Now that it's all over with the NCAA, some perspective on Pruitt and his tenure here

#51
#51
Dooley and Pruitt, in a tie for worst head coach in Tennessee football history. One was a bumbling idiot, the other was a cheating idiot. Bookending Butch Jones, they make him look comparatively good. That's saying something.

Go Vols!
 
  • Like
Reactions: ksgovols and OrangeBeachVol
#54
#54
BowlBrother85 said:
Yes.

We know that a lot of coaches cheat ... but they use bag men. Plausible deniability when something goes wrong is essential.

These are third party contractors who have no ties to the school or to the program, and are well-experienced in how to launder money. That is transferring money by concealing the source of the funds, and without leaving a paper trail behind. Pruitt is the only head coach I have ever known to not only hand deliver cash himself, but also involve his wife. It is a shocking degree of stupidity.
Click to expand...
Exactly, Bama has always done this, but usually through bag men. You don’t leave banking, text or phone records. Everything is done with 2 or 3 degrees of separation and all meets are in person, like the mob. Tony Soprano (Nick Saban) doesn’t give out the cash. He has his foot soldier/ lackeys do it.
 
#55
#55
BowlBrother85 said:
Yes.

We know that a lot of coaches cheat ... but they use bag men. Plausible deniability when something goes wrong is essential.

These are third party contractors who have no ties to the school or to the program, and are well-experienced in how to launder money. That is transferring money by concealing the source of the funds, and without leaving a paper trail behind. Pruitt is the only head coach I have ever known to not only hand deliver cash himself, but also involve his wife. It is a shocking degree of stupidity.
Click to expand...
This is how it’s done:
Meet the bag man: 10 rules for paying college players
 
  • Like
Reactions: MemphisVol77 and BowlBrother85
#57
#57
Pruitt can kick rocks. We should forget his entire tenure as a Vol. No love lost for me.
 
#58
#58
cherokeeeVOL said:
I don’t hate him either but I do think he’s the worst coach in the program’s history. He and his staff blatantly cheated and still only won 16 games over 3 years, AND one of those years was arguably the worst season in the history of the program.
Click to expand...

At least Cornbread's poor results in the Win/Loss column won't cost UTK very many Wins that will have to be vacated.

There's another positive! lol
 
  • Like
Reactions: cherokeeeVOL and mackievol
#59
#59
Emperor VOLpatine said:
Reading the list of violations I actually felt like he was a pretty good guy. Most of it was paying kids parents medical bills and rent and stuff. He wasn't handing out dozens of free 45k cars to recruits like Saban
Click to expand...
I found it interesting it was proven $$$ were paid to Darnell Washington and OL Mims, they took the cash and signed with Ga anyway. One big knock was the assistants on staff except for the secondary coach who is in the pros were all destined to go back to the high school level. Micro managing doomed the offense, he was well liked by players and their families for the most part but probably in over his head as a P5 coach.
 
#60
#60
TNbuc2 said:
I found it interesting it was proven $$$ were paid to Darnell Washington and OL Mims, they took the cash and signed with Ga anyway. One big knock was the assistants on staff except for the secondary coach who is in the pros were all destined to go back to the high school level. Micro managing doomed the offense, he was well liked by players and their families for the most part but probably in over his head as a P5 coach.
Click to expand...
For sure. Not saying he was a great head coach. Also funny as several have pointed out that they took money from us but surely they went to GA for free lol. I'm sure Pruitt didn't learn to cheat working under Saban and Kirby at the same time
 
#62
#62
With this garbage in the rear view mirror, time to reflect on what an epically awful era of UT football 2008-2020 was. Shame on everyone involved, top to bottom. One of the gold standard brands in college football was lowered to Kentucky/ Vanderbilt’s level. It’s kind of corny but anyone remember The Princess Bride movie with the machine that sucks away years of your life? I feel like 13 years of the collective UT fan’s life has been sucked away forever. It’d be one thing if Tennessee during that period of time was a mediocre 8 win team every year where you could at least retain some degree of dignity as a fan, but it’s the fact that we were absolute garbage 11 of the 13 years that is shameful.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ptcarter
#63
#63
Pruitt is a Bammer. Through and through. Always has been always will. Never should have been even a thought for the UT coaching job.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KKruzVFL
#64
#64
The loosing seasons that we cheated to accomplish...are no more...smdh
 
#66
#66
JohnWardForever said:
You mean "Grinch"? lmao.
Click to expand...

You’d think. But unless I read the article wrong—Fulmer’s list of candidates in his email listed an Alex French. The reporter who wrote the article said that after extensive research he was unable to determine where Alex French had coaching experience at.
 
