Ryan Glasspiegel
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One of the mysteries in the SEC, beyond who will be the next head coach at Auburn, is what Tennessee will do with Jeremy Pruitt.
The public narrative has been that Tennessee Athletic Director Phil Fulmer prefers to keep Pruitt for another season. However, there was some wiggle room in what Bruce Feldman said on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff this morning.
“Over at Tennessee, I’m told Jeremy Pruitt is pretty safe,” Feldman said, via 247. “But if the Vols get blown out today, all bets could be off. We know (Fox co-host) Matt Leinart loves Hugh Freeze. You know who else does, Tennessee Volunteer fans.”
Where does losing 34-13 to Texas A&M fall on the scale of all bets are off in a blowout? It’s going to be a tough decision for Phil Fulmer to make. The full-season SEC schedule this year exposed Pruitt. They finished the year 3-7, and you’d like to see a coach be making more progress than that in his third season. The Vols don’t feel like a team on the upswing.
The thing with Freeze is, I’m convinced a big part of the reason he turned down Auburn is because he doesn’t want to have to deal with the Alabama juggernaut in the West every year. Well, Tennessee is the only team in the East that falls under that same category since bama is their permanent cross-division rival. And you still have to deal with bama poaching your best local players in TN just as much as Auburn does in AL. If I’m Freeze, the two absolute worst SEC jobs are Tennessee and Auburn.
Wasn’t Malzahn 3-5 vs DartVader? Who has done better? Auburn deserves whatever poor coach they get. TN deserves another 3-5 years of mediocrity. Their glory days are in the rear view mirror.