Is Jeremy Pruitt just another Butch Jones 2.0?
By Ty Butler
Tennessee fans are beginning to gain unlimited confidence from recruiting success, but is Jeremy Pruitt just another Knoxville jester in SEC football?
It’s true that Jeremy Pruitt has had great success while recruiting the 2021 class. In fact, the Volunteers currently sit on the throne of first place- if you haven’t already discovered from the abundance of tweets coming from Vol Nation. The rest of SEC football certainly has.
However, we’ve watched this happen once before… Okay twice… Really, this makes the third time that Tennessee football has put far too much pressure on a second-year coach coming off of a mediocre campaign.
There’s not many fanbases in the SEC who are this happy about such an ordinary season- unless you’re Vanderbilt.
But I also understand. The Volunteer community is starving for success. And we all know there hasn’t been much of it for the past decade.
This leaves us asking- Is Pruitt just a Butch Jones’ 2.0 descendant?
Maybe. But here at Southbound and Down, we always look at statistical evidence so that we can make either a positive or negative correlation from exhibit A to exhibit B.
Today, we’ll unpackage the direct connection from Butch Jones to Knoxville’s newest shiny toy.
It’s important for Vol fans not to take this too personal. It’s only smart to analyze your failures and use that knowledge to better prepare for the future. But given the Vols’ past, it’s obviously something that they should work on.
It’s important to have a certain level of self awareness, especially in the world of fandom. Thankfully, I’m here to help.
It’s time to dig into the numbers.