s spread all over the field, and you may not even have a back.
Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt shouts as the Vols warm up for the Orange and White spring game Saturday at Neyland Stadium.“You have to evolve or it passes you by, but we’re definitely a coaching family, and there is nothing sane about it.”
The Pruitt family also contains mother Melissa and sister Leah, whom Dale quickly credits as being the household MVPs. They have heard countless comments while sitting in the stands of high school games, with Dale describing some of those shouts as “humorous later, but not humorous at the time.”
Dale became far more unraveled emotionally at Tennessee games last season compared to his contests while coaching Albertville (Alabama) High School, and he expects this year to be no different. He began last season in Knoxville watching games in the luxury box reserved for the families of the coaches but quickly realized that wasn’t the best environment given how he’s wired.
“I had a hard time staying in there, so I wound up watching from the sideline and kind of hid in the corner,” he said. “It’s difficult for me to sit in the stands. It was difficult to do that when Jeremy was a D-coordinator, because there are just a lot of people there who don’t follow the nuts and bolts of the game. It’s been a good experience with some rough roads, and I do think going to practice this spring was a whole lot better than going to practice last spring.
“I don’t know whether that will transcend into more wins, but they have more kids who can play and have bigger bodies. They’re going to be so young it’s unbelievable, but those kids who came in after Christmas were competing. It was a very positive month leading up to the spring game.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.