Following his father's footsteps, Pruitt answers Tennessee's call

The first words out of Jeremy Pruitt’s mouth as Tennessee’s new head football coach was a joke at his dad’s expense.

Moments earlier, Phillip Fulmer was standing at the podium explaining exactly why he tabbed Pruitt for the job when a classic ring tone filled a hushed room.

Undeterred, Fulmer kept talking and then introduced Pruitt.

When the former Alabama defensive coordinator took center stage, he immediately quipped, “I’m sure y’all heard that phone go off. It happened to be my father’s.”

Dale Pruitt sheepishly smiled and later said, “I thought it was dead.”

In the last 72 hours, Dale Pruitt’s phone has been buzzing non-stop though. The legendary Alabama high school head coach has won a lot of games in 36 seasons — 283 to be exact — but seeing his son become the head football coach at Tennessee, handpicked by Hall of Fame coach Phillip Fulmer no less, trumps them all.

Laying in bed late Wednesday night, Dale received a call he’ll never forget.

After accepting the job, Jeremy immediately phoned his dad and told him he was about to become a head coach just like him. The guy who grew up on the banks of the Tennessee River and cut his teeth as the twangy teacher tying shoes for kindergarteners had gone from Rainesville to Rocky Top.

“It’s very humbling. We’re so excited,” Dale Pruitt told VolQuest.

“I had Alabama folks text me today that said, ‘Hey coach, I thought I’d never say this, but Go Vols.’”

Jeremy Pruitt, 43, is charged with making Tennessee great again. He knows it. His dad knows it, and all of Big Orange Nation expects it.

The Vols haven’t won the SEC East in more than a decade and just lost eight games — all in the SEC — for the first time in school history. It’s not a total rebuild, but Pruitt inherits a real reclamation project.

“There was a time and place that this university was feared among the rest of the SEC,” Pruitt said Thursday.

“My goal as the head football coach at the University of Tennessee is to get us back to that point.”

It’s going to take time and a lot of hard work, but fortunately for Tennessee, that’s Pruitt's entire background.

Jeremy Pruitt grew up in the fieldhouse at Plainview High.

Football was his babysitter.

Everyday, Tennessee’s first-year head coach would tag along with his dad and brother. He’d wash jerseys at 6 a.m., attend practice and sit in the corner when the coaches broke down tape. One day when he was 6 or 7, Pruitt recalled sitting in a film study session after a loss and piped up that if the coaches had run a specific play on offense they might’ve won more games that year. Pruitt got a whipping afterwards that nearly had him rethink a coaching career, but it was that same confidence, brashness and natural football smarts that impressed Rush Propst, Nick Saban and others 20 years later.

“I got in the business because of my dad,” Jeremy said.

“I knew at a very young age, that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be just like my dad.”

Before making a name for himself at Alabama, Pruitt was an all-state quarterback and defensive back for his dad at Plainview. He spent five seasons working alongside Dale as an assistant, too. Pruitt’s first big break was when Propst hired him to coach Hoover’s secondary in 2004. Three years later, Pruitt went from Two-A-Days on TV back to Tuscaloosa and he hasn’t slowed down since.

“Football has been the life for our family as long as Jeremy can remember,” Dale said.

“I was thinking coming in when we went into the offices. Those offices are the same, they’re just different colors. Don’t matter if it’s Georgia, Florida State or Alabama or Tennessee.

“When he talks about grinding. That’s his life. When he leaves here, he will be doing exactly what he says. You won’t find him fishing. You won’t find him hunting. Now, he’s a terrible golfer, too. He just likes to do that every once in a while because Nick (Saban) likes to do that.”

Pruitt has previously joked that he only got the job at Alabama in 2007 — a low-paying start as the Tide’s director of player development — because Saban wanted three of his players at Hoover. True or not, Pruitt immediately caught the attention of the game’s best coach with his authenticity and X’s and O’s acumen.

With a warm grin and a down-home drawl, Pruitt could walk into a room full of high school coaches and kids from all backgrounds and connect with any of them. Within a couple years, Pruitt was promoted to defensive backs coach and became a key cog in Alabama’s dynasty — both as a coach and a relentless recruiter. Pruitt parlayed his time at Alabama into great success out on his own, too, winning a national title at FSU and spearheading a pair of Top 20 defenses on 10-wins teams at Georgia.

“If you talk to any kid that he’s coached or any kid that he’s recruited, he just tells them the truth. … He’s a people person. If you’re a people person, kids will play for you and they’ll play hard for you,” Dale said.

“Sometimes, they’ll play harder than they thought they could play. He relates to kids very well. They will play very hard for them because they know at the end of the day he’s going to be fair. Exactly what he tells them in their home — ‘We’re not guaranteeing you anything but if you come to Tennessee we’ll give you an opportunity’ — that’s all any kid wants really.”

This year’s College Football Playoff features three first-time head coaches and Nick Saban. Fulmer is betting on Pruitt eventually joining that group with the Vols. There’s plenty of risk involved in tabbing a guy with zero head coaching experience to takeover a program as dysfunctional as Tennessee’s in recent years, but there’s no guarantee that sitting Power 5 coach [X] would be any more prepared. Fulmer sees a lot of himself in Pruitt and believes Tennessee’s new coach is uniquely qualified for the job. Unlike Derek Dooley, there’s confidence that this Saban disciple was actually a sponge and understands what it takes to sell and build a program.

Plus, if he ever needs any advice, he can always buzz a couple revered coaches, too.

“He and coach (Fulmer) has a lot of similarities. I am so tickled that he’s getting to work with coach right down the hall. There’s going to be some times, no matter how successful or long you’ve been in this business, that you need to talk to somebody that’s been there and done that,” Dale said.

“There’s enough at the University of Tennessee that you can sell kids that fits this program that they can be very successful here. And they have been (in the past). Heck, you just look at the past.

"He’s had other schools talk to him and contact him, but I told him through the get-go. I said Jeremy, ‘Tennessee has the best potential of anybody. I seen it too many times. When he played, when he was Alabama, they were really good. That was during Peyton (Manning) and everybody during that run. Coach then carried it on after that. He’s very fortune. He’s very fortunate. We’re tickled to death to be here.”