NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jeremy Pruitt served as Nick Saban’s director of player development in Alabama from 2007-2009 on the ground floor of the largest program in college football history, a youngster with his first full-time college-level job.
His role at the time was somewhat similar to that of the young Tennessee staffers whose careers in collegiate athletics were set on fire along with his basically in the UT cheating saga, who thankfully received a suspended sentence Friday but no post-season suspension ended. Pruitt was Saban’s defensive backs coach from 2010-12. He rose through the ranks with jobs at Jimbo Fisher at Florida State and Mark Richt at Georgia, with talent assessment and sourcing being a big part of his appeal. Two more seasons back in Alabama when Saban’s defensive coordinator got him the job in Tennessee.
The SEC will be in Nashville for media days this week and we’ll be thinking about Georgia and Alabama, two of the three most powerful entities in the sport. We’re going to talk about Tennessee football, which is at a momentum it hasn’t had in many years. We will welcome Hugh Freeze back to the league. And we could say a few idle words, most likely jokes, about the disgraced Pruitt entering a six-year show-cause sentence with no marketability as is and taking nothing away from the $12.6 million buyout , which UT took from him when it fired him with cause in January 2021.
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It’s all so silly. And it’s a reminder of the fine line between the celebrated and the despised in this sport and the way they are often intertwined. I don’t want to exaggerate Pruitt’s sympathy, because the 127-page Committee on Infractions report that accompanied Friday’s verdicts laid out the outrageous, stupid fraud by him, his wife and his UT subordinates.
But if I could get a glimpse of all of that, it would be from some of the people who helped him on those other programs—him and Brian Niedermeyer, the UT assistant who got five years of show-cause and who previously worked as an assistant at Pruitt worked in Georgia and Alabama. Were they baffled by the way Pruitt turned out to be doing things over the long term that resulted in 18 Level I violations and a five-year suspended sentence that included scholarship cuts and about $9 million in fines?
Tennessee assistant coach Brian Niedermeyer (right), who received a five-year sentence for show cache, told NCAA investigators that the large withdrawals he made around recruiting weekends involved lavish spending on his girlfriend. (Bryan Lynn/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Or were you more surprised that any of this saw the light of day? Perhaps the biggest misconception here is that Tennessee had no choice but to carry on as before. I can’t prove that nothing happens if Pruitt has a successful season in 2020, nor that the NCAA doesn’t notice without UT doing an excellent job of self-determination. But I like both statements.
And I find the COI claim that without Tennessee’s “exemplary” cooperation a postseason ban would have been ridiculous. It’s a nice pat on the back in the hope that other schools will act accordingly in future cases, but the NCAA knows, and has basically confirmed, that it no longer issues post-season penalties for children unrelated to the violations of previously employed adults can become. Also, I’m not sure anymore what counts as a transgression.
The ones detailed in those 127 pages certainly seem quaint and not worth all the trouble given how collegiate athletics has evolved over the past two years. This was just a small glimpse of what happened, about $60,000 in improper benefits to multiple prospects over a two-year period without getting caught up in any of the actual bidding wars that are much more open now.
There is great comedy, such as on pages 11 and 12 where the COI notes that the Pruitts explained that their constant withdrawals of large sums of cash “rose from their rural childhood, where many of the people with whom their families are associated standing, didn’t have credit cards and always carried cash.”
And as the Knoxville News Sentinel first reported, Niedermeyer actually told investigators that the massive withdrawals he made on weekends filled with big visits were related to Knoxville’s wild nightlife and lavish spending for his girlfriend. It’s silly, but it’s also so hard to take care of these transactions. Luckily we will never do it again.
The most troubling aspect to me, and perhaps an underestimated aspect of the developments for Pruitt, is discussed on page 27. Then-recruitment director Bethany Gunn, who served as Showcase for five years, told investigators she never reported violations because she “feared retribution, serious backlash and even extortion.”
When it comes to declaring yourself to the COI, expect a lot of CYA. Still, there are plenty of stories and plenty of supporting evidence of angry Pruitt outbursts while he was coaching the Vols. Someone was motivated to take this to Chancellor Donde Plowman and start that process and perhaps poor football and the development of the Vols as a program in 2020 weren’t the only factors.
Perhaps Tennessee is in an even better position today if it simply fires Pruitt and pays him off at that point, without the painful introspection. That’s a lot of buyout money, but it also wipes out more than two years of it that hung over the program and restores lost scholarships and recruiting opportunities.
Regardless, the most important thing Plowman did in the episode was sign Danny White to replace the overwhelmed Phillip Fulmer as athletic director. White brought Josh Heupel from Central Florida, and Heupel far exceeded expectations given the circumstances.
It’s easy to forget how bad things looked in January 2021. But they were dark. You couldn’t look much more promising today. Whether this was necessary or not, Plowman’s approach worked and Heupel no longer has to answer these questions.
“The hardest part for all of our staff has been recruiting, and because it has nothing to do with who we are there at the moment,” Heupel said on ESPN’s Paul Finebaum Show on Friday. “People tried to use it negatively against us during recruitment, so you had to build a lot of trust with the recruits and their families. You talk about the culture you’re building, you talk about what happened and what you think the bottom line will be at the NCAA. (This verdict) gives us an opportunity to put it behind us and it’s up to the public. It’s done and everyone knows we’ll have the opportunity to play for championships.”
We’re going to talk a lot about that this week. We’ll rate Georgia and Alabama. We’ll hear Freeze lay out his plan for Auburn. He will likely quote some scriptures along the way. Pruitt can finally be discussed in the past tense, and he will no doubt be the subject of some rants and comments about his integrity. But his greatest transgressions are still losing and creating opponents.
For my part, I hope that one day Jeremy Pruitt finds his way back into this league, if for no other reason than to keep us entertained. He fits in better than many people who will be in Nashville this week would like to admit.
(Top Photo: Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)