Wednesday saw Butch Jones and his staff put put the finishing touches on their first signing class in Knoxville. The journey to today was a frenzied rush to the finish line for a staff that only came onto the job in December and worked feverishly to both maintain relationships, and in some cases hurriedly form some new ones.

Tennessee leaves today with 21 signees, including five early enrollees who are already on campus.

The Vols lost out on a what would have been a high profile signing when four-star safety prospect Vonn Bell of Rossville, Ga. signed with Ohio State today, but got also got a few pleasant surprises.

Quarterback Joshua Dobbs, who was previously committed to Arizona State flipped his decision today and signed with the Vols. Similarly, undecided defensive lineman Jaylen Miller of Gaffney, S.C. picked the Vols over Georgia Tech and others and 'sleeper' defensive end Malik Brown signed with the Vols after having been a longtime Syracuse commitment.

As always whenever a new staff comes into a program late in the game, managing time was a huge challenge. Evaluating commitments along with potential targets all while trying to pick up the thread of building relationships with coaches and prospects is a daunting task in the best of circumstances. Trying to pull all that off with just over a month of 'live' recruiting days is a special challenge that few can appreciate.

"I'd like to start off by thanking our coaches. I thought they did a tremendous job of helping and building relationships during a very short period of time-31 days to be exact, with the permissible recruiting days that we've had to assemble this class," Jones said of the frenzied effort that went into getting to this point today.

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