#67
#67
volfeeva said:
So far I haven't seen anything that suggests Georgia or Bama was paying players to the degree that Pruitt/wifey was doing. How do you figure that Tn got caught but no one at Georgia or Bama has spilled the beans about paying players for years now ? As for winning programs getting a pass for infractions, many fans are saying the same thing about Tn getting off kinda light here when you consider the sheer number of players being paid= 200 or so.
Click to expand...
Did Tn. Get caught? Seems to me we brought the bean counters in and it paid off. Do you think if Pruitt was winning we would be having this conversation?
 
#68
#68
Volanooga2521 said:
Exactly, Bama has always done this, but usually through bag men. You don’t leave banking, text or phone records. Everything is done with 2 or 3 degrees of separation and all meets are in person, like the mob. Tony Soprano (Nick Saban) doesn’t give out the cash. He has his foot soldier/ lackeys do it.
Click to expand...
The way Bama always got away with it, beside the time PF ratted oN them, the whole state was in on it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Volanooga2521
#69
#69
volfeeva said:
Thanks for the attempt, but to me you haven't made a compelling argument that Georgia was doing the same thing and was over looked by everyone. In this day and age of players not coming to a school out of loyalty like days of old, it's hard to imagine a program where they were paying players as wide open as you suggest and none of the players dumped on the school, or spilled the beans on what was going on. I still say any school like Bama and Georgia that plays for the NC frequently is going to have those folks doing all they can to find infractions they can dump on them.
And using your theory ( connecting the dots of Kirby paying players getting Georgia instant talent by his 2nd year )---that didn't happen with Pruitt. He paid players and they still sucked. I'm sure there are fans of other schools right this minute saying that Tn got a sweetheart deal after they were caught cheating---I mean so far, this is far from a death penalty for some pretty serious infractions.
Click to expand...
They do not give the death penalty. If you think Georgia and Bama dont pay recruits your out of your mind. Yes you buy the best players, it has always been that way. Certain schools get the benefit. Take Kansas and Duke in Basketball, Kansas, Kentucky... All of these schools had serious implications and all skated by well before NIL. Hell North Carolina made make believe classes and handed out diplomas. What Pruitt did was stupid and did not have the right morons in place to pull it off. So yeah he picked it up over his career. Bama has been busted more than once. Think banks just give away chargers to kids with no money ? How about flashing 20 G's ?
 
#71
#71
knox-townVOL said:
It's finally behind us, and at the end of the day we ultimately traded Pruitt for some recruiting/scholarship penalties and the hiring of Heupel, so we ended up winning in the overall big picture.

But as for Pruitt, I see a lot of people bashing him and celebrating that he's not likely to get a job for at least 6 years. But if I may give some perspective...

I don't hate the guy. Pruitt simply tried to play the game that the whole world knew Kirby was playing, which of course, he learned from Saban. He also did this under Fulmer's direction, which is not a shot at Fulmer because he also just tried to play the game. Fulmer had Tennessee's best interest at heart and wanted to do what it took to win, he saw mimicking Kirby and Georgia as the path to that.

Pruitt and Fulmer both knew that there was no way to compete with Georgia for the East without throwing stacks of cash at high school kids when it was illegal, because that's exactly what Kirby was doing. Now of course, Pruitt's fault in the matter was that he didn't win. If you want the NCAA to look the other way, you have to be a winning cash-cow for them.

If you blatantly play the game Kirby played pre-NIL, but don't win, you became an easy target for the NCAA to flex their muscle.

So we're here now, the dust is settled, and things are getting way better at a rapid rate on Rocky Top. Kirby has his two Natty's but also has publications like the AJC pointing out the excessive shadiness going on behind the scenes there.

I don't hate Pruitt for what he tried to do. The real villains in this story are our shady rivals. We already took one of them down, now it's going to be extra extra sweet when we remind Georgia that even with their cheating, they belong under Tennessee in the great pecking order of the SEC.
Click to expand...
Pruitt was a douche canoe and got what he deserved. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
 
  • Like
Reactions: GoVols1961 and Volanooga2521
#72
#72
onevol74 said:
I disagree with the plant theory. I think Fulmer hired him thinking he was dumb enough to control and that is the reason that Fulmer was so involved with coaching. If cornbread did not have enough success Fulmer could run him off and take over the program again.
Click to expand...
How can a guy who is getting paid millions be so dumb? He was doing it on purpose he didn’t care if he got caught or not. The guy is from Northern Alabama always was a Bammer. I think Dooley Sunseri and Pruitt were plants to destroy the program after what Fulmer did to Alabama. The administration and Fulmer kept hiring these people and not seeing what they were doing. We have hired all kinds of assistants from Alabama and none of them were worth a crap. It’s like they were hired to do nothing but make the program worse smh
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ptcarter and onevol74
#74
#74
VFL-82-JP said:
Dooley and Pruitt, in a tie for worst head coach in Tennessee football history. One was a bumbling idiot, the other was a cheating idiot. Bookending Butch Jones, they make him look comparatively good. That's saying something.

Go Vols!
Click to expand...

No kidding!
 
New posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

VN Store



Back
Top