KNOXVILLE – With the travel, long hours away from family and the necessity of constant communication, recruiting can be stressful and tiring for college football coaches.
The process also can be adventurous at times, as some of Tennessee’s staff members were reminded recently.
From hitchhiking and ice cream cones to pet lizards and car accidents, they encountered some unusual situations along the way to compiling the top-15 class the Volunteers sealed Wednesday on national signing day.
Perhaps the best tale from the recruiting trail was running backs coach Robert Gillespie’s journey to see Carlin Fils-aime play in Immokalee, Fla., in September. One of the two pilots of the private plane wanted to accompany Gillespie to see Fils-aime play, and Gillespie welcomed him to come along when they landed at the closed regional airport.
“There’s no (rental) car,” Gillespie recalled during a recruiting celebration with fans at the Tennessee Theatre on Wednesday night. “So he and I start to walk, and we’re literally on the side of the street hitchhiking. We can see the stadium. We can see the lights, but it’s to far too to walk.”