Jeremy Pruitt Finds Sneaky Way To Get Back To Coaching Football Through Brutal Demotion

Jeremy Pruitt is likely to be back on the sideline coaching football this fall. However, it is not quite what he is used to.

The 49-year-old worked his way up through the coaching ranks on the high school level before entering into the college ranks as the defensive coordinator at Alabama, Florida State and Georgia. While coaching at Hoover High School in Alabama under Rush Propst, he famously had never heard of asparagus.

But that's beside the point.

Pruitt was hired as the head football coach at the University of Tennessee in 2018. His tenure did not go well.

Not only did he go 16-19 over three seasons, his program was involved with a massive cheating scandal. Most notably, Pruitt was providing impermissible benefits to recruits through a slush fund that was intended only to help the Volunteers land top talent.

Oh, and many of the cash payments were made inside of fast food bags.

His NCAA violations involved more than 105 people in total. Although his practices may not have been too dissimilar from some of the other ongoings in college football, Pruitt was sloppy and got caught.

As a result, the NCAA recently handed down a six-year show cause for Pruitt and punished the University of Tennessee (though pretty lightly, when compared to similar occurrences in the past).

There is a slim chance that any program in the country will hire a coach with such a lengthy show cause in any capacity. Pruitt is out of college football for the time being, if not forever.

Probably not forever, but maybe! He's pretty untouchable right now.

In the meantime, Jeremy Pruitt has found a new gig.

With the 2023 season quickly approaching, there wasn't really anywhere for Pruitt to go on any level. There was the analyst route in the NFL, like when he spent 2021 as a senior defensive assistant with the Giants, but even that wasn't really an option.

High school teams have their coaching staffs in place. College programs aren't calling.

So what is Pruitt doing? He will be the new Physical Education teacher at Plainview High School in Rainsville, Ala., starting next week.

There are a lot of family ties to the school. Pruitt himself graduated from Plainview, where he played for his father, Dale, and was named all-state in 1991 and 1992.

And now he's back! Jeremy is teaching P.E. at his high school, where his dad is back as the head coach for the third time in his career.

Presumably, with the move, Jeremy will join Dale's coaching staff. Quite the demotion...