Tennessee has ended the most tortured football coaching search imaginable and hired Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, according to reports.
As fun as it’s been these last few weeks watching Tennessee bungle its way through a series of pitfalls that started with firing Butch Jones, progressed to hauling Greg Schiano out of the dumpster only to stuff him back in, and ended with the firing of the athletic director John Currie, the program appears to have pulled itself together and is expected to hold a press conference later today to announce the 43-year-old Pruitt as the Vols’ new head coach.
Pruitt was a high school coach for a decade before returning to his alma mater in 2007 to work under Nick Saban, where he was the director of player development until 2012. After that, he served as the defensive coordinator at Florida State for one season, and spent two seasons as Georgia’s defensive coordinator before returning to Alabama in 2016.
ESPN reported that Pruitt “plans to stay on as Alabama’s defensive coordinator through the College Football Playoff, while pulling double duty as the Vols’ head coach and spearheading their recruiting efforts and putting together his staff at Tennessee.”